There are tons of DIY hacks that can be employed, and everyday household items that can be repurposed into planters, watering cans, and even fertilizer. All you need to do is look around your home, and think about how these items can be used. To help with this process, and get you on the way to creating the garden of your dreams, we have put in some research and found the best gardening hacks. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, your garden will flourish if you utilize some of these. Keep scrolling to find out how to use your old milk cartons to water your garden, and control the weeds in your flower beds. Gardening will never be the same after using some of these great tips.
This article was originally published on eternallifestyle.com and has been republished here with permission.
Old Newspaper
Some people get the newspaper delivered everyday. If you are one of those, don’t toss the newspaper in the recycling bin. Instead, save the newspaper and use it in the garden to prevent weeds from growing. A single sheet of newspaper should be slightly buried over new seedlings.
The paper is thin, and when moistened with water, allows the seeds to break through, and receive the water they need to continue growing. The newspaper acts as a barrier to weeds, and most of them won’t be able to grow through it, and receive the sun they need to flourish.
Mini Greenhouses
Everyone enjoys a nice soda or bottle of water when on the go. Instead of tossing those clear plastic bottles, hold onto those as well. When filled with soil, a bit of fertilizer, and some water to moisten it all, a plastic bottle will make the perfect mini greenhouse.
Seedlings always need to be grown in the spring before planting season starts, and these mini greenhouses are perfect for getting your seedlings going. As they are self-contained, it also means watering them is as easy as taking the cap off, and then putting it back on to keep them nice and warm.
A DIY Watering Can
Proper watering cans are expensive, especially if you decide to shell out for a fancy metal one. There’s really no need to spend a lot of money on a watering can, when you can make one yourself. In most countries, milk comes in a plastic gallon container. This container can hold a gallon of water, and be used to water smaller garden beds.
All you need to do is clean out the plastic container – nobody likes the smell of rancid milk – and then poke a few holes in the lid. Now, when you turn it upside down, water will sprinkle out of the holes, and effectively water your garden. Plants, like people, love having their thirst quenched with some tasty water.
Goodbye Root Rot
Plants really only need two things to thrive: water and sunlight. However, you can have too much of a good thing, and this is true for plants to. One of the major contributors to plants saying, “Goodbye” is too much water. If a planet is over watered, the water will accumulate in the roots, which leads to root rot.
Sadly, that will make a happy plant turn into a sad one. To avoid root rot, either place a sponge in the bottom of a planter or line a flower bed with them. The sponge will absorb all of the excess water, instead of the roots. This will keep plants alive for a whole lot longer.
A Green Wall
Vertical walls, or green walls as they are sometimes known are hanging gardens that are planted with flowers, herbs, and hanging plants. They make for a nice backdrop in any garden, and can cover up a fence that isn’t looking its best.
Some people buy expensive contraptions to create living walls, but all it really takes is an old hanging shoe rack. The compartments for shoes are the perfect size and shape for small plants, and it’s a great way to reuse something old.
Homemade Insecticide
Natural remedies are always the best solution when it comes to combating pesky insects. Some bugs like to eat leaves, and spread diseases which are not ideal for a healthy garden. To keep bugs away, you can make your very own insecticide.
All you need is a mixture of garlic, mint, cayenne pepper, water, and some soap. Blend it all together and voila, you have an insecticide to spray on your plants that won’t harm any animals who stop by for a snack, besides the bugs.
The Cardboard Hack
Weeding is one of those activities, nobody loves to do but if you want a pristine garden you have to do it. One way to cut down on weeds, is to take cardboard from an old box and cut it into the shape of a garden bed.
The soggy cardboard will prevent weeds from growing in the bed, as it will only allow the uncovered plants to receive water. Anything else, will be trapped by the cardboard. Goodbye weeds!
Green Onions Forever
Some vegetables have the unique ability to grow from their roots on an almost perpetual basis. Green onions are one of these cool vegetables. Instead of throwing away the end with the roots, hold on to them.
Then, grab a mason jar, fill it up with about an inch or two of water, and place the onion bits roots down. Over the course of a few days, the roots should sprout more, and the onions should start to grow. You can plant these in your garden, once they have grown enough.
The Sweetest Tomatoes
Juicy tomatoes are what every gardener wants. They taste delicious in salads, and make the best tomato sauce for pastas. It’s actually possible to make tomatoes sweeter, if you add a commonly used baking ingredient.
Baking soda, when placed around the base of a tomato plant, causes the tomatoes to taste sweeter. Just be careful to only add the baking soda to the roots, and not the stem and leaves.
Hold On To Your Forks
There are a lot of tricks that can be used to keep birds away from gardens. One of these is placing a scarecrow near the most vulnerable plants, to scare away birds. Another one is to place plastic forks, prong side up in your garden beds.
Birds won’t want to land on them, as they will be afraid of getting poked by the prongs. This is also a great way to reuse old plastic cutlery.
The Toilet Paper Roll Trick
Have you ever looked at all of the cardboard toilet paper rolls that you’ve accumulated and wondered what to do with them? If you’re an avid gardener, or you want to become one, save those rolls.
Cut them in half, place them on a plastic tray, and fill them with some fresh soil. Then, plant a seed in each one. Slowly, little seedlings will grow, and when they are mature enough, they can be planted in the garden.
A Dash Of Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a delicious spice that is incorporated into a lot of baked goods, but it also has a special use for gardens. Ants love to swarm over plants, and grab tasty tidbits to bring back to their anthill.
To avoid an ant infestation, or to deal with one that is already happening, sprinkle some cinnamon in your garden. Ants don’t like cinnamon, and will actively avoid it, leaving your garden pristine.
Kitchen Compost
Everytime you peel fruit, and cut off parts of a vegetable you should consider keeping the peel or cut off bits.
These should go into a designated compost container, as they make excellent fertilizer. Once you have enough compost, you can spread it out on your garden beds. All of the nutrients and vitamins leftover in the compost, will penetrate deep into the soil, and keep your plants happy. It’s also a great way to cut down on waste.
Potatoes And Roses
Potatoes and roses don’t sound like a great combination, but in the world of gardening the two are actually best friends. Cut roses tend to lose their bloom over time, but if you have a potato handy, you can bring them back to life.
Grab a potato, cut the end of the rose stem into a point, and place it in a carefully made hole in the potato. You can do this with a couple of rose stems. After they are in place, plant them in a soil filled pot, or in your garden. A rose bush will start to grow.
Perfect Spacing
Some gardeners love that wild garden look, with flowers spilling out of every nook and cranny. Other gardeners like for their gardens to be perfectly spaced, and symmetrical. If you’re the latter kind of garender, grab a muffin tin.
Each muffin cup is evenly spaced in the tin, and this can be used as a mould in your garden. Place the muffin tin bottom down in your garden bed, press down, and repeat. You will have perfectly space holes in which to plant your seeds.
Vertical Gourd Gardening
Maximize your garden space and add a creative twist by growing gourds vertically. Utilize sturdy structures like trellises or wire mesh above a garden bed or along a fence to support the vigorous vines. As the gourds grow, they’ll hang down, creating a natural, eye-catching display.
This method not only saves valuable ground space but also promotes better air circulation around the plants, reducing the risk of soil-borne diseases. Plus, it makes for an easier harvest. Elevate your gardening game by going vertical and enjoy the unique aesthetic and practical benefits of this growing technique.
Eco-Friendly Baking Soda Hack
Baking soda, a common household staple, can be a gentle yet effective addition to your garden care routine. A light sprinkle around plant bases can fend off pests and combat fungal diseases, keeping your foliage healthy. When applied to the soil of tomato plants, baking soda can reduce acidity, resulting in sweeter fruit.
It’s also beneficial in preventing powdery mildew on leaves, ensuring your plants stay robust and thriving. Remember to use it sparingly to avoid altering the soil’s pH too drastically. With its natural properties, baking soda provides a safe and cost-effective method for boosting plant health and ensuring your garden’s vitality.
Bulb Planting for Continuous Blooms
When planting bulbs in your garden, strategic spacing and depth are key for a dazzling display of continuous blooms. Organize bulbs by their blooming period—early, mid, and late-season—and intersperse them to ensure a lively garden throughout the growing season. Plant bulbs at varying depths as per their size, with larger bulbs deeper and smaller ones closer to the soil surface.
This method not only maximizes space but also creates layers of flowers, offering a cascade of color as each variety takes its turn to shine. With this approach, your garden will transition smoothly from the first spring blossoms to the last hints of autumn color.
Egg Carton Garden Guide
Put your empty egg cartons to good use as a garden guide for planting seeds. Press the open carton into the soil to create a pattern of uniform indentations, ideal for seed placement. This budget-friendly technique ensures even spacing and depth, critical factors for optimal seed germination and growth.
By using this repurposed item, you not only streamline the sowing process but also contribute to a sustainable gardening practice. As your plants grow, you’ll appreciate this simple yet effective method for starting your garden neatly and efficiently.
Free Seeds
You know those seeds that you throw away after cutting them out of a bell pepper or a jalapeno? What you should be doing is saving them. All of the seeds in vegetables, and fruit can be replanted in the spring.
This is a great way to save money, and use the entire vegetable or fruit. As we mentioned before, you can also use any other parts of the fruit as compost to keep your garden nicely fertilized. How cool is that?
Goodbye Weeds
There’s no need to buy weed killer that is full of harmful toxins. Instead, it’s better to use natural products found in your home. A lot of the chemical weed killers also harms the plants we want to grow or eat.
A great homemade weed killer is one composed of white vinegar, some salt, and some dish soap. This mixture is non-toxic, and will only keep weeds from growing. If some of the mixture gets on some veggies you plan to eat, it won’t make you sick either.
Wine Cork Signs
For the gardener that likes to grow plants from seeds, there is always the struggle to label each seedling. It’s not obvious until a plant has matured what kind of plant it is. If you don’t have any cardboard lying around, that’s okay.
Take all of those old wine corks you’ve collected over the years, and use a permanent marker to write the plant name on it, like sage or thyme. Not only is this crafty, but it looks pretty adorable to see the corks sticking out of the pots.
Soapy Gardens
Soap and kitchens tend to go together, not soap and gardens. However, some animals like deer love to stop by gardens, and snack on the plants. This is not ideal, especially if you are planning to eat these plants yourself.
One thing that deer hate is soap. Simply grate some soap, and sprinkle it among your plants. This won’t hurt the plants, or the deer but it will make them rather unappetizing taste wise.
Just Add Salt
These days it’s all about going natural, and when it comes to fertilizer there is an excellent seasoning that works just as well as the store bought variety. Table salt can be sprinkled amongst the soil, to help your plants grow better.
It can also be absorbed into water, and added in liquid form. If you decide to add it to water though, be mindful that the water should only go on the soil, as the salt will harm the green leafy parts.
A Greenhouse To-Go
Beautiful glass greenhouses are fantastic for people that have large backyards, or a lot of land. But for the folks who live in apartments, and smaller homes that’s not an option. That’s where the tiny greenhouse made out of recycled to-go containers come in.
You can fill these up with rich soil, plant a few seeds, place the clear plastic lid on top, and let them get all toasty. You will have seedlings in a matter of days.
Special Garden Water
Humans get to enjoy all sorts of delicious fruit and vegetable juices, so why shouldn’t plants get to enjoy some too? Any weeds, or scraps of fruit and veggies have lots of nutrients contained in them.
Throw them all into a bucket, pour some water in, and let them marinate for a while. The water will pull out all of the nutrients and vitamins, which can then be used to water your garden. Sometimes even weeds can lend a helping hand.
The Coffee Filter Trick
Most flower pots have a hole in the bottom of them to let excess water drain out. This is good, because it keeps the roots from rotting, but it’s not good for soil levels. To prevent the soil from running out the bottom of your flower pots, grab a coffee filter from your kitchen.
Before repotting a plant, place the coffee filter inside the pot, and then place the soil inside the filter. This will keep all of the soil in place, and the roots of your plant happy.
Target The Weeds
Weeds can choke plants, and make it difficult for them to grow by stealing their nutrients. That’s one of the reasons that they need to be removed from gardens. Targeting weeds can be difficult, but if you have some handy tin cans around, you can use those to single out pesky weeds.
Place the can around the weed, and douse it with your choice of weed killer. This will prevent the weed killer from touching the surrounding plants.
Up-Lifting Plants
Large potted plants often tend to outgrow their pots. That means they need to be repotted into a bigger pot. This transplanting process can be difficult, especially if a plant is the size of a small tree.
If you have a big pot, place some clean plastic bottles in the base of the pot, and then cover them with soil. This will lift the plant up slightly, and allow its roots to grow amongst the bottles for better drainage.
Just Zip Tie It
Zip ties are a multi-use tool that are used to handcuff criminals, close garbage bags, and now help plants stay upright. Many vegetables and flowers tend to sprout up, and don’t have stems or stalks that are strong enough to support them. That can lead to drooping, and eventually breakage which can harm a plant.
To avoid this, place a stick next to the stalk of the plant that is drooping, and zip tie the stalk gently to the stick. This will prevent drooping, and allow the plant to continue growing upwards.
Grab A Beer With Slugs
Slugs are one of those critters that slither into gardens, and eat their way through vegetable patches. This is something no gardener wants. If you’re a beer lover, and even if you’re not, consider pouring some beer into a shallow bowl.
Place the bowl in your garden and leave it overnight. In the morning, you should find some slugs floating in the beer, and your garden untouched.
Put Out The Peel
Nowadays, almost anything can be used as a pot for plants. In fact, even orange peel can be used to provide a little home for vegetables that love acid. As oranges are citrus fruit, their peels contain a lot of citric acid.
That means that vegetables like peppers, and those in the radish family will be more likely to sprout if grown in some orange peel.
Say Goodbye To Rusty Tools
A lot of metals are prone to rust, which means garden tools like trowels may begin to rust if they get wet. Purchasing new tools is costly, and there are some great tips to avoid rust.
One tip is to store all garden implements in a bucket full of sand, with an oil mixed into the sand. This keeps tools in tip top gardening condition, and eliminates rust.
Every Plant In Its Place
Once a plant has been taken out of its plastic container, and let loose in a garden, its roots tend to spread out. If there is a lot of space for it to grow, then that’s fine. However, sometimes the roots can spread into another plant’s space, and steal it’s much needed water and nutrients.
A way to avoid this, is to plant a plant in it’s plastic container in the garden. This stops the roots from spreading uncontrollably.
The Diaper Hack
Babies are adorable, but their dirty diapers are not. If you plan on repotting some plants, stick that dirty diaper in the base of the pot and cover it with some soil.
All of the baby poop will act as a natural fertilizer for your plant, and make it grow nice and strong. Just try to ignore the smell during the process.
Reuse Those Rubbermaids
Most people have one or two rubbermaid containers lying around the house. If you have some empty ones, why not use them as planters?
Grab your drill, punch a few holes in the bottom of the container, and you’re ready to fill them with soil and start planting vegetables and flowers.
Eggshell Seedlings
As soon as spring rolls around, it’s time to start getting your seedlings ready. For people who eat eggs, hold onto your cracked eggshells and the carton they came in.
These eggshells are the perfect size to start seedlings in, and the eggshells themselves have some tasty nutrients for the sprouting plants to use.
Little Newspaper Pots
Another material which is excellent for making DIY plant pots out of is old newspaper. Whenever the paperboy or girl leaves a paper on your porch, hold on to it.
You can roll the pages into funnels, and cut them in half to make two paper pots. Then, seedlings can be planted in the garden until it’s time for them to go in the garden.
Creating Compost
Composting is an excellent way to reuse old food scraps for the garden. To make your own, you will need a container, some old scraps of food like egg shells, fruit pieces, veggies, and some worms.
Combine them all together, and after a few weeks, you should have some nutrient rich compost to sprinkle in your garden.
Raised Garden Beds
Raised garden beds are lovely in smaller spaces, as you’re able to decide just how big or how small you want it to be.
Select a metal container, like these old livestock water troughs, and fill them with soil. Then, make sure they are nice and moist, and go ahead and plant some seeds.
Protect Your Seedlings
Some woodland creatures like deer and rabbits like to hop into gardens and eat the seedlings. We understand their love of some fresh greens, but we want to eat them too!
Protect your seedlings by placing plastic containers like half a milk jug or a pop bottle over top of them.
Watermelon Hammocks
Watermelon is one of the most delicious fruits out there, but growing watermelons does take some finesse.
You don’t want them to drop off of the vine, which means as the melons ripen, they need a hammock to relax in. Hammocks can be made out of old t-shirts, and torn up blankets.
DIY Greenhouse
We’ve seen small greenhouses that can fit in your hand, but why not make a big one? All it takes are some plastic tarps, some metal piping, and some cinder blocks to make your very own backyard greenhouse.
It may not look fancy, but it will keep your plants nice and warm on cool summer nights.
Ice Cream Cone Gardening
Usually when you think about ice cream cones, you think about savoring that sugary crunchy goodness.
Because ice cream cones are something you can eat, this means that they are eco-friendly and a great container for growing seeds in. Once planted, the cone will break down in the garden bed.