Looking to spruce up your garden with a pop of colour? Hanging baskets are your go-to solution, perfect for draping around your home’s entrance with a vast selection of stunning blooms in an array of hues. For those lacking the space for hanging arrangements, container plants make a superb substitute. To keep them flourishing, an ordinary sponge might just be your secret weapon.
Eco cleaning brand Seep’s founder, Laura Harnett, praises this humble kitchen staple in gardening. There is no need to splash out on new sponges; any old natural sponge destined for the bin can become your garden’s best friend, reports the Express.
Laura shared a nifty tip: “While tubs are refreshed from earlier spring plants, help to keep the new bedding stay hydrated by cutting up old eco sponges into small pieces and add into the compost. These will act, literally as, sponges and will help hold moisture in the soil.”
She added, “They will be great throughout summer and will help reduce the need for as much watering if away on holiday. They need to be eco sponges as the yellow and green ones are made from plastic and so will leach microplastics into the soil.”
But it’s not just water retention where sponges excel — they’re also a boon for maintaining nutrient-rich soil.
In a YouTube video posted by Fast and Simple, a gardening guru praises the virtues of embedding sponges in potted plants.
Upon cutting up a sponge, the expert detailed: “Once we have all our sponge cut, we are going to start using it to benefit the soil of our pots and plants. And we are going to use the sponge to fill one of these pots.”
After the sliced sponges are placed in the plant pots, they slowly soak up the nutrients and moisture, thereby fostering healthier and more resilient plants.
The horticultural whizz stated: “What happens is that they have already begun to absorb the nutrients from the soil itself and the moisture from the soil that I have added to the bucket.”