Specialty Gardening: How to make papercrete containers., 1 by llilyfan

llilyfan wrote:
Al, my slurry was rather stiff so did not saturate the twisted paper sticks. If I understand your question correctly, the answer is yes, the paper is exposed between the plastic liner and the formed wall of your new pot. You will be building up the slurry so you will not have any exposed paper on the inside of your pot. The twisted newspapers (I prefer to think of them as ropes) are the actual mold for your pot, the cooler or large pot is just there to give them something to lean against so they don't fall to the outside while building the walls and the pot dries. I did need to keep making sure I wasn't pressing my slurry on to vigorously seperating the paper ropes.

This is so much harder to explain than to do. To quote Tomtom "JUST DO IT! You WILL get the idea as you go through the steps to the completed project!

So here is a very simplified set of directions:

1 place drainage sticks in bottom of pot (cooler,etc.)
2 place plastic bag in pot and smooth out as best as possible
3 place slurry in bottom and smooth out to form bottom
4 make drainage holes
5 start building walls on the slurry with the paper ropes
6 build up the walls with slurry as you form them
7 build up as tall as you want or til you run out of slurry
8 let dry for at least 24 hours (I let mine be for 48 in the closed cooler)
9 remove from mold by lifting out the plastic bag carefully and remove paper ropes which will be on the outside of your new pot.
10 let cure

Here is a pic of my paper ropes: about 30 inches long on average