Low-cost gardening: discover which common objects you can recycle to care for your plants

Anyone who decides to grow plants or decorate the house with flowers certainly has the pleasure of enjoying the gifts of nature, and usually finds satisfaction in seeing that the care lavished on them for months pays off when the plants and flowers flourish, bloom or produce fruit. We all know that it takes perseverance and patience to dedicate yourself to raising plants in a special green, area, no matter how big or small it is. But it also takes some extra expense to equip yourself with the necessary tools and products.

Given this, it is always useful to be able to effectively exploit objects that we already have at home, recycled to become brilliant remedies and products to be used in the care of our greenery without spending anything.

If you need a pot for cuttings, or to grow aromatic herbs at home, you can use glass jars such as those used for jams and preserves. They can be furnished with a layer of pebbles or expanded clay, so as to clearly see when they are drying out and need to be watered again. Better yet, use these jars for succulent plants, which need to be watered very infrequently.

You can also make planters from plastic bottles, especially the big ones for fizzy drinks. You can use the neck, and open the cap when you need the water to drain off.

And there are also ideas for using bottles horizontally and creating proper vertical gardens, even on the balcony!

If you want to make cut flowers you put in your home last a little longer, add sugar to the water: the stems can suck it up and the sugar provides carbohydrates, giving a simulated signal to the flower that the plant is still alive (at least, for a while).

If you need to mulch your garden to prevent weeds from growing, the cheapest way is to cover the soil is with newspaper, and then cover the sheets with more earth, or with stones to help keep them in place.

On the other hand, when you need to protect pots (or rather the roots of the plants inside them) from winter frosts, cover them with the packaging product made with plastic bubbles (bubble wrap).

Do you want to keep birds away from the garden? Hang up your old CDs: the reflections they produce will distract and frighten the birds away.

If you have plants you harvest seeds from to sow again the following year, keep them tidy in a collection of empty Tic-Tac boxes (properly labelled).

Pure Castile soap, as well as yellow soap (potassium soft soap) which are free of other additives, work as a natural repellent against aphids and other pests on plants.

If you need to pollinate flowers, such as for tomato cultivation, you can do this with old toothbrushes!

Garden tips like these are worth knowing!