Don't Toss Old Toilet Paper Rolls: Use Them To Create A Bee-Friendly Garden

Where would we be without bees? The black and yellow buzzing insects play an essential role in the food system, pollinating plants and ensuring that people, livestock, and wild animals have enough to eat. To help bees play their important roles, you can use another type of roll — empty toilet paper rolls, that is — to grow the flowers they love to pollinate.

Toilet paper tubes make ideal seed starters, as they are the perfect width and height, especially after being cut in two. Since they are made from untreated cardboard, they are biodegradable and will break down in the soil, leaving no waste behind. In a video from LifesFood on YouTube, creator Charlotte demonstrates how to grow seedlings in halved toilet paper rolls.

To get started, you'll need to select seeds from pollinator- and bee-friendly plants. In the video, Charlotte chooses cosmos (Cosmos), calendula (Calendula officinalis), daisy (Bellis perennis), and hollyhock (Alcea rosea), but you can choose any other plant that helps pollinators do their job, such as zinnia (Zinnia), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), or garden phlox (Phlox paniculata). If you can't decide, pick nectar-rich plants that bloom with yellow, blue, purple, or white flowers, as those are the colors bees love. Many bee-friendly flowers can be planted in spring after the danger of frost has passed, while others are best sown in fall.

To start your bee-friendly garden from seed, first prepare your toilet paper roll seedling starter cups. You can get two starter cups from one toilet paper tube. Cut the tube in half so you have two shorter rolls. Make 1/2-inch vertical cuts up the sides, then fold them in to form the base of the seedling starter cup. Fill each cup with seed starting mix and press a couple of flower seeds in the center, covering according to the directions on the seed packet.

Line up the toilet paper tube seedling cups in a shallow tray — to continue with the zero-waste theme, use an empty lettuce tray or shoebox lid. Water to moisten the soil and set the tray in a sunny windowsill or under a grow light. Typically, once the seedlings are a few inches tall and have their first set of "real" leaves, you can plant them outdoors in your garden after the last frost has passed.

Dig a hole in the ground or in a container that's twice as wide as the toilet paper tube and about as deep, then place one of the seedlings inside, tube and all. Fill the hole in with soil or potting mix and press gently, then water. If you have leftover toilet paper roll tubes, there's another way to reuse them to welcome bees to your garden: transform them into a bee hotel.