A gardener has shared clever ways to reuse everyday household waste, including egg boxes and plastic bottles, to benefit your garden. Instead of recycling these items, you can repurpose them to help your plants thrive.
Why Stop Recycling Egg Boxes?
Every week, households discard takeaway containers, plastic bottles, and empty egg cartons. But clever gardener Ish has revealed ingenious methods to repurpose these items. He wrote in his TikTok video caption: "Everyday items you normally throw away can easily be repurposed into useful items in the garden."
Plastic Bottle Mini Propagator
Ish demonstrates how a plastic bottle can become an excellent mini propagator. He recommends cutting it in half while keeping a small section attached. Then fill it with compost, plant seeds, and put the lid on top. This creates a "nice humid environment" to get seedlings started.
Egg Carton Seed Pots
Regarding egg cartons, Ish proposes using the bottom section as "individual pots" instead of discarding them. He highlights that they "decompose very well in the soil," so after planting seeds in them, you can cut them up and place them directly into the ground without disturbing roots. The carton will then "start to break down." Ish praises this as a "great way to start off your seeds" before transferring them into the earth.
Salad Tray Seed Viability Test
Finally, Ish shows how to make use of a salad tray or takeaway container. He points out these are "not deep enough to work as a propagator" so he uses them to check the "viability of any old or expired seeds." He places a "layer of kitchen roll" at the bottom, saturates it with water, adds expired seeds, and covers with another layer of paper towel. This creates a "moist and humid environment" that should "hopefully get these started." He can then pick out which ones are doing okay and plant them up, thus "not wasting any seeds that normally would've expired."
Ish encourages viewers to repurpose these items in their gardens rather than throwing them away. In response to his video, one woman joked her "kitchen looks like a recycling centre" as she had been stockpiling items. Another viewer shared: "Ish, this is such good helpful information as I have a lot of old seeds, but I was going to throw them out now I'm going to try what you said."
