by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The easiest way it to make such a propagator for individual pots is to use a clear plastic bag, place the pot (with seed(s) inside) and lightly close the top of the bag. It works! I have done it and that more than once. And this is a great reuse for those clear plastic produce bag one has to use at so many of the greengrocers in which to package the fruit or vegetables.
Another way to make your own propagator, and you are actually recycling or reusing and upcycling, whichever term we should use here is irrelevant, is to put PET bottles – bottoms cut off/out – as cloches over the pots (or even seeds/seedlings/plants outside). The caps make it possible then to control, of a fashion, the air flow and you can take the caps of entirely to give more air. Alternatively you can poke a little hole into the caps for airflow.
Reusing PET bottles in the garden is not only reserved for use as cloches and propagators but propagators is what we are concerning ourselves with at the moment.
Small bottles, such as half-liter or liter ones work well to put on standard plant pots to grow on individual seedlings while the larger two liter or even larger ones, such as the large water bottles, work well over larger plants to keep them warm-ish, even in the colder months.
Obviously, it will not keep tender plants that really should be in a greenhouse during winter from freezing but other plants can, possibly, kept going for a much longer time with such cloches.
The best use for such recycled cloches, in general, however, is to use them for starting off seeds.
© 2014
