Herb seeds and paper pots

April is here (Waaahoooo!!!) and although it is quite fresh outside these days, I decided to sow some herbs and place them by a sunny window. With their germination time being between 10 and 30 days (depending on the herb), this will lead me to mid to late April. By May, I will hopefully have some healthy young plants to place outside in pots and/or beds. :)

I decided to try a new kind of sowing pots. Following instructions from "learningandyearning" (click here), I put together seedling pots made of newspaper. They are easy to make and inexpensive. When the seedlings are ready, we can even choose to just plant them where we want them, paper pot included! The paper will eventually decompose and disappear. However, it's important to remember that there are actually chemicals in newspaper, (thanks to a friend of mine for pointing it out)*** so I will probably be more inclined to remove the paper when the time comes.

For the time being, I don't think it is a big problem, as the seeds and eventual small roots will be taking their nutrients from the soil and the paper won't have time to decompose before it is planting time... I hope!?

One thing is for sure, I'm curious to see how it will all go and I'm eager to write updates about this little project! Here are the herbs I sowed today, along with their expected germination time. 

Oregano: 15-20 days
Parsley: 18-30 days
Green basil: 10-14 days
Red basil: 10-15 days
Chervil: 14-20 days

Update / Correction:
*** After verification on the level of chemicals in newspaper (thanks again to my friend for doing the research), it seems newspapers now-a-days are not as full as chemicals as originally thought. So there is no reason to fear planting the seedlings along with their paper cups. :)