Garden Start Plant Containers

Containers that were used for other things make great planters. How do I know? Because my obsession with zero waste plus huge garden= alternative planters!

For instance, a group of about 50 people meets twice a week (for four hours!) During the break, everyone is invited to have refreshments, lemonade and tea and coffee are the drinks, served in styrofoam cups! Since I've done my best to eliminate styrofoam from my world, and seeing it piled in the trash like that made me panic... that is just crazy waste!

So the cups became planters. Here is a picture from someone doing the same thing (although I am not sure if these were upcycled or not.) It isn't just cups that make great seedling pots, though. We folded the bottoms of toilet paper rolls, cut open plastic soda bottles, used yogurt containers, made pots from newspaper and sturdy old coffee bags... so many options! Using the plastic salad clamshells to sprout early lettuce and have early salads seems particularly brilliant to me (see details here).

We've been saving eggshells, carefully cracked on one side, just for the novelty of planting using eggshells. I will post a picture when that project is underway.