(Homesteading.news) We’re all looking for better, easier ways to make our lives more fruitful and productive, and that is especially true when it comes to growing the food we need.

Here are five amazing gardening tips and tricks that will really make spring planting a much more enjoyable and industrious experience:

Growing tomato seedlings from a tomato slice

Maybe you’ve heard that you can take a slice of a tomato and grow new seedlings from it – well, it’s true, and it is so easy you won’t believe it.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Some ripe tomatoes

Potting soil or garden mix

Small containers

A bit of time

How easy is this? Check out this short video:

Now, when your seedlings are ready to transplant, here’s another short video showing you how to do that [H/T Sojali]:

Recycled watering jug

Don’t throw out your empty milk or juice jugs – turn them into portable watering devices!

Find out how here. It’s very simple.

Eggshells

Don’t let those fresh chicken egg shells go to waste, either. One way to protect your plants from pests is to sprinkle crushed egg shells at their base:

Image: Bloglovin

Coffee grounds

Image: OrganicFarmBlog

If you’re not a K-cupper and still like to drink coffee  the old-fashioned way, then you for sure ought to be saving your old grounds because the make wonderful compost feed for your plants:

Coffee grounds make great garden fertilizer. Along with phosphorus and potassium, one of the main nutrient of a good fertilizer is nitrogen. As a processed seed, coffee grounds, can give out around 10% of nitrogen, making them a good source of natural nitrogen. This is how it works in plants… Nitrogen helps the plant in converting sunlight into energy. This energy is then transmitted throughout the plant via cells and root systems with the help of phosphorus. Potassium keeps the plant moist, which aids the process of photosynthesis and that is how plants produces their food.

Coffee grounds also work well as sheet mulch. The pH in coffee grounds is usually from mildly acid to mildly alkaline and the pH turns neutral as it decomposes. Applying a half inch thick of coffee grounds atop the regular organic mulch will make it easy for worms and other soil microbes in breaking it down.

Read the full article here.

Save your scraps!

You can grow so many foods from table scraps – think of the tomato above! And we’ve listed 10 foods you can use for that purpose – just click here!

More:

• These vegetables grow best in small spaces
• How to freeze your garden goodies so you can enjoy them all winter long
• Start your own orchard

Homesteading.news is part of the USA Features Media network.