This inexpensive DIY project makes starting or growing plants a whole lot easier by automatically keeping the soil at just the right moisture level. All you need is a 2 liter bottle and some string.

ASBloom shows you how to make these clever planters on the Skruben blog. Basically, you cut the bottle in half, and thread some string or yarn through the bottle cap. Then invert the top half into the base and add your plants and soil.

The yarn acts as a wick and the plants will take the water as they need it. Even better for those of us with black thumbs: The clear bottles help you see when the water needs refilling.

(Note: If you need a larger planter, you can instead use a milk jug and some foam for your automatic watering needs.)

How To: Self-Watering Seed Starter Pots | Skruben via HGTV

Instead of throwing out the cardboard center roll from your paper towel or toilet paper roll, put it to good use in the garden. Cut it into segments, and press it into the soil around your newly planted seedlings to give them a little extra protection from slugs and other ground dwelling pests that won't appreciate a tall barrier between them and your plants.

Granted, the most enterprising pests will just climb up and over the paper roll, but the added protection may be all it takes to help your seedlings grow a bit and get hardy enough to not mind a little slug-munching. Plus, if you're looking for a plant starter, you can pack some soil and seedlings into multiple rolls and keep them inside until the weather is right to plant them in your garden. That way you can give your plants a pest-free headstart to the growing season.

Apartment Therapy has a number of other great gardening re-uses for common kitchen waste items at the link below, like using crushed eggshells in your compost or hollowed citrus shells to lure slugs and snails away from your plants, so check it out for more tips. Do you have any favorite gardening tricks to share? Let's hear them in the comments below.

7 Kitchen Waste Items to Use In the Garden | Apartment Therapy

For those of us without a green thumb, keeping a single houseplant alive is a nearly impossible task. However, with the help of a little technology you can find the right location in your home, remind yourself to water it, or even automate the watering process altogether. Here's how to do it.

Houseplants usually die for one of two reasons: improper watering or improper exposure to sun. Tracking both and getting it right is easy with the help of a little tech and the first step is to make sure you have the plant where it's getting the right amount of light.

Find the Right Location

Most plants need sunlight of some kind and your lightbulbs probably aren't getting it what it needs (although sometimes artificial light works). Most plants houseplants you purchase will suggest one of three different amounts of sunlight:

• Full sun: Six or more hours of sunlight.
• Partial sun: Four or five hours of sunlight.
• Full shade: No direct sunlight.

With that knowledge you need to figure out how much sunlight your house gets and find a good place to put your plant. If you have the time and patience you can sit at home all day long, pop open the windows, and make notes about how long each section of the house gets sunlight.

Better still, you can try out an app like Sun Seeker for iPhone (which might be having some problems with the most recent update, so check out the free version first) or Sun Surveyor for Android to get an idea of how much sunlight your exact location gets. Both apps use your location to track the sun's movement. You can do this with a simple compass or use the augmented reality feature to put your phone right where the plant will sit and get view of the sun's movement throughout the day.

If you live in a cave that just doesn't get that much light, you can also build small, unitrusive LED Light Spikes to help boost the amount of light your plants get.

Set Reminders or Get Notifications to Water the Plants

With a good spot chosen and your plants getting the right amount of sunlight it's time to actually remember to water them. You have two options for watering reminders. You can either set up a reminder system or use an automated, "low-water" alert system stuck directly in the dirt. Let's look at some of your options for reminders first.

Set Up Reminders

Keeping a plant alive isn't always as easy as just setting up a calendar event for a couple times a week (unless you have a plant that needs watering everyday, in which case, a calendar event is your best option). However, most plants need a different amount of water.

To help you water when you really need it, Koubachi is an iOS app and webapp where you enter in your plant's name, average sunlight exposure, and your own location. With that, the app will send you reminders on when it thinks your plants needs watering. It's not a perfect science, but the more you use it the better it gets at predicting when your plants need water. You can supercharge this process with an expensive Wi-Fi sensor as well, but the free apps do a good enough job for most plants.

Use Sensors to Alert You When to Water

If the setup of a service like Koubachi is too much of a hassle or you just need a more in-your-face alert you can use sensors stuck directly in the soil that alert you when a plant needs water. Surprisingly, you have a lot of options out there, but the Hydrofarm Thirsty Light is the one I personally use and it works great. When the soil is dry the light on the sensor starts blinking and as the soil gets dryer it blinks faster. If you're more the DIY type, the Botonicalls kit will send you a tweet when you need water.

Automate the Watering Process

If constant reminders still won't help you then you might want to consider automating the process altogether. Depending on the type of plant you have you can automate the whole watering process. The previously mentioned Arduino powered watering system gives you the most control over how and when the plant gets water. If your plants need constantly moist soil the self-regulating automatic plant watering system made from a bottle works great. You can also build a simple system with a timer built in to water plants every day.

Reminders and the right location are great, but if you're just looking for a little green to liven up your house or cubicle, your best bet is to stick with the nearly unkillable plants. Combo an unkillable plant with the help of technology and it'll survive a very long time.

Have your own tech tricks for keeping plants alive? Share them in the comments.

Before you toss out that orange juice container or that huge plastic tub your yogurt or margarine came home from the grocery store in, why not use them to mass produce some concrete planters to decorate your yard, garden, or home with? It takes much less effort than you might think, and you end up with solid, sturdy planters you can use and reuse for years.

Concrete planters are surprisingly easy to make once you have a mold for them, and blogger radmegan figured that if she had to recycle all of these plastic bottles and containers, she may as well put them to good use first as molds for her planters. All you really need are some spare containers that you want to make molds of, like a water bottle, orange juice bottle, or any other large piece of plastic, a bag of concrete that you can pick up at any home improvement store, some sand (also available at the home improvement store), and some perlite to make the concrete a little lighter once it's set. That's all—just cut the plastic containers to the shape and size you want, and fill em up.

Megan used some large water jugs, and then put smaller containers inside to hollow out the mold, and then poured in the concrete. After letting them completely cure, and a little work with a screwdriver to add drainage holes, she was all finished. It was a bit of trial and error on her part (you can read the entire saga at the link below), but the end results look pretty good, even if they're not perfectly smooth and rounded like the type you'd spend way more money on at a nursery or gardening store. Plus, they cost a fraction of the price and were made with castoff items she was planning to throw out anyway.

The pots here are some of her first attempts, and you can see how she's refined the process with time. If you do the same, you could easily use a spare piece of plastic to smooth over the top, or spend more time chiseling down the sides or bottom if you like. Either way, it's a cheap and easy way to make something that's normally expensive.

Moled Concreate Planters | In Words and Pictures via Apartment Therapy