An Upcycled Garden: Toilet Paper Roll Planters

 

It is sprint which means... time to PLANT!  I love spring and I love gardening.  It is so fun to get something of value out of something of very little to no value.  The past few years we have been planting from seeds so we aren't spending money on buying plants, but we usually start them in the little mini green houses (just wait till you see what I found that makes a perfect upcycled green house!) and compostable containers that you can get from your local garden center.  This year I am on a mission to find things we can re-purpose... and the little compostable planting containers were the first to go!  In their place??  Toilet paper rolls!

We saved toilet paper rolls (and paper towel rolls too!) for about a month and just cut them in half (or in fives for the paper towel rolls).  We placed them so they fit snug in our little green house starter container then filled them with dirt, planted them with seeds, and kept then moist in a sunlit window.  Because they have no bottoms, we were careful not to bump them too much. 

 

After a few weeks they had sprouted and were ready to be transplanted.  You can see that some of the toilet paper rolls started to unravel a bit, but it did not seem to disturb the plants. Plus, I unwrapped before planting anyway!  However, you could most likely plant with the rolls still on and have no issue!

The most curious thing I noticed about doing it with the toilet paper rolls is that the roots grew along the bottom of the tray and did not ball up like when confined to a container.  You can see how long and nice they were and I am expecting these plants to do well now that they are planted! 

I have some other fun bits and pieces of upcycling that I am going to share for the garden... but I am curious... what have you upcycled to use in the gardens??