[N.WalesIdealist]

I've just read in The River Cottage Vegetable Handbook a novel idea for recycling guttering off cuts...

Get a length of gutter, the type that goes around house, not the pipes, drill a few holes in the bottom and sow your seeds down the middle.  With a few well positioned bits of wood or even a more elaborate rack arrangement the make shift trays can be stacked and left to wait to germinate.  The books says planting out is made easier as the clumps of soil simply slide out the ends of the pipe, though I've yet to try it.

Anyone heard of this before?  Seems a brilliant way to make the most of something that seemingly has no other use.

Now, I'm off to freecycle to look for off-cuts...

[mumofstig]

It's quite an old tip 

If you put 'sow gutter' into the search facility you will find many posts/ideas about doing just that

Good luck with freecycle !

[noshed]

It's a bit tricky if the guttering is longer than about 3' but I use supermarket fruit boxes instead - they're free, I get the people at work to collect them, they're usually predrilled, they're deep and narrow for even big things like beans. Just turn them over and drop the clump into a small trench when they're ready to transplant.

[Aunt Sally]

I've been using this method for about 4 years for germinating my peas.

I do find the soil strips easier to slide out if you line them with some polythene first.

[ex-cavator]

It's particularly useful if, like me, you haven't fully knocked your plot into shape yet and you're constantly fighting weed seedlings. If you sow in the plot, you can't tell your plant seedlings from the weeds. If you bring on your plant seedlings to a decent size in the guttering first, you can hoe the bed at the last minute & make a trench to slide the contents of the guttering into, & then they've got a good head start & there's no confusion over what's what