Depending on tastes and preferences, a single kitchen item can be repurposed differently by gardeners.
Before you toss the old baking tins or the slightly cracked flowered tea pots, look at how you can reuse them in the garden. Repurposing kitchen items for garden use might sound outrageous but it’s actually genius.
Maybe you’ve just bought a potted plant and wondering when you will get time to shop for a pot. Rummage through the kitchen for the old cups or kettles and grow the flowers or herbs, giving your garden a unique rustic look.
Chege Mbugua of Creative Kenya says, since gardening is eco-friendly, it makes sense to reuse rather than burn or piling up the garbage hill.
Depending on tastes and preferences, a single kitchen item can be repurposed differently by gardeners, he says.
Wine Bottle
“A wine bottle, for example, can be used as bottle gardens, bird feeders or a watering appliance for your plants especially when you take a vacation,” he says.
The beauty with most wine bottles is that they have an elongated neck allowing the gardener easy time in reusing them.
A gardener can pick used wine bottles of the same colour and stick them into the ground uniformly to create a perimeter wall around a seedling bed.
Mr Mbugua says in such a case, not only would the wine bottles be functional in preventing children from trampling on the young plants but also add to the aesthetics of the landscape.
An air plant can be grown in a wine bottle and flourish into an amazing ornament after sometime. This slow-growing plant that can thrive despite neglect, does not require soil and can grow suspended from a string.
Strainers and colanders
These are ideally used in the kitchen to sieve flour or drain food such as pasta.
Most have handles which are prone to breakage ,but it should not mean that they have served their useful life. The first step is to put some good potting mix into either the strainer or colander then plant the flower or herb of your choice in it.
Given that both items have perforated bottoms, no excess water will be clogged in the soil and cause root-rot.
“The perforations are also functional in allowing air into the soil and the root, which ensures you have a healthy plant,” says Brenda Kamande, a landscape architect.
She notes that the planters can either be placed on the ground or suspended in the air to create hanging gardens.
Kettles and plates
It is almost inevitable that a kitchen would lack plates or kettles. Most households have unused electric kettles. A gardener can transform a kettle, whether the electric or the conventional one into planters where a variety of plants can grow.
Trailing-cascading-spiller plants that are ideal for baskets make a perfect choice for the kettle plater that has its handle and spout intact. Succulents also look adorable in the kettle planters.
Boost your imagination by edging a flower bed using old plates. This not only creates an eye catchy pattern on the landscape but also ensures the flower bed is protected from any form of interference.
Aside from acting as garden bed boarders, the plates can be used as bird feeders. These will attract birds into the garden which is a sight to behold.
Muffin trays/ baking tins
Muffin tins that have seen better days can play a functional role in the garden rather than sitting idle at some corner in the kitchen or in shelves.
All you need is some good potting mix and you are good to establish a herbs or vegetable seedling nursery.
Teresa Nanjala Lubano, a plants seller uses muffin trays to grow young succulents prior to moving them into a planting pot for sale on her online shop. A visit at her backyard showed how different varieties of succulent plants can be grown and attended to from the blister trays.
“Succulents root-system makes it possible to contain them in small pots,” says the owner of shopnanjala.com.
Alternatively, you can push the muffin tins into the soil to create well-spaced little depressions where you can throw in your seeds or young plants. You can also grow herbs or other plants in old baking tins—just perforate them.
Plastic forks
These sometimes get discoloured after prolonged use. Instead of throwing them in the trash can, why not stick them in soil around the garden?
The best location to stick them would be at the seedling bed where the forks offer the functional role of keeping the slimy predators at bay.
This will prevent the intruders from snacking at the budding veggies.
Tea cups
Just like the kettle, the cups that are no longer in use in the kitchen can be used to grow flowers. Succulents look amazing especially in porcelain and ceramic cups.
There are limitless ways household items can be repurposed in the home including the following; spoons as chandeliers.
You can tie at least our spoons in a circular arrangement and hang a bulb at the centre to create a chandelier. This can either be hanged indoors or outdoor at the backyard, as long as it is sheltered from rain.
Instead of throwing away used tyre, drill some holes around it that are big enough to hold umbrellas. This is way much better than throwing them haphazardly.
