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To Save Soil, We Tried The Viral Pool Noodle Hack. Here's How It Went
By KAILEN SKEWIS
The Pool Noodle Hack
A popular viral hack suggests you pad the bottom of your large planter with a foam pool noodle. Their malleable nature makes them easy to form into the shape of the planter.
Most bags of potting soil are not cheap, and you may be wasting a lot of soil that you don’t need for the plant just to fill up space in the planter.
Pool noodles can also create more space for oxygen, water, and root growth, so your favorite spring and summer flowers can grow healthy and strong.
The Soil-Saving Supplies You'll Need
We purchased two 8-quart bags of potting mix, two pool noodles, and two 2.5-quart live Aubrieta flowers from Walmart. For our planter, we used a 14-inch half-whisky barrel planter.
We gathered our supplies on our concrete patio and added gardening gloves, a watering can, and scissors. We rinsed our planter and took the tags off the pool noodles.
Trying Out Pool Noodles In Pots
We created a wide pretzel shape with the noodle before pressing it down into the bottom of the pot. Because our noodles were skinny, we stacked a second one to fill more space.
We filled the pot with soil, added the plants, and placed more soil around the base of the stems to cover the noodles and roots. We watered until it seeped from the drainage hole.
Our Opinion Of The Gardening Trick
Thanks to this viral hack, we were able to save money on soil and easily plant flowers that do not need much extra space to thrive.
In addition, replacing some of the soil with foam makes pots much easier to move around and keeps water retention to a minimum, which helps to prevent root rot.