Pumpkin Challenge Prep: DIY Seedling Pots to Kick Things Off

Hello, dear hive gardeners here at @gardenhive! Here I am taking on the challenge of the 2025 Pumpkin World Cup. I am grateful to @der-prophet for telling me about the challenge after I commented on his post. I never thought it was a real challenge here at Hive, so I’m glad he helped me understand it better by directing me to @hive-world-champ link.

I am really excited to start my pumpkin challenge journey, so as soon as the June rain began last Friday, I started planning the preliminaries. While the pumpkin seeds are on their way for delivery to my house, I began the preparations by making DIY seedling pots. So the above pots are empty yet, since I am still waiting for the seeds. The last time I checked, they will probably arrive this week.

I will use these seedling pots to ensure a high germination rate of the seeds before transplanting them to their permanent space on the ground. This method is our common practice, not just for pumpkins but for other vegetables in our garden. As observed previously, the germination rate is around 90-100%. So I am hoping that it will be the same with the pumpkins that I will be planting in these pots.

These seedling pots are made out of banana leaves, fastened with coconut midribs. They’re very easy to make and economical, not to mention that they are also environmentally friendly. We started using these DIY pots after we realized that using polyethylene bags can contribute to environmental toxicity due to plastic pollution.

To make the seedling pot, you just need to cut the banana leaf into rectangles depending on the pot size that you like to make. Form a cylinder using the rectangle strip, slightly overlapping the edges, then use another strip to serve as the base, and then use coconut midribs to fasten the edges. Put the best kind of soil and set aside.

For my pumpkin pots, I put soil mixed with decomposed leaves from our compost pit. As you noticed, the soil texture is a bit loose, and the color is black due to the organic materials and crushed wood charcoal.

I am expecting 20 seeds of pumpkins to arrive, so I made 20 seedling pots here. I put them in a tray and placed them on our seedling table outdoors. This is to ensure that chickens and other sneaky pets won’t disturb my seedling pots.

I can’t wait to put the pumpkin seeds in these pots! I will surely update you about my pumpkin challenge journey in my next posts.

(I hereby attest that this article is made by me without any aid of AI or grammar editing apps and the photos attached are mine; that I fully understand and adhere to Hive policies and guidelines in posting; and that I won’t be violating any of these rules for my future posts.) Photos are mine, the 5th one was edited in Canva.