Does anyone know how to make their our Jiffy pots

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Flatland, Jan 11, 2016.

  1. Flatland

    Flatland Member

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    In Oz you can buy things called Jiffy pots. They are little lumps of potting mix held together by some sort of fine netting. The idea is you put a seed in the pot after it has sprouted and grown into a little seedling it can be planted as is, so there is no disturbance of the soil and roots. They work well but are ridiculously expensive, so i am wondering if anyone out there has any ideas to make something similar but without the high price tag.
     
  2. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    aren't they made from compressed organic materials? when i see them around here they are made of peat.

    the simple method would be to use tubes made from newspaper or toilet paper rolls and a flat ended piece of wood to compress the starting mix a little (before wetting it at all).
     
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  3. Bryant RedHawk

    Bryant RedHawk Junior Member

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    I have to agree with songbird, the easiest way to "duplicate" the jiffy pot is to take moist peat and compress it then put that "puck" into a tube of netting.
    What we do on Asnikiye Heca is use toilet paper rolls or pieces of a paper towel roll. We fill it with moistened peat and plant directly into the filled tubes. (I don't compress them as much as the commercial jiffy pots have been compressed)
    Once the seedlings are up around 3cm we can either plant them or leave them in the greenhouse till we are ready to plant them out.
     
  4. Flatland

    Flatland Member

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    Sounds like it should work well. i am thinking of using this idea to start lucerne plants as I don't have much seed and don't want to risk losing it all if I seed straight into the ground
     
  5. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    for lucern you want long and deep plugs as they put down a taproot fairly quickly. this would get rapidly very expensive if you make them too wide. you could probably use a mix of 1/5 potting soil along with your native soil to keep the expense down. or experiment with different ratios to see which does better...
     
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  6. Bryant RedHawk

    Bryant RedHawk Junior Member

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    Once again I agree with Songbird. We just set some lucern seed, we used full paper towel rolls filled with a mix that was one part Bacto potting soil, two parts sharp sand, 3 parts top soil gathered from the area we will be planting out the seedlings. We decided to use the full length papertowel rolls when we found out about the long tap root. This way we hope the taproot has enough potting soil in the column so it doesn't pop out the bottom before we plant them out.

    I also have used lengths of PVC pipe as containers, these are nice because you can cut them to the length you need for the root systems and they are reusable many times. When I use these I just tap all around the pipe and the plant slides out nicely.
     
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  7. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    i have actually never transplanted lucern here because the clay soil and climate makes it grow fairly well from seed. the thing i would do for a dryer sandy soil is do seed balls (clay, organic fertilizer, seeds) and then see what started and put some organic material around the seedlings to keep them protected during the first dry season. i don't think i'd be too focused on growing lucern either as i'd want a good mix of native plants for a pasture.
     
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  8. Ben Zumeta

    Ben Zumeta New Member

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    Fukuoka's clay-compost seed balls seem to be of similar function and skip the nursing stage.
     
  9. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    i wonder how it has been going. :) ...
     
  10. Grasshopper

    Grasshopper Senior Member

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    Coco peat(or compost/wormcasting alternative) in egg cartons.
    Plant the individual egg pockets
    No root disturbance
     
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