Gardening is not just about planting trees and flowers. You need to master many hacks so your plants can thrive in the given atmosphere. Though many tools and different decorations are available in the market, not everyone wants to spend money on them. Luckily, you don’t have to! Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive at all. You can use many items in the garden lying idle in your house to help you save a few dollars.
Instead of tossing these household items into trash, save these materials to use in the garden. Many of these items contain things that you’re probably throwing out daily.
Contents
Plastic Bottles
If you can’t stop buying soda, transform it into something productive. You can make cloches using 2 liters of soda bottles. These cloches will act as a protective covering for plants to help them withstand cold temperatures. If you have other plastic bottles lying around the house, you can use them as seedling guards or slug traps.
Banana Peels
Bananas are rich in potassium, and you know that very well. Putting the banana peels into the garden will give your plants the required potassium boost. This potassium boost will help plants stay healthy and robust, which will also protect them against pests.
Wood Ashes
Untreated wood ash is an excellent fertilizer for your plants. It’s because wood ash can help to alkalize the soil, which is suitable for different plants in your garden as they all have different PH levels. And it’s best to keep them as close to neutral as possible.
Fire ashes will provide your soil the required calcium carbonate and potassium.
Newspaper
You have used newspaper to make seedling pots, but they can be used in many more ways. For instance, you can use newspaper as a weed preventing mulch in your garden. For this, you can also use another kind of paper as mulch. Just shred any non-glossy paper or brown paper bags and scatter them across the surface of your garden.
You can also use wet newspaper to attract pests that might harm your plants. For this, you have to place a soaked newspaper overnight in your garden to bring all the bugs. The following day throws away the newspaper and get rid of them.
Eggshells
Eggs are a part of the staple diet in households. You probably enjoy scrambled eggs or fried eggs on toast for breakfast or boiled eggs with salad for dinner. But what about the eggshells? You won’t throw them away after reading this. Eggshells are great for the garden as a pest deterrent or as a fertilizer.
You can also use eggshells to get rid of snails and slugs if they are bothering you. Just throw crumbled eggshells around the plants having pests. The sharp edges of the eggshell will look dangerous to those pests, and they will move somewhere else where they feel safer.
Vinegar
Readily available vinegar has more benefits than you may realize. From cleaning molds in the bathroom to killing weeds in the garden, vinegar can do various tasks in your household. For killing weeds in the garden, you have to mix 1 gallon of white vinegar, one tablespoon liquid dish soap, and 1 cup salt in a spray bottle. Now, spray it onto the weeds during the sunniest time of the day for maximum results.
When looking for an alternative for killing weed, these ingredients have all the properties to do the job. The acetic acid in the salt and vinegar helps to draw out moisture from the weed.
Tea Bags
Are you destressing yourself with your favorite tea? Now you won’t have to toss out those used tea bags. Tea acts as an excellent fertilizer for plants requiring acidic soil. Just put used tea bags or used tea leaves around your plants to fertilize the soil and deter pests, especially mice. If not this, you can also brew the used tea leaves in a bucket of water and sprinkle the water on the plants to protect them from fungal infections.
Coffee Grounds
Coffee grounds give nitrogen to the soil and do not need to get composted before adding them to the garden. However, make sure the coffee is dehydrated before you hit the plants, as wet coffee is very likely to cause fungus to the plants, which will be harmful.
Coffee grounds also act as repellents for pests such as ants, slugs, and snails. They are also helpful in repelling fruit flies, beetles, and mosquitoes.
Aluminum Foil
Every household has aluminum foil on their grocery list, but now you can use them outside your kitchen too. Birds are scared of shiny and noisy things. You can tie a few stripes of aluminum foil to the branches of your tree to save the fruits and vegetables from birds.
Cardboard Boxes
Are you ordering things online more than usual? Well, save the cardboard boxes as they have many uses in the garden. You can shred these cardboard boxes and add them to the compost pile as brown material. You can also cover the weed with cardboard and pour water over it to kill the weeds.
The Bottom Line
Your regular household items have more uses than you may realize. From now on, do not throw away these items and use them to turn your garden into a green heaven. These items are readily available in every household, so you won’t have to spend extra money on them. Now that’s a win-and-win situation!
