Cultivating a lush organic garden is a crash course in innovative problem-solving — without all those pesticides. When insects, weeds, or fungi come out to play, you need to get creative to solve the issue. After all, many gardening sites will tell you to just spray chemicals and move on.
One gardener recently posted a TikTok sharing her eco-friendly hack for protecting seedlings from insects and animals. And all you need is your extra toilet paper rolls.
@homegrownflorida Save those toilet paper rolls! ♻️ Use them as collars around young seedlings to keep cutworms, slugs, and snails at bay. It's an easy, eco-friendly solution! #GardeningHacks #seedstarting #transplant #gardentips #organicgardening ♬ original sound - Homegrown Florida
The scoop
Petrina Steacy, who posts under the moniker Homegrown Florida, recently posted a video sharing how she uses her leftover toilet paper rolls for pest control in her organic garden.
"Save those toilet paper rolls," she wrote in the caption of her video. "Use them as collars around young seedlings to keep cutworms, slugs, and snails at bay. It's an easy, eco-friendly solution."
To do so, Steacy first cuts the toilet paper roll in half. Then, she simply puts the roll around the seedling to shield it from insects, worms, snails, and slugs.
"This will be a physical barrier to keep the cutworms, the slugs, and the snails from snapping those little seedlings in half," Steacy says in the video. "And by the time that these plants are large enough that they can protect themselves, this will have disintegrated and basically become compost in the garden."
She added in the comments of her post: "We save all our [toilet paper rolls] for this purpose. I'm sure people think I'm crazy, but it works."
How it's working
According to The World Counts, about 42 million tons of toilet paper is used every year worldwide. That's the equivalent of 184 billion toilet paper rolls.
While cardboard is one of the most versatile and recyclable types of waste we create, reusing your rolls is a climate-minded way to upcycle your waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces around 5 pounds of trash daily. Repurposing some of your waste in smart, innovative ways is a great way to curb your environmental impact.
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What people are saying
Commenters were excited to try the gardening hack, thanking Steacy for sharing her gardening expertise on TikTok.
One fellow gardener commented: "I was holding to rolls for fall and Christmas projects, but NOPe! Heading out to the garden now! Thank you."
"I am going to do this to all my plants," another added.
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