Saturday, March 3, 2007

Instant Soup Cups-Hack


I've found myself throwing away a lot of these instant soup cups lately because we have guests and they eat these like crazy. It's not unusual to throw away 10 or more of these cups in one day around here. The other day as I was taking out the garbage and they kept falling out of the bag and it dawned on me that these sturdy cups have a use for gardening.

Take a sharp pencil and poke holes in the bottom and you can use these to start your gardening seeds until they grow big enough to transplant into larger gardening pots or into your garden. If you're propagating plants fill it with your favorite brand of potting soil and stick your cuttings in these and cover them with a clear plastic bag to trap humidity. They're sturdy enough to use for starting seeds under grow lights if you have an indoor garden light set up.

If you're an indoor gardener and have small potted plants in a window that may be too cold in the winter place the potted plant inside (make sure you poke holes in the bottom) this cup. The Styrofoam will act as an insulator and keep the roots warmer as the temperature near your window drops at night

6 comments:

Manature said...

Hi Mr. Brown Thumb,

Thanks for leaving a comment in my post Adding a graphic to your blog header. I have responded to your comment.

Just remembered something. I am going to comment again in the above post, so depending on who is faster you should see one or two response in the above post to your comment.

Peter a.k.a. enviroman
Enviroman Says

MrBrownThumb said...

Peter thanks for the reply.

DragonStone said...

Oh, that's definitely a good idea. (I need to check Garden Hacker more often.) I don't eat ramen noodles though, especially out of cups.

What I have done is taken those microwaveable pogresso cups and drilled holes into the bottom. For example, my variegated jade in that ghastly colored pot? I painted over the progresso cup because I figured it'd last for a long while before I'd repot it.

MrBrownThumb said...

LOL,

I had noticed the colors on that pot but thought it came that way. It's pretty cool and a good idea. I don't eat these myself but plenty of my family members do.

Anonymous said...

since you said you throw away a lot of these cups everyday, maybe you should recycle them. I get $2.50 a pound for styrofoam in my area and about 4-5 pounds per garbage bagfull.

MrBrownThumb said...

Hi Anon,

Thanks for that information I didn't know you could recycle the stuff. We have tons of the junk in my house-I'll look into it.

Thanks for the tip.

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