You probably have never taken an inventory of all the household items you have on hand. You’d be surprised how many of those items can also be used to preserve indoor plants and gardening tools.
Here is a list of ideas of how to use mundane household items to help preserve the garden and indoor plants.
- A flowerpot that hosts gardening tools. Cover a terra-cotta pot’s bottom hole with duct tape and then fill it with builder’s sand available from any hardware store. Stir in just enough mineral oil to dampen the sand. The concoction cleans the tools and prevents them from corroding and rusting.
- Save banana peels to fertilize your roses. Flatten a banana peel and bury it under about 1-inch of soil at the base of a rosebush. The potassium of the banana peel helps the plant resist disease and serves as great plant food.
- Use bleach to preserve flowers. Next time you receive a bouquet of flowers add a few drops of bleach into the water in the vase. The bleach will prevent bacteria growth and prevent the stems from mildewing.
- Use car wax to lubricate your garden shears. Rub a little car wax paste on to the hinge of a pair of garden shears. The wax will keep the shears from jamming.
- Use a balloon as a flower preserver. Take a simple backyard-party balloon and fill it with a little bit of water, and then slip it over the flowers’ stem. The water will help to keep cut flowers fresh and prevent them from wilting when transporting them to a friend’s house.
- Plug a flower stem with a cotton ball. Cut the bottom of a flower’s stem at a 45-degree angle, turn the stem upside down and fill it with water, then stuff the stem with a piece of cotton. The cotton keeps the water in the stem and helps the flower soak up water and stay hydrated longer.
- Use croquet wickets as a pathway for your hose. Take the croquet wickets and use them to form a path from the waterspout to your flowerbed, and then feed the hose through the wickets. The wickets will prevent the hose from migrating around the flowerbed and keep it from damaging flowers.
- Use a grapefruit knife as a weeder. The curved blade of a grapefruit knife is ideal for removing weeds from tight spaces where traditional tools are too big for the job.
- Use a cake dome as a terrarium. Take a cake dome and use it to cover small potted plants to speed up their growth.
- Use dental floss as a vine winder. Dental floss is resilient and that makes it ideal to use to train vines on a trellis. Be careful not to tie the floss too tightly around the growing stems.
- A funnel as a twine dispenser. Place a spool of yarn or twine inside the funnel and pull the end through the hole of the dispenser.
- Use a turkey baster to remove too much water from waterlogged plants. Use the baster to suction out excess water from a pot’s base.
- Sponge as soil container. Line the bottom of a pot with a sponge to keep soil contained.
(Source: realsimple.com)
