With it being Earth Day today, and with our attention turning to health and wellness with recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important that we continue to address improved sustainability.

There are many things I’m learning from experiencing this pandemic, and one of many is that I grossly underestimated how reliant I am on external sources for everything to run my home (from food, to even seemingly simple things like toilet paper!)

On top of everything else, we are in the middle of a move, so I’m really learning what it means to live under not-so-ideal conditions and still making things work (not quite completely moved into one house and not completely out of another means neither house is fully functional!)

So, if you’re worried you don’t have the resources or the tools to start trying to be more self-reliant, don’t worry. Even if you’ve been stuck inside your home for days on end and haven’t ventured out to buy more supplies, there are still things you can do to start being more self-reliant today!

Recycle What You Have

If you’re anything like me, you probably went out to stock up on your typical food storage items when news of the virus coming became widespread. Having some of these packaged items makes it very easy to recycle.

Among these food storage items was probably some spaghetti sauce. If you’ve made spaghetti any time recently, all you have to do is load it into your dishwasher and rip the label off and you’ve got a perfectly great glass container perfect for storing dried herbs or flowers!

I also like storing bulk food items I need for cooking in glass jars too (I made the mistake at first of buying a box of mason jars before I realized that I’ve already paid for glass jars with every jar of spaghetti sauce I buy!).

If you’re looking for a way to organize your pantry better, the jars actually work really great for this too! They have aesthetic appeal so you can just leave them as is on your shelf, or if you want more organization, you can compartmentalize them into a nice bin too.

To make things a little easier, I put together this list of other miscellaneous things that may be lying around your house right now that work great as gardening supplies.

Seed-starters:

You can recycle containers to start seeds. The small size of the individual yogurt containers is ideal for individual seeds, while the salad and greens containers work great if you’re starting seeds in peat pellets or toilet paper rolls and need a water-proof container to keep them in.

Egg containers work great to recycle too since you can just rest the cracked egg shells perfectly into the different compartments and have the added benefit of the calcium from the egg shells too.

With all containers you recycle, you just want to make sure you clean them out well and dry them before using them.

• yogurt containers
• salad containers
• egg containers
• toilet paper rolls

Plant Propagation:

You can spend a lot of money on really nice propagation stations, but the fact is, you can start some of your own when you recycle items you already have on hand.

For any propagation, you’ll want to use a container that is tall enough (to give roots room to grow) and that has a small mouth. Otherwise, the plant generally will just fall into the water even if it has some leaves to help balance on top of the mouth of the container.

What I’ve found works great are water bottles and sauce bottles (like if you do any Asian cooking, fish sauce or sweet chili sauce usually comes in these tall, slender-mouthed jars). Ideally, you won’t have too many plastic water bottles lying around the house, but when you do, you can put them to good use!

• water bottles
• sauce bottles

Mini Greenhouses:

Again, water bottles aren’t great for the environment if you don’t recycle, but if you happen to have some lying around, you can cut them in half and use it as a mini green house for little seedlings.

This is great for when you’re starting seeds indoors because it acts like a greenhouse and traps some of the moisture and warmth inside to provide the ideal environment for your little seedling. The top of the bottle where the cap was is great because it still allows air circulation. You’ll just need to make a similar opening on the of the bottom half of the water bottle so it can allow air to circulate as well.

• water bottles cut in half

Better Pot Drainage:

The generic rule of thumb for providing pot drainage has been to just add some rocks to the bottom of your pot, but many gardeners believe this is actually not as effective.

A great alternative to making sure your pots have proper drainage (to avoid problems like root rot!) is to just place some cut up sponges at the bottom of your pot, or a coffee filter. These will make sure the soil won’t just come out of the bottom of your pot.

• cut-up sponges
• coffee filters

Pots

With whatever you decide to use as a pot, you just need to make sure you drill drainage holes into the bottom to allow proper drainage like we talked about in our previous point.

• large yogurt container

Make Your Own Compost:

You can read more about creating your own compost in our starter guide, but these are just some basic things that could be added to your compost instead of your trash can!

• kitchen waste (banana peels, eggshells, etc.)
• yard waste (leaves, grass clippings, etc.)

Storing Dried Herbs:

I don’t have kids, but I do have a puppy and her vet recommended we feed her Gerber baby food that comes in those small glass jars.

I didn’t know what I could use them for at the time, but I decided to keep them. Now I’m so glad I did! These work great for storing your dried herbs and I love how small and cute they look in my pantry!

Spaghetti sauce jars are much bigger so they can accommodate larger amounts of herbs you might have. I actually even store bulk herbs I don’t grow and have to buy at the store in spaghetti sauce jars too. The only thing with storing it in something bigger is that you’ll probably need to measure things out so you avoid accidentally dumping a whole bunch of something in your dinner!

• baby food jars
• spaghetti sauce jars

Recycle Items For Other Uses

These are just some simple ideas specifically for gardening, but if you’d like more information on how you can recycle, you can visit the US Environmental Protection Agency’s website for more information.

Recycling Rocks!

Ultimately, gardening is about nourishing the earth so it can nourish us in return. So, creating and consuming inordinate amounts of the earth’s resources to use as planters or other gardening supplies could be considered counter-productive.

By using what we have, re-using where we can, and choosing sustainable products where possible, we can do our part to promote a healthier environment (and in most cases, save money too!).