This clever trick for using a toilet paper roll in the garden will be so helpful during planting season this year! If you ever find yourself wondering which plants sprouting up are weeds, and which are the seeds that you planted, this will be a big help!
Add this trick for how to use a toilet paper roll in the garden to the list of things that I wish I knew a long time ago. 🙂 I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying which little green sprouts are the plants I want, and which are the weeds, but every once in awhile I’ll try planting something new and I’ll be totally stumped. What usually ends up happening is that I’ll leave that section full of weeds because I’m just not sure which plants I should pull and which I should leave, and then before I know it the whole section is almost un-saveable.
I do have a pretty good system for rescuing our garden when it gets overrun with weeds because, hey, life happens, but prevention is always so much better!
Here’s how to use toilet paper rolls to make your job in the garden just a little bit easier!
Using the Toilet Paper Roll in the Garden Trick
First take a few empty toilet paper rolls (or paper towel rolls), and cut them down into slices about 2 inches thick.
Next, get ready to plant your seeds! Bonus points if you use our trick for creating super straight, consistent rows. 🙂
As you cover up each seed with soil, plunk a toilet paper roll slice down over it and press it into the dirt a little bit so it stays in place.
Now, sit back and let the magic happen.
…and by magic I mean, let the weeds grow back. Ha!
When you need to get out in the garden and pull those weeds, you’ll know exactly where to pull from, and where to avoid pulling because you’ll have a marker showing you exactly where your seeds are planted. You’ll know precisely which little green sprouts are weeds, and which are not.
You can even bring a sharpie marker out with you to the garden and use these as plant markers just by writing the names of the plants right on the cardboard!
This is a really great one for me because we get so many weeds blowing in across the fields and deciding that our garden is the perfect place to set up shop. We do make our rows, and we can easily see where to weed in between the rows, but we end up needing to do a fair bit of weeding in the rows themselves as well.
Definitely save your toilet paper rolls this year so you can feel a little extra clever in the garden this summer!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.