A smart mulching tip using old nursery pots
Like many gardeners, our reader Mary hangs on to nursery pots rather than tossing them in the landfill, confident they’ll be useful someday. While mulching a newly planted garden bed, she stumbled on a clever new use: turning those extra pots into protective covers that shield young plants and make mulching easier.
Use nursery pots as simple mulch rings
Mary simply inverts a nursery pot of the appropriate size over each new or emerging plant before mulching the garden bed. The upside-down pots act as protective covers, allowing her to spread mulch quickly and evenly without worrying about burying tender stems or damaging young growth. When you slip off the pots, the mulch falls almost perfectly in place, leaving it a couple of inches away from the plant crowns.
Mulching made easy
This trick is especially helpful in newly planted beds where small plants can easily disappear beneath a fresh layer of mulch. Once you’ve finished, just remove the pots and stack them up to reuse again next season. See the tip in action at our test garden in the video below.
Tip submitted by Mary Dickinson, IL
Try this easy mulching hack!
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