7 Genius TikTok Gardening Hacks To Try (And 2 To Avoid)

It's supposed to be relaxing to spend time in your garden. (And yes, a cluster of potted houseplants counts as "your garden"). Caring for your plants should be something you enjoy doing, and that gets easier when you can use some brilliant shortcuts to save time, money, and effort. Too bad your ancestors didn't have TikTok when they were trying to keep their crops flourishing. Luckily, you do!

The beautiful people of GardenTok have tips for every kind of gardener, from novices sprouting their first seeds to certified green thumbs with decades of experience. We've collected some of the best, easiest, and most genius TikTok hacks to help your garden grow. (And because no one's perfect, we also found a few popular so-called "hacks" that probably won't do what they claim to.) Whether you have acres of land to work with or have zero outdoor space, there's something for everyone in this round-up of TikTok hacks.

A sprawling garden could start with a few humble toilet paper rolls. As @dmrbushcraft demonstrates, those cardboard tubes make the perfect vessel for sprouting new seedlings. It's a kid-friendly way to start new plants indoors until they've grown enough to be transplanted into the ground or a pot.

Granted, there are a lot of ways to start seedlings using things around the house. You might wonder, how does this strategy compare to planting seeds in items like eggshells, egg cartons, or paper cups? Honestly, those methods can all work too! But the toilet paper roll strategy has a couple of perks. One, it's easy to write on the tubes to label all your different seed types. Two, they're long enough to allow roots plenty of space to grow. (Though some tutorials do also suggest closing the bottoms of the rolls, which would keep things a little neater and prevent soil from spilling out.) And third, the tubes themselves are biodegradable, so you technically don't need to remove the roll before moving the sprouted plant to its new home.

Ever heard of sheet mulching? It's the technique that @brandontgentry uses, and it might create a little bit of an eyesore in your garden at first, but the results are worth it. Laying down sheets of cardboard over grass will gradually kill the grass and weeds growing there. The cardboard will decompose, and after a few months, hopefully you'll have transformed a patch of your yard from grass into nutrient-rich soil. Some people use it to replace entire lawns with drought-resistant ground cover, but you can also copy Brandon and use sheet mulching to create a decorative flower border.

Thinking about trying it? There are several components to doing this correctly. (The California Native Plant Society has a handy step-by-step guide to sheet mulching.) For the best results, layer the cardboard with nitrogen-rich material like grass clippings or compost, and make sure there are no gaps in the cardboard that could let sunlight reach the ground below. Completely soak the area with a hose after adding each new layer, and at least once a week thereafter (unless it's rainy). One caveat: In his TikTok, Brandon piles soil on the freshly laid cardboard and plants flowers right away. But it'll take a few months for your cardboard to break down, so if you try the same thing, don't expect the plants to survive long-term. Their roots won't be able to take hold until the cardboard has begun to decompose.

This one's for the slightly lazy folks who want to have a garden but don't necessarily want to hoist a shovel or do a bunch of other tedious prep work. Putting plants directly into bagged soil (as demonstrated by @whitneyjmcfarland) is the quick-and-dirty way to get your garden growing today. Each soil bag garden can be moved/repositioned as necessary, no digging required. Laying down bags of soil and cutting away most of the bag could be a great way for kids to get into gardening, especially in families with multiple kiddos — there's no fighting over which plant belongs to whom when everyone has their own separate bag garden to tend!

There are a few key points to bear in mind if you're going to make soil bag planting work. First, a soil bag garden is only as deep as the bag, so this isn't a good setting for plants that need more space. Examples of plants that can grow well in shallow soil include lettuce, radishes, spinach, lavender, and black-eyed susan. Second, don't forget to create drainage holes and water these mini gardens frequently. And third, you can use all-purpose garden soil for this project, but add some compost or other organic material like grass clippings. Depending on whether you start with seeds or buy potted plants, you should be able to create each individual soil bag garden for $10 to $15.

A lot of clever social media hacks aren't exactly new ideas, but they might be new to you. @thecottagepeach illustrates a gardening strategy that dates back thousands of years. Clay pot irrigation is also sometimes called olla watering, with "olla" literally translating to "pot" in Spanish — but we don't actually know for sure where this practice originated. The idea is simple and brilliant. All you have to do is bury a clay pot in your garden's soil so that just the top of the pot is visible, and fill it up. The water will slowly seep into the surrounding soil to keep it damp, and you just refill it whenever you notice the water level getting low.

It's the very definition of a win-win way to water plants! Keeping the pot filled is easier than getting out to your garden every day with the hose, and this method is ideal for anyone concerned with water conservation. The key is using unglazed clay pots. Dry soil can essentially suck water through the porous clay. Thanks to the principle of soil-moisture tension, the soil pulls less water as it becomes moist and dense, so no worries about overwatering when the soil is able to take only as much as it needs.

Maybe you or a loved one has a physical disability that limits what you can do comfortably, or you just slept weird and your back isn't up for a lot of bending and crouching. Tending to plants feels a lot more challenging when you're working around some physical limitations, but there are a ton of brilliant workarounds. Like the simple-yet-brilliant hack TikToker @kayla.creates shared, featuring her dad planting seeds in his garden. He carries a waist-high piece of PVC pipe as he moves along a row of tilled soil, dropping seeds through the pipe so they land right where he wants them with no bending or crouching required.

This simple hack is a reminder that mobility challenges don't have to keep anyone from gardening! There are tons of workarounds and handy gadgets that can make gardening more accessible to people with disabilities or injuries. For example, plant in raised garden beds to minimize bending, and move around your outdoor space with a rolling garden scooter for support. Using extendable gardening tools and attaching a watering wand to the hose can also make gardening more accessible for folks with mobility issues.

Spending a few dollars on grocery store herbs now could yield you a lifetime supply, with just a little bit of work upfront to get those store-bought herbs ready for planting. Propagating (aka growing new plants from cuttings of existing plants) is a common gardening technique, but it's not something you might think to try if you're an inexperienced gardener. TikToker @marfskitchengarden demonstrates the technique using rosemary. It's super simple: Strip off the bottom leaves, trim the bottoms of the stems, and keep them in a cup of clean water near a sunny window for several weeks until roots have sprouted. At that point, herbs can be planted in soil, and your new herb garden is underway.

Propagated rosemary can absolutely sprout roots and thrive in a pot, but what about others kinds of herbs? You can try this method with basil, sage, mint, parsley, dill, and really any kind of fresh herbs you bring home. There's no guarantee that all your water-propagated cuttings will flourish, but there's also no harm in trying this little home science experiment whenever you have extra herbs around.

No yard? No interest in getting down on your hands and knees to dig and weed? No problem: Try vertical gardening. It isn't a new idea, but TikTok videos like this one from @spicymoustache are hugely handy for anyone who hasn't tried this method before. Once you've seen someone run through step-by-step directions for safely cutting openings in bottles, creating drainage holes, adding plants, and hanging the planters, you can start experimenting using whatever empty bottles you have on hand. Hang your mini gardens outdoors, or on your walls indoors. Even if you live in an apartment the size of a shoebox, you can always find space for at least one hanging plant.

There's a lot of freedom to experiment and customize your own hanging bottle garden. The example TikTok shows plastic bottles hung vertically, but hanging them horizontally can work too; you can tie them together like the rungs of a ladder and hang a series of horizontal gardens to maximize space. It's important to choose the right plants for a vertical garden carefully, because they need to be able to thrive in shallow soil. Succulents, epiphytes, and clematis are just some of the varieties that might be successful in your DIY bottle garden. Gardening 101 reminder: Make sure you know how much sunlight your specific plants need before hanging them up!

The notion that plain old white vinegar makes a powerful DIY weed killer is something you'll run into a lot if you spend enough time scrolling Gardentok. This video from @my.big.small.garden is just one example, suggesting spraying weeds with vinegar. This is one of those not-great hacks that won't necessarily cause harm, but also probably won't be an effective way to deal with the problem at hand. It's definitely not a long-term solution to pesky weeds, since you would need to absolutely soak your garden with vinegar in order for it get down into the roots and kill them. Plus, you might accidentally kill plants around the weeds that you didn't mean to kill.

There are better ways to eradicate weeds. Getting them out by the roots is always the fastest way to destroy them, but it's labor intensive. Smothering weeds with mulch should help kill them by cutting them off from sunlight and preventing their growth. Or, wait for spring and attack problem areas with targeted treatment of a weed-killing compound. They're vulnerable at the beginning of the growing season, so weed killers should be maximally effective at that time of year.

In the spirit of reducing, reusing, and recycling, coffee lovers might be thrilled to hear that they can dump their used grounds in the garden every morning. TikToks like this one from @aprilsunrisefarm tend to make claims that are a little too good to be true, like coffee grounds mixed with water are a great fertilizer for your plants. Some people believe that tossing coffee grounds onto your soil is useful for getting more nitrogen into it, and/or that coffee will lower the pH of acidic soil.

In reality? Coffee isn't a great source of nutrition for soil. Compost is a more effective soil amendment if you're concerned your soil needs a nitrogen boost. And coffee grounds are neutral, so they're not going to help you correct overly acidic soil. (Soil pH matters because if it's too acidic or too alkaline, the soil can't transfer minerals to plants effectively. A simple soil tester can tell you if you're outside the ideal range. Soil pH may be raised by adding lime and lowered by adding elemental sulfur.) Here's the moral of the story: Add coffee grounds to compost instead. Or, if you do add them directly to soil, an Oregon State soil scientist recommends using them at a depth of 1/2 inch to 4 inches, not on the very top of the soil.