How to Make Soil Cubes for Planting Seeds

Soil cubes or blocks offer you a way to start plants inside without pots or plug flats, those plastic trays with multiple small compartments. The soil cube sticks together because of their soil-mix ingredients, which hold together well when compressed. The roots of your seedlings become air pruned to further hold the cube together, and the plant goes into the ground without transplant shock. You can make soil cubes with or without a commercially purchased cube maker.

Coconut fiber
Compost
1/4-inch screen
Pail
Cube maker
Brown peat
Perlite
Garden soil
Plant tray

Instructions

- 1
  Screen coconut fiber and compost through a ¼-inch screen. Mix four parts coconut fiber and one part compost with hot water in a pail until it achieves the consistency of stiff oatmeal, recommends the Oregon State University Extension. Allow the mix to sit overnight.
- 2
  Push a cube maker, which makes one to 20 cubes at a time, into the mix three times to fill it tightly. Hold the cube maker over a plant tray. Push the plunger so the blocks release onto the tray.
- 3
  Dip the cube maker in water between making each batch and clean it after completing the project.
- 4
  Press seeds into the dimple at the top of a cube to the depth recommended on the seed packet. Pull soil block material over the seed to cover it.

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