Day 3 – Making Egg Carton Planters with Sunshine Ballew

This post is a part of the “15 Days of Green Tips for 15 years of Keep Carroll Beautiful” Virtual Birthday Celebration. Every day between April 8 and April 22, a member of KCB Board, Staff, or the public, will share their favorite tips on how to Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle!

Sunshine Ballew is Keep Carroll Beautiful Board Treasurer and local Realtor. She also serves as a CASA volunteer, helping children who are in the foster care system for abuse and/or neglect. Sunshine hopes to inspire people to get involved and volunteer to enhance and beautify our community and preserve the environment for generations to come.

Sunshine enjoys finding new ways to repurpose old items and today she shared a short video on how to turn your egg cartons into planters. All types of egg cartons will work, whether plastic, styrofoam, or paper! Plastic, translucent packaging can be used as a mini-greenhouse, and carton planters can be placed in the dirt with the eggshell! “You can recycle these (plastic egg cartons), but if you can, it’s even better for the environment and a great Earth Day project to do with your kids!“.

Young plants have tender roots and some varieties really do not take well to transplanting. Squash, beans, sunflowers, root vegetables – just to name a few, get a much better start if transplanted with the container they sprouted in. The eggshells let the plants settle in a bigger pot or in a garden bed without disturbing the roots. They also decompose into the dirt providing a nutrition boost.

Other benefits of using eggshells in the garden

🥚 Pest control: https://www.thespruce.com/uses-for-egg-shells-1389039
🥚 Nutrition: https://home.howstuffworks.com/green-living/fiveways-eggshells-garden.htm