Gardening Life Hack: Use Empty Soda Cans to Save on Soil for Your Container Plants!

Here's another life hack I learned years and years ago–you can use empty soda cans at the bottom of containers to save on dirt!

I prepped my containers for the season a few days ago. Now, how I personally go about growing herbs, tomatoes, and zucchini in containers is by layering the dirt by its source.

I always start with a base of soda cans, and we'll fill a few in each pod with old potting soil from last season. No need to reinvent the wheel, might as well reuse it!

The second layer, which is usually the bulk of the dirt in any given container, it's a combination of local compost from the yard waste site nearby and my own compost.

And the top layer, which I didn't do today, is usually a potting soil that's new and fresh for the year. That way those nutrients will run down through the roots of the plants or herbs throughout the summer.

So like I mentioned before, there's two main benefits to using soda cans in containers.

The first is that you can save on a couple inches of dirt. Most root systems won't go all the way down into the container if you pick the right size, so those sodas cans help you save on how much dirt you need to use

The other benefit is it actually helps create a better drainage system for those containers. If the container is just full of dirt, it makes it harder for gravity to pull the water all the way down. By creating that small void, those gaps in between the cans can act like a little drainage gallery at the bottom, allowing the water to flow out faster. Otherwise it can pool up into a layer of nasty saturated mud!