Tips, Tricks and Hacks to help grow your backyard garden, from your kitchen!

One thing I love to do is reuse and find new ways to repurpose things around the house. Here I'm going to share some easy ways to reuse stuff for your backyard garden! If you're new here, just know that I'm no expert! I'm just a mom who loves plants and gardens and reducing and recycling.

I'm not sure how much you know about backyard gardens or even plants but hopefully you find some helpful tips in here for your garden and your family. I'm very happy to share what I've learned and tried and have actually seen results from!

Coffee Grounds

Are such an easy thing to mix into soil or backyard compost after making your morning pot of coffee. Coffee has nitrogen, calcium, potassium and other important nutrients to help your plants grow! It also attracts worms which are great for soil!

Egg Shells

Can be crushed or ground and mixed in soil for extra calcium or lightly crushed and spread around plants to help deter snails and other critters from your plants!

| Back Yard Compost can be comprised of all kinds of kitchen scraps like veggie cuts/ends, coffee grounds and egg shells like stated before, fruits and veggies, grass clippings, tree branches, plant cuttings, old soil, cardboard, leaves, paper egg cartons and even hair!! |

Water

Is very important for all plants! Did you know you could use old fish water, half empty water bottle or that glass of water on your nightstand from two days ago?! A trick for plants in|oor or out, it's not about the amount of times you water it but the amount of water you use every time. Wait until the soil is all the way dry and then either bottom water and fill up your plant or put it in the shower for awhile to soak or bottom water all of them in your bath tub at the same time! It's a really handy trick I've been using for all of my indoors. For my veggies outside, I wait about 2 days of no rain and then soak my plants. Compost Tea. Sounds gross, Right?! but its great for plants. There's multiple ways to make it and I don't have the things I need to make it how I want right now but how I do it is use some compost and leave it out to get rained on, forget about it for two days, strain it out and use to water plants! Banana Water. It's exactly how it sounds! I like to save up banana peels but you could start small, about 2-3 peels in a big jar of water and let it sit for a few hours or overnight and then strain and use! Sink Water/Unfiltered Water. You most definitely can use plain tap water but fill up your container the night before and let it sit out to make sure all the chlorine is evaporated.

Fillers

Are used for the bottom of planters and pots. You can use all kinds of things... If it's a container you don't need to move, you can use rocks or cinder blocks or bricks. Some light weight options would be empty water bottles, sticks and leaves and cardboard or cardboard egg cartons. All of these options are great if you don't want to use up a bunch of soil and to recycle!

Check back later this year for more updates after this gardening season! I love sharing my tricks with you and feel free to share yours with me! Happy Planting!