Origami: Paper Seedling Tray.

In this instructable I'll be making a seedling tray from majorly paper. It mimics the shape of conventional seedling trays and has a hole at its base for draining excess water. It's a fun origami build, although a little bit time consuming, the result is well worth it.

• Sheets of paper (any kind if paper, must not be too thin)

• Corrugated cardboard.

• Broomsticks.

• Ruler.

• Scissors.

• Pencil.

• Blade.

Take a regular sheet of paper, it could be from books not needed any more or some disposed printing paper. Any type of paper that is not too thin (which will tear on folding) and is more than 10cm in both width and height can be used.

Measure a length of 10 cm from one side of the paper sheet and mark it. Fold the paper along this mark width-wise, make sure the the overlapping halves align properly with the tops and bottoms being at the same level. Use your thumb to flatten the fold so it forms a crease, open the paper sheet and cut it into two along the crease using a scissors or tearing it using a ruler as a guide.

Take the part that measures 10cm in width and fold it from the top left edge to the right so as to make two right-angled triangle halves laying on each other.

Cut the folded part away from the rest of the sheet. Unfold it and we've got a square.

Fold the square length-wise into two equal halves, unfold it, fold it again width-wise into two equal halves and unfold it again. Now we have a crease pattern of a plus sign with a slant line from bottom left to top right.

Fold the paper from bottom left to top right into two right-angled triangles, unfold it and now we have another crease line running from top left to bottom right of the square piece of paper.

The entire crease lines form a web-like structure or probably an asterisk.

Placing the square sheet on a flat surface in a clockwise manner, fold the top right box (quadrant) of the crease patterns into half along the dividing crease line, do the same for the bottom left box formed by the crease. Now we have a smaller square with inner pockets.

The new square has two infoldings and two flaps (one on each side). Taking the side facing you, fold the flap such that its apex touches down on the pointed bottom exposing the inner foldings, open back the flap and fold it in half such that its apex touches down on the middle of the crease line made by the previous fold. Fold it in half once more, making sure the fold rests (and doesn't exceed) the crease line that guided the previous fold. Finally turn over/fold the entre folding we have made on the flap onto the bottom pocket.

Repeat the same for the flap on the other side. Now the the two infoldings should be visible when looking from any of the two sides.

Take the shape we've made and fold each side into half so that the outer sides now get to be folded inwards while the inner sides are flattened and outwards.

Again, we have two flaps by the sides and no infolding between them. Repeat the folds we made for the previous flaps (which had infoldings between them) for these two flaps. Now unfold the two flaps to resume their previous form but now with crease lines.

Mark the middle of the second crease line (counting from bottom up) with a pencil.

Taking one of the two sides made by the dividing vertical crease line, fold the side so that its tip lies on the pencil mark in the middle. Do the same for the other side.

A new tip is formed at each sides but higher up. Fold it in as Shown in the pictures 30 so that its edge lies next to the top edge of the previous fold. Do the same for the new tip on the other side. The side we've been working with is now noticeably narrower than the side facing away from us. The flap on the side facing us have now been folded into an 'A' shape.

Fold the 'A' shape along the crease lines earlier made in picture 1, 2 and 3.

With your finger or a pencil tip, raise the two small pockets on each side of the bottom area of foldings so a gap for tucking in is present. Take the folded flap and tuck it in the two pocket so it is firmly held in place.

Repeat the same for the other side.

Now we have a paper pocket with a pointed-tip bottom. Fold the bottom along an imaginary line that runs from A to B on both sides i.e fold to one side, unfold, fold to the other side and then unfold.

Using a pair of scissors, cut a tiny piece away from the pointed bottom to make it blunt/flat. Pick the paper pocket up and with the top facing you, stretch the infolds out. This makes a square top and also makes the bottom open into a smaller square. Adjust the shape so it forms a good pyramidal shape.

We've just made one cell for our seedling tray, I will be making a 4×4 tray so I'll need 15 more of these cells.

To arrange the cells into a seedling tray, we'll need a corrugated cardboard and thick broomsticks. You can also use similar substitutes for these.

The width of our paper cells is about 3.5cm, so four of them would be about 14cm in length, adding 4cm to it (for a 2cm excess on each side) would make it 18 cm, so we would need a length of 18 cm sticks cut from the broomsticks, for a 4x4 tray we need 8 stick, each of which is 18 cm long.

Straighten slightly bent broomsticks by sliding them through your fingers. Sharpen the ends of the broomsticks with blade, exercise caution here both with the blade and the sharp tips of the broomsticks.. Taking one cell at a time, pass the broomstick into the outer side-pocket for one side of the cell till you have four cells passed through the stick. Then take another broomstick and pass it through the other side-pocket through the four cells, we should have something like picture 8.

Repeat this for other cells until we have four rows of four cells each as in Picture 1

Take the corrugated cardboard and cut out two rectangular pieces 16cm by 2cm.

Starting with one of the cardboard pieces, take a row of four cells and insert the two protruding broomsticks into two holes (the holes created by the corrugation in the cardboard layer) wide apart enough to accomodate the two broomsticks without damaging the cells in-between, do these for the remaining three rows.

Repeat this with the second cardboard piece for the other side of the seedling tray.

And now we have our paper origami seedling tray.

Fill the cells with seed-starter mix or soil as appropriate, make slightl depressions into each cell with your fingers and sow your vegetables seeds into them and cover them lightly with more soil/starter mix and take them to your garden's greenhouse.

When its finally time for transplanting to the garden bed, disassemble one of the cardboard pieces and slide out the cells containing the seedlings one by one and plant into the soil together with the paper pot.

While it's not as rigid as those made of plastic and thus won't lend well to frequent movement;

It's fun to make and adds to your origami skills.

It's biodegradable.

The pyramidal shape (which allows air to flow around each cell instead of all cells being jam-packed together) and hole at the base provides for a very effective draining system for excess water thus prevents risk of seedlings damping off or being attacked by fungi in the garden bed.

And we managed to put together a complete seedling tray without touching a bit of plastic! Go green or go home!