Great idea. I have found the 3 ounce little plastic drink cups from Walmart to be perfect for starting plants. You get 100 for 1.59, and being clear, you can watch the root development. I recycle these as I transplant into the garden or larger containers.

Other good recycling ideas include using the individual fruit cups, take out containers, pop bottles, and the Hormel/Tyson meat entree trays make good germination trays. I used a lot of these precooked meats when my mom was with me. Now I have great containers for starting seeds.

Oh! I love these ideas! I just started collecting & cleaning my plastics for recycling (I'm in an apartment so I'm still trying to figure out a system for collecting and storing until I can take over to SWM). Since I'm single, don't eat much, although a lot of convience foods/frozen foods...I don't have the entree trays...any other ideas on germination trays? And what to you cover them with to maintain humidity?

I hope this thread gets a lot more traffic!

Suz

Yeah, yogurt cups are good plant containers. I just use an awl for poking the holes in the bottom. I don't get too many of them, though, since we use them to make our own yogurt in. The little plastic solo cups are good for starting plants in, too.

Wow, that's great, you have a lot of Milkweed! What species are you growing?

I used about 2 dozen yogurt cups last year for spring sowing some annuals. They worked well, but because of their size they have a tendency to dry out pretty quickly. I put them inside a rectangular plastic container and watered from the bottom. This year I'm going to use 1 ltr bottles cut in half with a hinge to start the warm season annuals, veggies, and grasses instead of the yogurt containers. The 1 ltr bottles hold more soil, and the bottle acts as a mini-greenhouse to raise the temperature and hold moisture in the bottle.

I'm in the process of sowing quite a bit of Asclepias (several kinds) as per the Winter Sowing Forum. I've done this over the last few years and it has worked quite well. I'm using 2 litre pop bottles and yogurt containers as well. The yogurt containers come from a restaurant so they are the bigger ones at 650g. I also recycle clear plastic juice jugs and bottles, ice cream containers, take-out containers, etc. As long as I can put 3" of moist soil in them, then they qualify. :O)

I sure could use 250!! Last year I nearly ran out of Milkweed for the cats and had to 'borrow' from a neighbour.

I use plastic cling wrap to cover the entree containers, or stick the whole thing into a gallon plastic bag. Plastic bags are reusable if you just save them for planting.

Butterfly man, in your zone, wouldn't the milkweed come back on it's own?

I'm trying to germinate Asclepias (tuberosa?) for first time this year, and on another thread someone mentioned (in my zone) that they were unsuccessful several times to get that one to germinate (but they are successful with incarnata).

I have also read that they are slow to start up in the spring from the ground (in warmer zones - doesn't give me too much hope where I am, even though many seed sites I've visited said it's good to zone 3).

Also, I use my old hot glue gun (with no glue stick in it) to melt out holes in my yogurt containers, and a single holed hole punch works good on the pudding containers my kids plow through during the winter. Just an alternative. Glue gun makes perfect ventilation holes in my rubbermaid 'worm bins' also.

Thanks.

Tuberosa and Incarnata both come back, but the plants in the picture are milkweeds I will share.

I'm give away about 500 plants every year to schools and individuals. I may end up walking the neighborhood giving away milkweed plants if I have to.

The easiest way to germinate tuberosa is to plant the seeds outside and let them come up on their own. You can use cups or just throw them on the ground, mix it up and then let them be. Tuberosa is a slow grower so it will take a number of years before they reach their potential, but then they look spectacular.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cold Stratification

Good idea, butterflyman!
Sherry