I've used them and paper pots as well. But i prefer the containers (milk jugs, juice jugs or clamshells). Try them and see if you like them - everyone has their own preferences.

I've used toilet paper rolls, and newspaper pots that are just rolls of newspaper. You don't need to fold under a section to create a base. Place them into your larger containers (milk jugs etc.) and fill them with soil, using a stick to make sure the soil gets to the bottom of the tube. The bottom of the jug holds the soil in.

When plants are ready to go in the ground, you don't have to cut or tease roots apart -- just drop the plug (paper pot and all) in a hole in the ground.

One tip from my experience is to fill the paper pot to the very top with soil; otherwise you've got to tear a strip off the top of every tube when you plant out.

Marcia & Cangrow: Thank you for your responses, but I think you missed the point of my question which is: how quickly will the toilet tissue roll biograde? I used some thin cardboard this summer as the base for a new lasagna type bed, and it took a couple of months to rot. Would I be restricting the growth of the root systems of plants (like tomatoes and parsley) for two months by using the toilet tissue roll, which is in my opinion, not much different from the cardboard I used in bed this summer? I used some newspaper pots last summer and by the time I was ready to plant out, they were practically falling apart. But the toilet tissue rolls are ready made and uniform, and I just thought I might save a little time using them, if they would give me a favourable result: i.e. breakdown qickly enough for my root systems to 'spread their wings'. I hope I have explained myself. Thank you.
Northerner.

Can't answer that, then! :) I don't recall what i planted in toilet paper rolls, and whether or not they germinated, and if they did where did i plant them?

(Age - makes life always full of surprises!)

I couldn't say for sure how long it took the pots to biodegrade, but I can say that the plants grew well. I remember them being quite soft by the time I planted them out.

Perhaps with the open bottoms, the roots find their way out even if it takes a bit longer for the pot to disintegrate.

Thank you, Cangrow. I will use them, and as you advised, I will leave the bottoms open.

Yes, I've been thinking of using toilet tissue rolls too but I wasn't worried about the cardboard degrading b/c I was just going to peel it off when I'm ready to plant out IF it wasn't degraded enough. I think though...it should be quite soft by the time the seedlings are ready to be planted and you could just poke holes in it with a pencil if you didn't want to peel the paper away.

One benefit of the toilet tissue tubes is that you don't have to transplant the seedlings to separate pots like you might have to do if you just spread seeds in a flat container.

Barb

Barb- now I realize why it took so long to invent the wheel...I was wondering the same thing about the root development v. non-degraded cardboard, and it never even occurred to me to JUST POKE HOLES IN IT!!!

Thanks a million!

How funny MMQC..!

Barb