Create containers from Recycled containers

Recycled containers

How to take ordinary household containers and turn them into containers for planting.  A great reuse idea

We have some additional pictures for you to see samples, plus a short video showing how we prepare the containers.

Also here is the link to our video channel where we will be adding more how to videos and video favorites. See the bottom of this page for a video on creating containers.

For the initial Planting Containers, we decided just to use Household trash to begin with.  Every week there are at least two Gallon Milk containers, 1 18 Egg Pack (no longer since we got our chickens), 6 or more Cans, Styrofoam meat and poultry trays, and other miscellaneous plastic and paper containers. Basically, lots of containers for lots of seedlings. We get a bit lazy about planting for a few weeks and then madly try to get caught up with the supply of Reuse Containers.

The process of converting the containers into Planting Containers is straight forward. The Household waste is sorted into four basic groups:

1) Plastic
2) Paper
3) Cans
4) Egg Cartons and Meat trays

1) For plastic containers with narrow tops, we use a box cutter to cut off the top sufficient to have a opening which makes it easy to add plants. Then I use a hobby soldering iron which I use to melt two or three holes in the bottom of the containers for drainage.

2) We do the Paper Containers the same way as the Plastic Containers. Cut off the tops if required and burn drainage holes.

3) The Cans just need Drainage holes, and for this we use a small Phillips Screw driver as a punch and a small tack hammer and punch two or three holes in the bottoms for Drainage.

4) Our Egg Cartoons are paper which makes them great for small seeds, but we found out they fall apart very easily so we started using the meat trays under the Egg Cartoons so I could move them around. Then we noticed the trays didn’t drain (obviously as they were plastic), so we burned drainage holes in them with the soldering iron and this combination made for nice seed trays.

We keep our eye out for nursery containers being thrown out and salvage a few every month or so. We reuse 5 gallon containers usually paint, and a local restaurant helps us out in several ways: they save the 5 Gallon Oil containers which we reuse, and they save CRV containers which we turn in to help with our 15 Gallon Container purchase fund.  Also we are able to purchase used containers from a local nursery at a substantial savings, especially the large containers.