Celebrate Earth Day With 8 Ways to Repurpose Plastic Milk Jugs for the Garden

With Earth Day this Saturday. I thought I'd share some of the ways we can repurpose clean plastic milk jugs in the garden, replacing single-use item purchases. I buy milk primarily in 1 gallon jugs, however many of these uses work with 1/2 gallon jugs as well.

1.  planting containers -- before cutting the milk jug, I use a corkscrew to add drainage holes to the bottom. I make about 8 to 10 holes with the corkscrew. After I've made my drainage, I use a sharp knife to make a slit where I want to cut, then use scissors to cut off the portion of the jug just below the handle. 

Milk jugs have a square-ish shape, which means I can fit more of these planting containers on a shelf for growing. I'm growing lettuce, parsley, spinach and basil on plant shelves on the deck this year, using milk jug bottoms as my planting containers. One milk jug planter is just right for 1 head of leaf lettuce, 3 or 4 baby spinach plants (for baby spinach), 3 parsley plants, or 2 or 3 basil plants.

2.  cloches to protect young plants from cold nights (or days as I'm finding this year) early in the season. To make a cloche, make a slit with a sharp knife at the base of the milk jug, about 1 inch from the bottom, then use scissors to remove the base. In windy weather, I secure these cloches by burying them in the soil about an inch.

3.  plant saucers -- those shallow bases cut off the milk jug when making cloches make effective plant saucers for 5 1/2-inch diameter (at the base) pots.

4.  no-cost drip irrigation -- poke 1 or 2 holes into the bottom of the milk jug, fill with water, put the lid back on and set next to a plant that needs watering. If water isn't dripping out as quickly as you'd like, loosen the lid slightly. If you live in a windy area, weight your jugs with a few small rocks before filling with water (so it doesn't blow away when empty).

5. storage container for keeping homemade compost tea.  I make compost tea in large batches, storing what I won't use immediately in cleaned out milk jugs with lids.

6.  hot water bottles under row covers to extend the growing season. I'll be planting out our tomato plants this next week. Due to our cool spring weather, I plant them under row covers/season extenders. When temperatures threaten to drop too low for my plants, I add a few milk jugs filled with hot water under the covers. This works at the end of the season, too. When frost threatens before I've harvested all of my tomatoes, I cover the large plants with a sheet or two at night and add a "hot water bottle" or two.

7.  mini greenhouses for starting plants. This is something a couple of you have told us about. Make your drainage holes first, using a corkscrew. Then cut 3/4 the way around the jug, leaving a connecting 1/4 as a hinge. 

8.  plant markers for garden rows or pots when starting seeds. Cut the leftover odds and ends from milk jug repurpose into narrow strips about 4 inches long. Use a Sharpie to write pertinent info on the plant marker.

Blessings

Here we are, mid-spring, and I'm noticing that our garden produce from last season is almost gone. This is the last of the pumpkins that I grew. I harvested it in late October, still green when cut from the vine. I left a really long, trailing vine for the first couple of weeks after bringing indoors. And I kept all of the pumpkins in my cool storage room (about 52 to 54 degrees F from late October through early May). The homegrown ones all did well. Of the pumpkins and squash that I purchased, I had a couple of squash (but no pumpkins) that went soft in my storage room. I brought this last pumpkin out to the kitchen counter over the weekend to remind me to cook it up in the coming week for soup, pasta sauce, pie, or pumpkin bread.

For our Easter celebration, we used the last of the garden potatoes (purple and white) in mashed potatoes. I also kept those in the cool storage room. I think doing so kept them from going soft or sprouting too badly.

I still have a little garden garlic remaining, perhaps enough to get through early May. I keep the garlic in the fridge in a paper bag and it keeps very well. I also have the last of the garden onions, the very small ones, enough for one omelet. I'll use those onions up this week, as we're also almost out of the purchased onions from the 50-lb sack.

We finished off the garden carrots, beets, and turnips around Christmas. I do have some frozen veggies remaining, mostly items like chives, beet greens, sorrel, grape leaves, and carrot leaves. I'll need to get creative in using these veggie bits. If I put my mind to cooking with them, I imagine they will be used by the middle of May. 

Remember those 2 huge bags of blackberries that we foraged and froze in September? We've been using them steadily in smoothies and as fruit, simply thawed and topped with honey. We'll be out of blackberries in mid to late May. 

What else is left? A handful or two of dried homegrown fruit, some blackberry syrup and juice, some crabapple sauce and juice, and assorted jars of jams, jellies, pickles, and preserved figs. It's definitely winding down.

It's a good thing that the garden will begin to produce regularly again soon. Our rhubarb (one of the first produce items I can reliably count on each spring) is up, but no where near cutting. We're a month away from rhubarb pies, sauce, and muffins.

I can't imagine what life and mealtimes would have been like in a period when folks had to raise all of the food they would eat not only for an entire winter, but most of spring as well. We're blessed to live with grocery stores, freezers, electricity for canning, and farmers to grow a lot of our food. We're blessed.