It's hardening off time for seedlings in preparation for planting outdoors.  Hardening off is when you place your thinned and transplanted seedlings outdoors and expose them to mederate weather and sun over a period of a week or more. When your seedlings have developed five or more 'true' leaves, they are ready to start hardening off.

Many of our seed started plants for the garden we are growing in New Jersey have reached the right size to 'thin out' and re-pot into their own deeper containers. This year we've started all of our plants in egg cartons. I jammed in 4 seeds per spot, in the hopes of getting a few usable plants out of each. Now the cells are getting crowded and I also want to give them more room to grow deeper roots. So, I'm upgrading the ones that are nearly ready to be introduced to the outdoors to 2" wide x 3" tall paper pots. 

I remembered seeing a photo on Brooklyn Homesteader of how they used re-purposed old newspaper to make seedling pots, but I couldn't find how she made them. I did find a somewhat simpler design over laurabarnard.co.uk, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, kudos to her fine illustration though. So, I scoured the web and found a few hard to follow videos on how to make these little guys.

After watching the videos a few times and practicing all the way, I got the technique down and thought I should share. I've taken a series of photos that I hope you'll find helpful with the accompanying instructions. Please feel free to comment with any questions or suggestions. 

I didn't have any newspaper, but we have a hell of a lot of Amazon's shipping filler paper, so I decided to put it to work.

Your final bag will look like this. 

This slide show will show you how to make them. The decriptions of each photo explain in more detail how to proceed from each step.

Here is a happy seedling growing away in a new bag.