The Clever Way A Repurposed Potato Sack Can Benefit Your Veggie Garden

Do you like growing your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables to cook with but struggle to fend off pests? Fortunately, you don't have to reach for toxins to protect your garden from these pesky animals. Natural pest control comes in all shapes and sizes; it's one reason it always pays to plant basil near your tomatoes. You can also repurpose items from your kitchen to protect your plants, such as potato sacks.

Using net-like potato bags works differently for deterring pests than repurposing eggshells in your garden, which snails and slugs have a hard time moving over when you sprinkle them around your plants. Instead, the sacks that potatoes and other produce — such as onions — come in at grocery stores and markets can be used to cover your plants to keep away larger pests. Snails and slugs will be too big to fit through the holes in the mesh design, while it will deter some birds, deer, rabbits, and squirrels from trying to get to your fruit and veggie garden.

It doesn't take much to use potato sacks for pest control. Just stand a pole or stick (if you want to remain as natural as possible) in the ground next to your plant. Then, tie the sack over the top of your stick and drape it around your plant, like a tent. You can use rocks or stakes to keep the bottom of the netting in place.

Aside from being a natural way to prevent pests from getting to your plants, repurposed potato sacks offer other benefits. The biggest is that they're environmentally friendly and safer than using toxins that also harm beneficial insects, particularly pollinators such as bees and butterflies. However, these pollinators may also be deterred from getting close to fruits and veggies that need pollination to grow, like cucumbers, summer squash, and tomatoes. In that case, you can wait to put the bags over the plants after the fruit or veggie is set.

Another benefit of repurposing potato sacks — or other produce bags — is that their design is conducive to plant growth. Like conventional garden netting, the holes in the bags allow for excellent air circulation and sunlight penetration, and you don't have to remove them to water your plants either.

Keep in mind that smaller pests can still get through the small holes in potato bags. To improve your pest control, you can fill other sacks with citrus peels, garlic, or onion because their strong scents repel pests of all sizes and types. Additionally, cinnamon is a common pantry spice that has amazing benefits for your garden, especially as a natural fungicide and pesticide against some species of gnats and ants. Another option is to use diatomaceous earth as non-toxic pest control because it's natural and kills a wide variety of insects.