Don't Throw Away Your Wine Bottles – Turn Them Into Practical DIY Garden Hose Guides

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Wine bottles may be one of the top household items to repurpose. You can turn them into rolling pins for your baking endeavors, use them as vases for flowers, grow plants in them, garden watering bulbs, or even as a little fence in your green space. And if you want them to help beautify your garden with functionality, they're great for that, too. 

You're likely using a garden hose to help your veggies, fruits, or flowers thrive, but it could be damaging your homegrown goodness, too, if it lands on top of them or gets pulled across the garden. To protect your plants, you can easily create a DIY guard that helps guide the hose around your precious plants. One way to do that, and also add visual interest to your garden, is to use wine bottles.

First, choose bottles of similar sizes and decide if you want to use multiple colors or keep them uniform. Then, remove the labels using a wet and sudsy sponge. For sticky adhesive that refuses to budge, you can also use orange slices to remove it. When you're ready to make the hose guide, mark the spaces near your plants where you want to place the bottles (they can be close together or on corners and other key locations). Dig a hole for each that's deep enough to press the bottle into so that it reaches an inch or two beyond the neck — this will ensure it remains stable. Finally, invert the bottles into the holes, and replace the soil in and around them. Then, though the bottles are sturdy, just remember to be mindful when handling your hose to minimize any risk of breakage.

Once you've finished using your wine bottles to make your garden watering more effective and efficient, try putting any leftover bottles to other uses outside. First, light up your garden with bottles filled with strings of lights. If your bottles have decorative labels that you love, you can leave them on. Otherwise, remove them and scrub off the glue to maximize the visibility of the light. Then, fill the bottles with the lights. This will be easiest using solar LEDs, like these waterproof solar string lights from Brightown, but if you have a socket close to your garden, you can use electric string lights, too. Then, either place them in the ground top-down or just stand them up. For upright bottles, the best choice is to go with the solar-powered variety, so you can secure the original cork or screw-top on to keep out pests and precipitation. Some brands of the lights also come with their own cork to seal the bottle up. Brightown also has a battery-operated pack that comes with corks. 

One of the mistakes that some gardeners make is not labeling their plants. Wine bottles can come to the rescue, helping you solve the problem of struggling to identify your veggies and herbs. Just clean them, turn them upside-down, and secure a pretty sticker on the wide part of the bottle. Then, in waterproof marker, write the name of what you've planted on each label. Press the bottle's neck end down into the ground next to each group of plants, and you'll have a far sturdier way of keeping track of your growing greens.