How to Recycle Flower Pots

When we think of flowerpots, we think of terra cotta pots with a drainage hole in the bottom, and generally we picture flowers in them. However, flowerpots have a number of other uses around the house and in the garden. Here are some of them.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Keep your yarn tangle-free while you're knitting or crocheting. Place the ball of yard under an upturned flowerpot and thread the end through the drain hole. Set it next to your favorite craft spot and purl away.

2. Wipe out fire ants in your yard or on the patio. Place a flowerpot upside down over the anthill where these stinging attackers reside. Pour a kettle full of boiling water through the drain hole.

3. Make a handsome firewood container of a large clay or ceramic pot and sit it near the fireplace or wood stove. It's a perfect for storing kindling and small logs.

4. Create a fish cave in your aquarium. Some fish prefer to lurk in the shadowy corners to hide from imagined predators. Set a mini-flowerpot on its side on the aquarium floor and watch them hide.

5. Bake bread in a new, medium-sized clay flowerpot. Soak the pot first in water for about 20 minutes, and then lightly grease the inside with butter. Prepare the dough as usual, place it in the pot and bake. The result will have a crusty exterior and a moist inside.

6. Line up medium-sized flower pots on your desk or artist's table to hold pens, pencils, paintbrushes and other implements you like to have handy.

7. Help shallow-rooting plants establish themselves in a new, large container. Rather than fill the container top to bottom with potting soil, set a medium-sized flower pot upside down in the bottom of the container. Add the potting soil, and then repot the new plant.