Try this easy water saving tip to use fresh disposable diapers to help keep your container plants moist all summer. It works great and saves money!

Why I Use Disposable Diapers In The Garden!

Did you know you can save time and money by using disposable diapers in the garden! They are not dangerous to your plants — The water storing crystals in diapers are the same stuff that is packaged and sold as garden watering crystals, only a lot less expensive.

When I lived in Kansas, it would get very hot in the summer. Our deck didn’t have any shade and some of my plants needed to be watered twice a day. I was going to buy the granules that hold water from the garden center, but I discovered small container of the water granules was $25!

Even though I really needed it to keep my plants going that summer, I just couldn’t come to bring myself to pay that much. One day, I was thinking about it as I was changing my son’s diaper. Then it dawned on me! The same stuff is in baby diapers!!!

I tore open the center of a diaper and scooped out all the cotton with the granules in it into a bowl. Out of curiosity I wanted to see just how much water it would hold. I was hoping for two cups. It held NINE cups of water! That means I could use this stuff in 3-5 containers of plants, depending on the size. I was able to get diapers for .20 each so the cost wasn’t huge.

Using disposable diapers in your garden or in container plants, you can save a LOT of time because you don’t have to water nearly as often and the plants have a more even supply of water. You can even use these for plants that are already planted as I demonstrate in our disposable diapers in the garden video!

You can even use used diapers (GASP!), but not dirty ones. If you have diapers that have only urine in them, they are fine to use in the garden if you’re willing to mess with them. Some people are horrified at the thought, but consider this:

Gardening is an outside activity. Squirrels, rodents, dogs and cats and other various animals pee in your garden all the time, but it just goes back into nature. I’m assuming your baby doesn’t have some hideous disease that would make their urine more dangerous for you or your plants than the urine from these animals.

Nature has a wonderful process of using chemistry to convert various substances to other completely different things so if you use manure, compost (rotted food), or something with baby urine, even to grow food plants, it’s not like you’re eating manure, rotten food and urine! Good grief!

We have had a question about the safety of using these in your garden pots. I personally don’t have a problem with it. I didn’t use these in my vegetable plants only flowers. Use your own judgment regarding whether or not you want to use them with vegetables.

If you’re curious about the safety of using disposable diapers, here are some details:

• The external liner for some diapers is plastic. It will not hurt the soil and the plants won’t eat it, so you can use the diapers and later, when you’re re-doing your garden, you can simply throw the plastic away.
• Diapers also contain the water storing crystals, which break down naturally and harmlessly over time (and are also sold specifically for gardening with different packaging).
• Some diapers also have cotton or wood pulp, which decomposes naturally. Some people are concerned about how these item are processed when diapers are made, but there seems to be little substantiated concern and if you’re using them in the garden, the environment provides several layers of “buffer” that will convert them through chemistry as I mentioned above, so I’m confident any substance that might have posed a minuscule threat would be neutralized.

Remember, Always Think Outside the Box!

      -Tawra

P.S. If you are wondering about the safety of using diapers here is a great article we found with more details about what’s in disposable diapers.