Household items to reuse in the garden

Instead of throwing your household items away, check out these tips on reusing them in the garden. You'll get more use out of them, plus they can make gardening even simpler!

Old spatulas and spoons make great plant markers. Find them at rummage sales and discount stores for less than 25 cents apiece. Use a fine-tip permanent marker to write the plant name on the front of the utensil and the planting date on the back. If you want to reuse them the next season, use a scrubbing pad to remove the writing.

Acquire a retired baby-changing table, then convert it into a three-tiered seed-starting stand. Remove the bottom of each shelf and affix welded wire fencing with a staple gun to hold seedling flats. If you water the top tier, it drips down to the two tiers below it. It's charming and works really well!

If you're taking a summer vacation, fill plastic bottles with water and freeze them. Just before you leave, drill a small hole in the water bottle and set it in your potted plants. As the ice thaws, the plant gets watered. For larger pots, use a gallon milk jug. Test your setup before you leave so you know your plants will receive adequate water.

When planting onions, radishes or carrots, sprinkle the leaves from an opened tea bag in the row before planting them on top. This keeps root maggots away from your crops.

Do you have some wild winter storms and a lot of snow? In the fall, bag all of your leaves and stack them around the foundation of the house for added insulation. In spring, the leaves are the perfect mulch for your organic vegetable and flower gardens.

The metal hose guards you see in stores are beautiful, but they're very expensive. So pick up old fireplace-tool sets from thrift stores for an average of $3 each. Then, cut off the shovel, brush and poker with a hacksaw, which leaves a set of three guards to use wherever you need to protect flower beds from a hose. You can find some with very interesting handles that are just as attractive as those seen in the catalogues.