Do you drink a lot of soda or bottled water? If you have a patio, balcony, or even an empty windowsill, you can grow a garden with all those plastic bottles. What is a bottle garden, you ask? Why, it’s exactly what it sounds like — plastic bottles are transformed into planters. Create a cold-weather indoor garden and grow fresh food even in the dead of winter, or use them to nurture seedlings in your greenhouse, ready for planting out in the spring once the weather warms. All you need is a pair of scissors and the bottle itself. Snip the bottom off the bottle and pop it over the mouth to create a tall planter with a sturdy base ready to fill with soil. It couldn’t be simpler!
Upcycled bottle planters are an excellent option for small-space gardeners — and not only because you have to take the recycling bin out to the curb less often. They’re a cheap to free source of often pricey garden containers, particularly if your household goes through a lot of pop. The plastic they’re typically made of (PET) is approved as food safe by the FDA, meaning you can grow plants you eat, like salad vegetables, in them. The bottles come in various sizes, Coke’s standard 20-ounce or new 13.2-ounce 100% recycled bottles, for example, which is great for plants large and small. From a garden maintenance standpoint, the transparent plastic means you can easily see when your plants are getting root-bound and need a bigger home.
The how-to
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Grab your sharpest pair of scissors or a box cutter, and take the bobbly base off the soda bottle. Cut a hole in the center of the base that’s just big enough to fit tightly around the neck of the bottle. Unscrew the bottle cap, slip the modified base over the mouth, and screw the cap back on. Turn the whole thing upside down so the now-open end of the bottle faces upwards. Fill your new planter with quality soil, sow your seeds or seedlings, and pop the planter in a sunny spot indoors or out.
It’s best to use these new-to-you planters to grow herbs or fast-developing, shallow-rooted vegetables like lettuce, spinach, and scallions. Cultivating cuttings or seedlings is another great use for them. Succulents and cacti also do well in these planters. Noticing a theme here? The wide base acts as a stabilizer, sure, but these tall, thin containers still get top-heavy fast. Growing lighter, stouter plants in them reduces the chance of a topple. If your bottle planters keep falling over, glue pebbles inside the foot to add more weight to the base. Want to ensure rotting roots will be a thing of the past? Drilling or punching a hole in the lid before screwing it back onto the bottle and mixing sand or pebbles into your potting mix will fix this. Experts insist roots grow best in the dark, so modify your new bottle planters by adding a few thin sheets of newspaper.
