I, personally, use newspaper pots made from old telephone book pages, just wrap the paper around a couple of fingers to make a cylinder and put one piece of tape on it to hold them together. They have to be stacked close together after you plant the seeds, since they'll lean, but they're easy to water from the bottom. No need to water the surface at all. There's another way to do it, too. Use small paper or styrofoam cups with the bottoms cut out. Turn the cups upside down so the small portion is at the top and punch a couple of drainage holes on the bottom sides. Fill with planting soil and plant your seeds. When it's time to set out the transplants, use a spatula to keep the bottom soil in place to set them in the planting hole. Then just carefully lift the cup straight up and pack the soil around the root ball. Nothing surrounds your transplant then.

Aerating with a golf course putting green aerator with aeration tines set on 2 inch centers works great for seed bed preparation. We like using turf tractors (w high flotation turf tires) and rear mounted 3 pt hitch cam driven aerifiers for at least two complete passes over the same areas. The first pass is set at 3" to 6 inch depth for root penetration, and a 2nd pass set at 1/2" to at most 1 inch tine depth. The wider the tine the better (7/8" wide are great!) These create protected seed pockets with GREAT TILTH, and hold moisture. These professional aerators roll and smooth simultaneously JUST BEFORE before this final tilth and subsequent seeding takes place. One major benefit to this system is that the ground remains firm enough to still move over it. It's as if the un-aerified soil between aeration holes acts as a soil "grid", further protecting the "seed pockets" between them. This in essence prevents the plugged seed pockets from being compacted or disturbed. This system can work for all new plantings, and when overseeding existing turf. It does an amazing job where existing turf is stripped off with a sod cutter, and then this system is applied. We've done it on projects ranging from entire golf courses, to sport fields, and small residential sites. This can also be combined with running sub-soiling "Mole Ploughs", and vertical lineal aerators like Graden and Turf Mach units. The P.G.A. and U.S.G.A. have researched it thoroughly on putting greens, and published an article entitled, "Core Aeration by the Numbers", (pdf via Michigan State University, Chris Hartwiger and Patrick O'Brien) Scott Buley, High Tech Turf & Trees

Received almost two inches of rain here last night over a span of a few hours. It was the first rain event since seeding this past Saturday. Hoping the heavier lawn roll saved some of my seed from erosion.

I tried it and they alternated between drying out completely and getting mouldy. Also the compost fell out of the bottom and the whole thing was a sorry mess. I'm sure there are advocates of "bog-roll-planting" out there, but for plants with long roots (e.g. sweet peas) I now use 500ml yoghurt pots - they're nice and deep. Yes, the plant has some root disturbance, but it doesn't make a huge difference, in my opinion.