Gardeners have been advised to reuse their loo roll tubes in the garden in a clever way. Households go through a considerable amount of toilet paper, so we tend to discard a large number of these small cardboard tubes. However, there are numerous uses for them that you may not have been aware of. Gardening experts have explained the great benefits toilet roll cardboard tubes can have in your garden.
As the UK gets increasingly colder with more changeable weather ahead of a cold and blustery winter. November could be a particularly cold month, as the Met Office predicts chilly temperatures, while maps show strong winds across the country. This means that gardens might need a bit more protection. After a hot and dry summer, when gardens faced a whole set of different challenges, they now enter a rough period of winter conditions. However, toilet roll might be the thing to help your plants.
You can shred the cardboard and lay it flat on your soil with mulch. This creates a protective layer for the soil when the cold and wet weather arrives, when frost is common in gardens. It will be particularly effective in protecting seedlings and small plants.
You can also place the cardboard tube around the stem of a small plant. This will protect it from cold air on the ground, as well as chilly gusts.
While this can be a lifesaver for small plants and seedlings, it isn’t a one-and-done for all kinds of plants. This method will have limited effectiveness when it comes to large plants and especially severe frosts. Instead, it works on small plants during a light frost.
Gardening guru Ish, who goes by gardening.with.ish on TikTok, revealed that these cardboard toilet roll tubes have several benefits in your garden. In a recent view, he explained: “The first thing you can do with your cardboard tubes is make little seedling pots, and these work absolutely fantastic, because they are a thin cardboard, they will naturally decompose over the next couple of months. So, start your seedlings off in the first three or four weeks and, once they’ve started to grow, it’s worth taking them out and potting them up.
“You can simply put these in a bigger pot, or in the ground, and these will slowly decompose in the ground, causing very little root disturbance. If you’re trying to start to make your own compost, these work absolutely fantastic too, and you can simply just chuck the tubes in.”