Tips to protect flowering plants using household items

To help protect your flowers through the seasons, you can employ ordinary household objects.

Peonies, delphiniums and gladiolus are among the tall perennials that generally need support. A wooden stake is the usual answer, but a less obtrusive option is an old lampshade frame.

1. Place the metal frame, narrow side down, amid seedlings when they're about 15 centimetres (six inches) tall.
2. Work the frame into the soil to a depth of about 1.25 centimetres (0.5 inch).
3. As the seedlings grow, tie them loosely to the top of the frame with twist ties. The leaves will obscure the frame as the blooms above stand tall.

If any of your flower stems are bent, pick one of these common items to use as a splint:

• For thin stems: A toothpick or cotton swab
• For thick stems: A drinking straw, pencil, ballpoint pen or ice cream stick

Affix splints to stems with transparent tape, but not too tightly.

Panty hose "ropes" have long been used to tie snapdragons, hollyhocks, tomatoes and other tall flowers and viney vegetables to stakes, but panty hose are not the only household item that will serve the purpose. Try these as ties:

• Gift-wrap ribbon left over from birthday gifts
• Broken cassette tapes
• Plastic interlocking trash bag ties
• Dental floss
• Hook and loop binding strips
• Fabric strips cut from old sheets
• Yarn

Get creative and use an old umbrella — stripped of both its handle and fabric — as a frame for a flowering climber or vine.

1. In your spot of choice, drive a 1.5-metre (five-foot) metal pipe wide enough to accommodate the handle into the ground about 0.3 metres (one foot) deep.
2. Next, slide the umbrella stem inside.
3. Plant seedlings of morning glory, trumpet creeper or any other thin-stemmed flowering vine next to the pipe. Over the next few weeks a unique garden focal point will take shape.

Brown paper grocery bags filled with sawdust or peat moss are the easy answer to winter storage of tender crocus, tulip, daffodil, iris and other bulbs and rhizomes.

1. Put a five-centimetre (two-inch) layer of sawdust or peat in the bottom of the bag.
2. Arrange bulbs of the same type on top, making sure they don't touch.
3. Continue layering the bulbs and organic material until the bag is about three-quarters full.
4. Clip the bag closed with clothespins or metal clamps and use a marker to label each bag with the name of the bulbs therein.

To keep rodents from nibbling on newly transplanted bulbs, seal bulbs off in wide-top plastic containers.

1. Before planting, punch drainage holes in the bottom and sides of a large plastic jug or carton (think laundry bleach with the top cut off or economy-size yogurt).
2. Bury it in the soil up to the open top.
3. Fill it with soil and humus.
4. Plant two or three small bulbs in the container or one or two larger bulbs.

Old plastic storage boxes are more space efficient — and who knows what kinds of potential bulb protectors you might find if you go rummaging through your basement or attic?

You'll love these easy tricks that will make your blooms burst with colour — and you won't have to go far to find what you need.