I have found this great site where Mary and Tim Vidra talk in their  17Apart blog about starting their seeds in pots, as you do, to have the seedlings ready to transplant either into bigger pots or out in the open ground.

Quite a long time ago I found the idea of making little pots from newspaper, winding it around a small jam jar – more of this later.

However small the jar is the pot comes a bit too big for a small seedling, say tomato or pepper.

This idea that Mary and Tim had is great, giving recycling another step up!

I followed their excellent teaching video and got some egg halves, after cracking the eggs very carefully, filled with potting compost and…

I’ve got a perfect little pot. The shell will provide nourishment at the start of the growing process and will eventually break dow. After all, I put egg shells and egg carton into my compost anyway, so I might as well put them to more use.

Another possibility, when I don’t have enough egg shells, is to use the egg carton itself, again put one or two seeds into each compartment and when the seedlings are growing, cutting the container along the obvious lines and planting the whole thing into pot or open ground. The carton will break down, same as the egg shell.