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Hey, welcome to my potting bench.
I am Shawna Coronado from Gardening Nude.
Today, I have a coffee cup challenge for you.
Are you ready?
The coffee cup challenge is all about reducing, reusing, and recycling.
A certain chain wastes 2.3 billion coffee cups every year.
That is right – they go into the land fills.
That is crazy!
We do not want coffee cups to go into the landfill but this is made out of a certain
percentage of paper and a certain percentage of plastic, and although some of the contents
is recyclable, it is still not completely recycled.
So therefore, all of the cups that are in the coffee house industry are being thrown
in the trash and I want to see that changed.
First of all, I want you to ask your local coffee house to please use recyclable cups
– it is the right thing to do.
But, if you can not do that and you can not convince them to change, then the next thing
to do is reduce, reuse, and recycle.
So here is an idea.
If you are a gardener like I am, every year you start a few seeds on your own.
Instead of going out and buying one of those expensive kits, why not use coffee cups instead?
So here is what you do.
You punch holes in the bottom of a coffee cup so that it has drainage.
You put it in a container and fill it with soil and then pop a seed in.
So then it grows, right?
And when it is done growing, what you will have to do is – because remember, this does
not melt in the soil; it is not fully recyclable – you will have to cut it down the side
and pop the root ball out.
Grab the root ball, toss it in the ground and it will work just fine.
The advantage of this technique is certainly that you are reusing something but there is
more than you can reuse.
Not only do they have coffee cups but they also have sampler cups, or espresso cups,
and these are from the holidays so I picked up this whole section up during the holidays,
and you could plant individual seeds in here, tomatoes, or anything.
Now here is another cool tip – a way to recycle.
Guess what this is?
That is right.
A rotisserie chicken box.
So when you put the lid on like this it is like a little mini green house.
How awesome is that?
You can have a green house and grow your little plants and even if you have frost in the area
you can still grow these plants because you have a cover over them.
So what a great idea.
A great way to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Now, one last thing I do with coffee cups.
I toss them in the bottom of my pot.
I know you are wondering why but here is the deal – when you plant annuals, they only
need soil from here to here.
They do not need the full pot filled.
Their roots are relatively shallow.
With that in mind, if you put something in the bottom, like the coffee cups here, then
what will happen is you will lighten the load and you will be able to move the pots around
to areas when you want to move them and have them look good.
So there you go!
Some awesome tips.
So now, I want you to come up with even more ideas.
Tell me what you are doing with coffee cups.
Send it to the blog: www.gardeningnude.com and let me know what is happening with your
coffee cups.
I want to find solutions for these that everybody can use to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Do not forget pictures and details.
I went them all.
So, write soon, I can not wait to hear you, and remember: make a difference!
The time to do it is now.