If you’ve recently redone a bathroom, kitchen, or any other room and have an extra sink laying around, try this hack as a creative way to upcycle it, rather than tossing it at the dump. Plain ceramic looks nice in any garden, but you can also paint the piece any color that you want to use for your planter. First, make sure that all of the active plumbing Now, put your sink up against a fence or tree for the most aesthetically pleasing view.
If you set it somewhere in the open, it’s likely to look out of place, especially from the back. Fill your sink with soil and the plants of your choice. Pro tip: use a cascading, flowering plant like Scaevola, ‘Summer Wave Bouquet’ Torenia, Mandevilla or Passionflower, if you really want your sink planter to pop. Be sure that water is able to properly drain out of the bottom of the sink and that it’s firmly planted either in the ground or mounted on wood or something that allows for drainage. This may be the only case in which having an old sink in the yard actually looks nice.
Coffee Filters Help Absorb Excess Water
Anyone who’s dealt with potted plants before is all too familiar with what happens when you over water one of them – you wind up with a big puddle of the stuff in (and often around) the bottom of the pot. But fear not! Because your friend, the coffee filter, is here to help!
Simply place a regular-sized coffee filter at the very bottom of your pot prior to filling it with soil and planting your plant. Doing this should reduce the amount of excess water you have on your table by a long shot. Of course, it won’t act as a barrier, so do try to control your pour as much as possible, just to be on the safe side.
What to do with Broken Pots
If you’ve been dabbling in gardening for any length of time now, you’re probably all too familiar with the heartache that comes along with dropping one of your potted plants and watching it shatter all over the pavement, right along with your heart and all of the feels. Luckily, this hack gives us hope and lets you use reinvent the broken pieces and use them to make something pretty awesome.
Take the broken chunks of your pot and use either marker (Sharpie) or acrylic paints to write the names of your veggies and herbs on them. Then, stick them up out of the soil as labels for an authentic, cool feel. Just be careful not to put any edges straight up that are too sharp, you don’t want to accidentally cut yourself (or have anyone else do it!)
Diapers for Water Retention
For smaller potted plants, coffee filters make great liners that absorb excess water from overpouring. But what about for your larger plants? Diapers can be used to line the bottom of large potted plants, to help absorb excess water in fairly large amounts, if need be. This tip can also work using menstrual pads if you’ve got enough of them.
This may not be the most cost-effective solution, considering how expensive diapers can be, but it works well if you happen to have some laying around the house from a child that’s outgrown them. Just open the diapers and line the bottom of the pot before filling it with soil and you won’t have to worry about overwatering your potted plants anymore.
Sharpening Pot
Keeping your gardening tools nice and sharp is crucial to maintaining your garden. But the process of keeping them in shape can be both time consuming and draining – unless you use this awesome hack to cut down on time and energy! To get started, you’ll want to get yourself a big old terra-cotta pot.
After you’ve picked out the perfect pot, the next step is mixing together the right amount of sand and mineral oil. This concoction helps keep your tools nice and sharp with very little effort on your part (well, after you put it together, anyways!) Keep the pot in the garage or shed, or somewhere where it isn’t going to get rained on.