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.
Creative Use for an Old Sink
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.
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.
Recycled Wine Bottles
Great news for all of you weekly (okay, daily) wine drinkers out there! There’s a way to reuse those bottles and improve the lives of the plants in your garden. This kind of goes along the same lines as the water bottle waterer and ensures that your plants get a constant and controlled flow of H2o. This hack is great for someone who goes out of town on the weekends and doesn’t have anyone close to coming take care of their plants for them!
To bring this hack to life, all you need is your old wine bottle and their corks. Use a sharp object to poke a small hole on the cork, fill the bottle with water, stuff the cork back inside, flip the bottle upside down and place it deep down in the soil. Voilà! Your very own wine bottle watering station.
This DIY Stand for Plants
If you’ve got an extra ladder laying around that you don’t plan to use for anything else, why not use it to create this shelf for your plants? All you’ll need is the ladder, some baking sheets and gravel. Set the metal sheets down on your ladder, fill them with gravel and arrange potted plants until you’re happy with the way it looks. Just make sure that the metal is sturdy on the ladder before adding the plants, so you don’t end up with dirt all over your floor.
This hack can be used both indoors and outdoors, and if you don’t happen to have an extra ladder but you’re into the look, you can always scope out garage sales and thrift stores or build a similar structure yourself. This DIY plant stand is an excellent space saver and has an adorable aesthetic that is sure to compliment any room or garden.