Frugal Gardening Hacks with Household Items

Brian from Next Level Gardening shares 10 free and ingenious garden hacks using household items for gardening success.

### 10 Free Garden Hacks to Save Money and Improve Your Garden
* 🌱 Use toilet paper rolls as seed starting containers by **stacking them in a container with drainage holes**, eliminating the need for slits and folding.
* 🐌 Control slugs by placing old plywood on wet ground overnight to **attract and dispose of them easily**.
* 🥤 Repurpose plastic bottles as **mini greenhouses** for individual plants or DIY **drip irrigation systems** for deep-rooted plants like tomatoes.
* 🏷 Make plant tags from **semi-hard plastic containers** or **old window blinds** to **save money** and **reuse materials**.
* 🌾 Easily sow small seeds by mixing them with sand in an Old Spice bottle with a **shaker top** for even distribution.
* 🌱 Utilize **extra seeds from store-bought legumes** for planting, as there are usually **more seeds in a bag of dried beans** than in a seed packet.
* 🌿 Support climbing peas with twigs and small branches, **eliminating the need for a trellis** for dwarf pea varieties.
* Improve watering efficiency by placing an old sponge at the bottom of a pot to **cover the drainage hole and distribute water slowly** as the soil dries out.
* 🌱 Boost propagation success by dipping cutting ends in **honey or cinnamon** to prevent fungal infections, eliminating the need for **expensive rooting hormone**.
* 🎥 Brian from Next Level Gardening shares these 10 free garden hacks using common household items, which can **save money and improve gardening success**.

garden centers are full of helpful garden gadgetry that can really make a difference in your wallet. However, with a little ingenuity, you can craft these things for free with things you have laying around the house. I'm Brian with Next Level Gardening. Welcome. In this video, I'm going to show you 10 of my favorite free garden hacks. Let's get right into it with the inside of paper towel or toilet paper rolls. One popular way of doing it is cutting four slits and folding in the bottom so that you have a solid bottom. But you don't really need to do that. Just grab a container that has drainage holes in the bottom and stack the toilet paper tubes side by side. Add your seed starting mix. The seed starting mix that falls around the outside of the tubes will hold them in place. This method is especially good for peas, beans, any legume, even sweet pea flowers because they like long deep root systems. Once the plants are ready to transplant, you can stick the entire toilet paper tube in the ground.

bury it. It will disintegrate in no time, and there will be no transplant shock. Slugs can be huge problems in the garden, especially with your spring lettuce. If you have some old plywood laying around, wet the ground with a hose, and then lay the piece of wood right there on the ground overnight. Slugs will gather underneath. You can go ahead and dispose of them in any way you see fit. Off to a good start. Let me know in the comments what your favorite free garden hack is, either one you learned from someone else or came up with on your own. Plastic is everywhere nowadays, literally everywhere. You can reuse some of your plastic bottles in many different ways. You can make a small greenhouse for individual plants with a 2 L bottle. Just cut the bottom off and sit it over your plant. You can go ahead and put a bamboo stake down through it, and that will keep the bottle from blowing away. For plants that need deep watering like tomatoes, you can make your own personal drip system. Poke a bunch of

holes in the cap that will let the water flow out slowly. Cut the bottom off of the bottle and bury it next to your tomato. Fill it up with water, and as the water seeps out the bottom, it's going to water those deep water roots that tomatoes have. You can also put the bottom of the bottle back on to make sure that no dirt gets in there and clogs those holes. Plant tags are expensive, and let's face it, we lose most of them before the season's over. Take any semi-hard plastic container like yogurt or sour cream and cut them into plant tags. You can also use old window blinds, just cut them or break them to the desired size, and these can be used over and over for years. I used to have a set of metal ones that I made hundreds of markers out of that lasted a really, really long time. Sometimes it's hard to sow really small seeds like lettuce or carrots without having to thin out a bunch later. Take an Old Spice bottle with a shaker top, put a

couple tablespoons of sand into it, along with the seeds from one seed packet, and Shake It Up. When you sprinkle the contents out, it will naturally space the seeds Out Among the sand. Have you ever counted the number of seeds in any legume package like beans or peas? There's not all that many. Have you ever counted a bag of dried beans? There's a lot more. You take out 20, which might be in a seed packet, you're not really going to miss that 20, but you basically have a free 20 seeds to plant or use the whole bag. Who am I to hold you back? While we're continuing the subject of peas, twigs and small branches from any shrub at this time of year that you might be cutting back are great to help peas start to climb. Dwarf peas can actually live their entire life on some branches just like this, no trellis needed. Anybody have an old stinky sponge, place it in the bottom of a pot to cover the drainage hole, then fill with potting soil. As you water the pot.

the sponge soaks up the water and distributes it slowly as the soil in the pot dries out. Is it just me, or do seeds germinate much better in the path than in actual beds? Rather than weeding it out and tossing it away, anything that's sown, just go ahead and dig it up out of the path and transfer it into a bed. When you're taking cuttings from plants for propagation, you might be tempted to use rooting hormone, which isn't cheap. And honestly, I don't feel that it's needed for most things. What's more important is keeping fungus off of your cuttings so they don't get disease and rot away before they have time to root. That's where honey and cinnamon come in. Both have anti-fungal properties. Dip the ends of your cuttings in either one of these before you put them in the pot and watch your success rate skyrocket. I hope you got something out of these top 10 free Garden hacks. I would venture to bet you probably have the things laying around the house for

out of 10. Maybe even 10 out of 10. If you want to know how to get free plants from the garden center, take a look at this video right here. I'll see you next time.

Top 10 Free Vegetable Gardening Hacks

Next Level Gardening

Garden centers offer helpful gadgets, but you can save money by using household items for these 10 free garden hacks, including using toilet paper rolls for seed starting, using plywood to get rid of slugs, and repurposing plastic bottles for a small greenhouse and a drip watering system.

Clever Gardening Hacks for Thrifty Gardeners

Use a plastic bottle with holes to create a slow watering system for tomatoes.

Repurpose plastic containers or old window blinds to make durable plant tags.

Repurpose an Old Spice bottle with sand to evenly sow small seeds and take advantage of extra seeds in legume packages.

Reuse twigs and branches from shrubs to help peas grow without a trellis, and repurpose an old sponge to cover the drainage hole in a pot.

Maximizing Garden Growth with Simple Hacks

Using a sponge in the soil can help distribute water slowly as it dries out, benefiting plant growth.

Transferring seeds from the path to the bed can improve germination, while using honey and cinnamon on cuttings can help prevent disease and improve the rooting success rate.

Rooting hormone may not be necessary for most plants, and these natural alternatives can be found at home, making them cost-effective garden hacks.

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