Don't Throw Out Old Milk Jugs: Reuse Them To Save Your Garden Plants

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Plastic milk jugs are part of our daily lives and often end up in the recycling bin. But with a little tweaking, they can be put to work in the garden, protecting and saving tender, vulnerable plants. Milk jugs are surprisingly versatile, as they're easy to cut and manipulate into different shapes for a variety of uses. When it comes to saving plants, milk jugs make perfect individual greenhouses, protective collars, temperature regulators, and even drip irrigators! Your plants will love them.

Milk jugs are ideal for use as small garden cloches. Just cut off the base with a regular pair of scissors and remove the lid for ventilation, and they're ready to be pressed into position to protect tender plants from frost and pests. Make two holes near the bottom on opposite sides of the bottle and use Gomedi Landscape Staples to hold them in place. If you need to cover your seedlings after planting, use the cloche with the lid on to create a mini greenhouse effect.

As seedlings and young plants outgrow cloches, they may not yet be ready to face the elements on their own. One of the mistakes gardeners make when transplanting seedlings is to skip the hardening-off stage. For seedlings growing in milk jug cloches, you can adapt the cloche to support their next stage of development. Cut the top of the jug off and leave it in place as a protective collar against high winds, boisterous pets, and blazing sun. 

When the temperatures drop after sunset, your milk jug greenhouses will take the edge off the cold for your tender plants and seedlings. While leaving the lid off the jug during the day is important for ventilation and to protect your plants from overheating, replacing the lids at night will help the greenhouse to retain daytime heat. Milk jugs are also great for protecting plants from frost, which is one of the big advantages of growing plants in a greenhouse. 

If your garden is regularly visited by deer, rabbits, squirrels, or other animals that like to treat your garden as a buffet spread just for them, plastic jugs are highly effective in stopping the nibbling. They're also great for keeping out leaf-eating bugs such as grasshoppers, locusts, snails, and slugs. 

Milk jugs double up as built-in plant labels. If you know you won't remember where you planted what, use an Artline Premier Garden Marker to write the name of the plant on the jug. Labels written with a regular marker will likely wash off in the rain, leaving you with a potluck garden, but those specifically designed for outdoor use will stay put through the worst weather. You can also add the date each batch was planted if you'd like to keep track of growth and development. If your seedlings are behind where they should be, you'll be able to intervene by tweaking the conditions or fertilizing the soil.