Easily Start A Mini Garden With This Cheap Laundry Staple

If you've ever used laundry baskets to make your weekly grocery shopping trip easier, or to keep items corralled while taking inventory in your chaotic kitchen pantry, you know these durable plastic baskets are good for more than just holding laundry. Not only are they the perfect inexpensive, lightweight container to store everything from sealed surplus boxes of snacks to fancy cookie decorating supplies used only during the holidays, they may also be the answer you've been looking for to start your very own container garden.

In fact, if you already have an extra laundry basket or two lying around, this could be the perfect hack to start experimenting with your very own mini garden. Laundry baskets are not only sturdy, they're also made to be carried around, making them easy enough to move from indoors to your back patio once your seedlings are hardy enough to survive outdoors. Laundry baskets' latticework sides also allow for airflow, which can help prevent the buildup of moisture that can cause root rot and mold growth.

Of course, this same latticework can make it hard to fill your laundry basket planter with soil, so you need to line the inside with burlap, landscaping fabric, or coco liners. Avoid lining your baskets with plastic since it's nonporous and doesn't let excess moisture evaporate. After that, it's a simple matter of deciding which veggies grow best in your new container garden, adding seedlings (with lots of breathing room in between), and watching your little garden thrive.

Though evaporation helps keep your soil from getting waterlogged, you may still want to drill drain holes in the bottom of your laundry basket — especially if growing veggies that require well-draining soil, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, zucchini, or carrots. All of these veg like sandy soil fortified with plenty of nutrition, which helps them produce a large crop. All you need is a standard drill with a ½-inch bit to quickly buzz some holes into the bottom of your basket since the plastic usually isn't very thick.

Even with limited space, you can use companion planting to grow your very own salad garden in a single basket simply by noting which plants help each other thrive. For instance, radishes, zucchini, lettuce, peas, and chives all grow well together because they deter various pests and don't compete too much for the same nutrients. Plus, they make a delicious summer salad. If you have enough room, you can also combine mini gardens by using patio chairs to create DIY raised beds since many laundry baskets fit easily between the arms of a standard plastic patio chair. Place them in a rectangle or in a semi-circle to make your plants even easier to tend. You can even stock one or two chairs with stacks of empty baskets to make harvesting that much easier.