Summer of Solutions Hartford is one of a few local organizations participating in the food justice workshop series at the CT River Academy in East Hartford, CT. Last week, we had a booth at their food justice fair. Students had an hour in the fair to talk to representatives from urban farms, seed companies, dining services, green jobs organizations, and local food producers.

At our booth, we had information about the program, and an origami seed pot activity. We had a big box of soil, some basil, parsley, and flower seeds, and a lot of newspaper.

Each student learned how to fold a square of newspaper into a little seed pot, and then planted some seeds to take home! The boxes turn out impressively sturdy.

The cool thing about these pots is that you can make them out of recycled materials and then, because they don’t use any staples or tape, you can put the whole thing in the soil when it’s warm enough and the newspaper will biodegrade!

I was really impressed working with the students at CT River Academy. A few students were assigned to help us at our table, and (after being a bit surprised when their first job was to mix dirt by hand) they very quickly mastered the origami and enthusiastically taught a constant stream of their classmates how to make and plant their own. I was quite thankful to have their help when the first group of 100 students came in.

If you’d like to learn how to make these yourself, follow this youtube link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1AzrqyzMOQ If you’re like me, you will yell at the computer a lot when you try to follow along with the video the first time, so you might not want to watch it in public. But soon you, too, will be an origami seed pot master!