If you’ve read, oooh, pretty much any other article on this blog, it’ll come as no surprise to hear I’m a lazy gardener.

Every Wednesday in my horticulture course we learn about all the right ways to help a plant grow: how to provide the right soil conditions, the right nutrients, the best levels of light, the best position in the garden, the right amount of water, the right temperatures…

It’s all fascinating and I eagerly scribble down notes and ask (slightly spoddy) questions.

And then I come home and can’t be bothered to do a single one of the recommended actions in my own garden. I don’t want to tenderly care for and nurture a plant for months on end, providing it with the best possible situation and assessing its wellbeing every day.

Nope. I’m of the plunk-it-in-the-ground-and-see-what-happens persuasion.

So planting bulbs and seeds is my very favourite form of gardening. Stick them in, forget what you put where, be pleasantly surprised by whatever comes up. (And anything that dies; well, it probably wasn’t going to be a very interesting plant in the first place…)

The only trouble with seeds is that there tends to be an awful lot of re-potting involved. From the seed tray to the small flower pots to the final position. So, when I read last year about planting seeds in old loo rolls, I knew I was onto a winner…

You just fill them with compost, plant the seeds inside, keep them well-watered and once the seeds are big enough, plant the whole thing in its final position. As long as the cardboard stays wet, the roots will be able to grow right through them.

It’s the same idea as those biodegradable pots you see, but of course much cheaper. Why spend money on something when you can recycle an object that you’d otherwise throw away to do the same job?

Last weekend, I took some of the seeds I’d been meaning to plant for ages and spent a nice few hours pootling around out the back planting them into the loo rolls.

Of course, the process ended up slightly less straightforward than it sounds. Turns out there is one really good thing that all flowerpots have and loo rolls don’t. A bottom.

I spent quite a lot of time re-filling the rolls as the compost fell out of the bottom if I moved them the tiniest bit. And you really need something the size of a spoon (not a trowel) to fill them, otherwise you end up with a lot of soil in the gaps between all the loo rolls.

But let’s hope it was a bit of extra effort now, to save lots of effort later on.

This was how they looked once I’d finished:

I’ll let you know how they get on over the next few weeks!

Have you ever tried this out before? How did it work out? And do you have any other time / money saving tips for gardening? Post me a comment below and let me know…

Related articles:

• Some nice vintage gardening images at my post Gone gardening

This post is linked at Thirty Handmade Days, the Shabby Nest, Beyond the Picket Fence, the Shabby Creek Cottage, Sew Can Do, CRAFT, Simply Dream and Create, Serenity Now. Head over and see what others have been up to this week…