How To Use Chopsticks In Your Garden As A Clever Tool For Growing Plants

As idyllic as it sounds to pluck ripe tomatoes, beans, or herbs right from your own backyard, the cost of small-scale gardening can easily get out of control if you're not intentionally resourceful. Pricy soil, fertilizers, raised beds — it's all enough to mean, when you crunch the numbers, that handful of homegrown cherry tomatoes didn't exactly put you in the green. 

Resist the siren call to buy the latest garden gadgets and big box store doodads — you mostly don't need 'em — and get crafty with what you already have, from spent paper towels to leftover party cups as planters to chopsticks from your Chinese takeout. Put the latter to use as small-scale trellises for tiny growing vegetables or droopy plants in need of some support. Give them a washing and stick a single separated chopstick — blunt or pointy end down  – into the potting soil. 

Space the sticks an inch or less away from the plant stem, close enough so the plant in need of support can lean without bending or leaning. Gently tie the plant to the stick to keep it upright and growing tall. Have a particularly dramatic, droopy plant? Prop it up by using an unseparated pair of chopsticks and gently bracing a stem or branch between the sticks. Chopsticks can work overtime as plant tags, too — stick a piece of tape to a stick or write the name of the plant species directly on it to track what's growing where.

It's easy to get garden envy if you spend too much time peeping the neighbor's luscious, landscaped beds or scrolling Pinterest. The reality is, the best gardens don't have to be the prettiest, perfectly plotted, or manicured ones — often, the most scrappy systems and supplies work best. One must, though, is giving plants that need them — many types of veggies and vines — some sort of trellis support. This isn't just an aesthetic choice to keep garden beds from becoming sprawling — trellising keeps plants healthy and happy, able to grow upward and stay protected from many bacterias, fungal diseases, and ground-dwelling pests. 

This is where the chopsticks come in. Of course, this hack works best on small seedlings, which will eventually outgrow the utensil's support and demand sturdier scaffolding from a fence post, tomato cage, or bamboo stalk. Though a chopstick's most obvious use is for growing plants, you can use multiple sticks to support bigger plants. Take two or three chopsticks and use them as horizontal beams of sorts. Connect three into a triangle shape, tying multiple branches of a plant to the sticks with twine, which keeps branches supported and trained to grow in the direction you want them.  

Once you start looking — the world, or the recycling bin, specifically, is your oyster — filled with useful castaways and materials that can be repurposed in your garden. And you'll never look at your Chinese takeout the same.