Make a Milk Jug Planter

Rather than buy garden containers for our small plants, we chose to make a milk jug planter. I’ve been collecting milk jugs {and milk caps} for a while now knowing we would eventually find a use for them. The milk jug planters were perfect for our strawberry and pepper plants.

Making a milk jug planter is really easy. An adult will need to cut the plastic, but kids can help with the planting and decorating.

Cut off the top of the milk jug. Use a serrated knife or a pair of scissors.
Poke a few holes in the bottom of the container for drainage.
Add a layer of rocks to help with drainage. {We didn’t have enough rocks for all of the planters, so we skipped this step. Our plants are growing fine and the containers seem to be draining well without using the rocks. Sometimes the drainage holes can be blocked by the soil. The layer of rocks helps prevent the blockage.}
Add some soil to the container.
Place your plant into the container.
Add soil around the plant.
Decorate the top of the soil with painted rocks, sticks, shells, etc.
Water the plant thoroughly.

Our strawberry plants came in biodegradable containers, which I thought was very cool. We followed the directions for planting on the container.

Aiden enjoyed helping with most of the steps. He added the soil, tore off the bottom of the biodegradable container, planted the strawberries, added more soil, decorated the top, and watered the plants. The only thing he couldn’t do was create the milk jug container.

If you want to make your containers more eye catching or prettier, you and your kids can always paint the milk jugs or cover them in papier-mâché and add a layer of outdoor Mod Podge. We chose to leave ours plain. Aiden likes to change the rocks and shells he has on the top of the soil.