Don't Toss Rotisserie Chicken Containers — Here's A Gardening Hack To Reuse Them

If you want to hit your spring garden as soon as the cold weather turns and the frost melts, you have a few options. Some pollinator-friendly plants like begonia and impatiens are annuals that can survive the season, or you can try methods for overwintering geraniums and similar flowers. You can also try winter sowing, in which you propagate more temperate seedlings in a protective container that can rest near a window to capture natural light cycles. Plastic starting trays will give you the best opportunity to build a winter sowing container with myriad slots for propagating different seeds, but you can also DIY a greenhouse seed starter of your own by reusing those supermarket rotisserie chicken containers.

There are a variety of different seed-starting containers to choose from, including row seedling trays that hold multiple germinating plants in line or larger cell packs reminiscent of egg cartons; then there are biodegradable Jiffy Pots made from peat that you can transplant directly into the soil. 

Reusing a rotisserie chicken container from last night's dinner offers you a seedling starter that you can use to flesh out your garden at little-to-no cost. The only other materials you need for this gardening hack from YouTuber OikoEco will likely already be at home: a cardboard paper towel tube, scissors, and whatever potting soil fits the kind of plants you're interested in propagating this season.

Constructing your new DIY garden implement is an easy process. Start by cutting your cardboard tubes into even segments — they should be about as tall as the lower half of the rotisserie chicken container. Set these inside the container as a grid, as many as can reasonably fit together, and then fill the entire thing with soil until you can barely see the tops of each tube sticking out.

If anything, figuring out the right growing media for your rotisserie chicken container hack is an important early step given it might take up the biggest chunk of time. Typical garden soils may be too dense for air flow in a sealed container, which could be an issue in terms of watering your seedlings to grow the best plants. Consider an option (like Miracle-Gro seed starting potting mix) with materials such as peat moss and perlite, lighter topsoil, or even coarse builder sand.

Once your soil is set and your seeds are planted within the frame of each cardboard tube, you can regularly water them and then lock the top half of the container on. This should create a humid environmental dome. Just make sure to watch for condensation forming on the clear plastic lid as a sign that your plants are releasing oxygen. As they outgrow their little DIY greenhouse, you can pull out the tubes to help transplant your starter seedlings — and hopefully, by then, the weather will again be warm enough to let them thrive in the great outdoors.