On Facebook’s Buy No Things Ann Arbor page, Stacie Cowie recently put out a request for old copies of the Ann Arbor Observer. “My husband makes little plant pots out of the pages and says they’re the perfect size,” she wrote.
Matt Cowie now has plenty of Observers to turn into planting pots for their greenhouse. He says gardening is his way of relaxing from his high-stress work as a financial software developer, but his large fingers made it hard for him to get seedlings out of plastic starter pots. “They’d inevitably break, so it’s very much single-use plastic, and you don’t get as much volume.”
He developed his paper-pot process through “trial and error.” After removing the staples from an Observer, he tears the double pages in half and folds each page lengthwise. He wraps the folded page around a two-inch diameter form—he fashioned his out of an old rolling pin—with the unfolded edge hanging over about an inch, then creases the overhang to make a flat bottom. Holding the rolled pot in his hand, he fills it with three-and-a-half inches of dirt and tucks it into a standard gardening tray. (He’s made a how-to video at bit.ly/MattsPots.) “When the seedlings come up, you can plant the whole pot and it will deteriorate. It’s very convenient.”
Matt says they grew more lettuce than they could give away last summer. This spring, he’s adding snap peas, because “tons of people wanted them.” The Cowies are giving away marigold seeds in their Little Free Library and will share marigold seedlings with their neighbors when they sprout. “I like to put stuff out for free, and it’s cool to see people pick things up,” he says.
The Cowies have a big backyard, and their two young daughters are eager to see if their dad meets his goal of growing an 800-pound pumpkin. He’s also experimenting with loofahs, a subtropical vegetable whose fibrous interior can be used as a sponge. “They need 200 frost-free days, and that’s hard to get in Michigan,” he says. He started the seeds in his basement and will transfer them to the greenhouse once it’s warm enough.
Loofah plants grow ten feet high, so he expects them to create a pergola effect inside the greenhouse. Undoubtedly, he and Stacie will share sponges with neighbors and friends. What will they do with the rest? “Hopefully, clean my children,” Matt chuckles.
