Gardener shares unexpected hack that can help kickstart seed growth: 'Works like a charm'

A recent Reddit post displays a helpful hack for current and aspiring gardeners. Using a product most people have — an empty toilet paper roll — the OP cut it in half and folded it in at the bottom. As a result, you have a simple and eco-friendly container to start your seedlings. 

The scoop

This garden hack is cheap and simple, as it only requires a used toilet paper roll and some scissors. After folding them in half, make little vertical cuts and fold them inward until you have an enclosed bottom.

"Used this last year and it works like a charm," wrote the OP. 

How it's helping

Instead of trashing toilet paper rolls, use them as part of a healthy and sustainable garden. As studies have found, gardening is good for your mental and physical health. So, a used toilet paper roll may be the first step in growing organic food from seedlings or reducing stress while spending time in a beautiful garden.

If cutting back on eggs due to the price, you need a replacement for those old cartons people often use to start seedlings. As one commenter expressed, "This [is] a better idea than commercially sold 'peat' pots. These would definitely disintegrate early, and roots could flourish. Peat pots just root bind your starts."

Reusing your paper roll like this is another way to get smarter about your recycling options. Further, repurpose cardboard material in your garden by using the "lasagna" mulch method. This type of mulching involves alternating layers of cardboard or other brown material like wood chips, green material like leaves or grass and finished off with topsoil.

While creating compost, toss those rolls, flattened boxes and other cardboard items in so their carbon abundance can help balance nitrogen — just shred it a bit first. Between the cost savings and soil benefits of repurposing these products, it's another reason to avoid adding to the annual $4 billion economic loss that cardboard and paper litter cost the United States, per the U.S. Department of Energy.

That cardboard-based litter and landfill dumping contribute to methane gases that go into the environment through air and water. Worse than carbon dioxide as it "traps 120 times as much heat as CO2", according to MIT's Climate Portal, methane has a larger impact on climate issues like harsher weather patterns and increasing planetary temperature.

Another recycling garden hack includes creating simple irrigation from an empty water bottle.

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What everyone's saying

Someone humorously replied, "I love giving porous cardboard material that spent the first few weeks of life next to my toilet a second life growing my edible vegetables."

Another plant grower said, "Good idea!! I tried egg cartons - unfortunately they just weren't deep enough."

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