Doing What You Can With What You Have Where You Are
Foliage expands perception of space, and this is one of many reasons it’s a key component of modern interior design. If you’re in a tiny room, but there are plants around, this breaks up sight lines and additionally serves to, in some small degree, purify the air. Certainly this will depend on the plant. But here’s the thing: even a window-hanging garden can be too much for some spaces. Yet this doesn’t mean you can’t have a garden!
You’ve probably got a mint tin somewhere in your home. If you take this and prepare it properly, you can grow a garden in that mint tin as though it were an itty-bitty potted plant. Now, you could use that miniature garden as a decorative piece in a scene replete with miniatures, or just spice up your tiny home with something manageable. There are a lot of options.
Following, we’ll go over a brief DIY step-by-step guide to help you turn an old container like a mint tin into a true garden—you may even be able to plant multiple tiny plants, depending on the tin and where you get your seeds. Also, it’s worth noting that you need not rely on a mint tin solely; many small containers can be excellent repositories for soil and seed, and the plants that can grow in such conditions.
Steps To Tin Conversion
First, get the lid off your tin. If you’ve got a little Altoids mint tin, you can easily pop the cover from the hinges. If you’re having trouble, don’t worry; you can bend the lid a bit as necessary. Once you’ve got the lid off, you want to punch a few holes in the bottom to drain out the tin from when you water your miniature garden. Use a drill bit that is very small; you don’t need massive holes.
If there is no drill bit available, get a nail and a hammer. If you’ve got industrial-strength hole-punching clippers, those could work. Just find a way of getting small holes in the bottom of the tin. You need four holes, by many accounts, and it’s best to arrange them in a diamond or rectangle pattern.
From here, you want to put the newly “holy” mint tin on the removed lid, which works perfectly as a water collection device, and makes your miniature mint planner look complete. You don’t want to over-water, once you put in soil and seed; just enough that it will evaporate naturally from the tin beneath in a reasonable time.
Next, put the right kind of soil into your mint-planter. Cacti can be an ideal seed to use. There are a lot of options here. At My Seed Needs, you can find a variety of options worth considering. Look for plants that are small and feature shallow root systems. Sprouts are ideal. Radishes, alfalfa, and wheatgrass are viable, provided you “harvest” properly.
Experiment And Repeat
You may be surprised at the kind of plants you can grow with just a mint tin and proper care. To keep a plant healthy, you need to provide it with several things. One, you want to plant the seed in good soil. Two, you want to give the plant proper light—provided it’s a variety of flora which is configured that way. There are night flowers. Three, properly water the plant.
As a human fully flourishes with proper diet and exercise—in conjunction with a healthy mind—plants flourish with soil, sun, and water in balanced quantities. Even if you’re in an arid environment, you can husband some exceptional plants indoors. Whether your goals are for beauty or diet supplementation, there’s much to recommend this approach.
A Unique Take On Gardening
As people increase urbanized habitation, older disciplines are lost. Many millennials today aren’t very savvy when it comes to gardening, and this is a real shame. There is much to recommend farming of any variety, be it in a field or a mint tin.
Look at some of the containers you’ve got around the house. Anything can be a plot of soil perfect for a little garden. Furthermore, this is affordable, and an excellent conversation piece for any home.