Put Your Baby Plants in Diapers!
by
Kalpa
Put your baby plants in diapers! – Like in the picture below? Well… not really. Read on…
Disposable diapers are a boon for mothers everywhere, they are very easy to use and are super absorbent. I recently came across an article which described a very creative use for diapers and I decided to try it out myself. Diapers contain crystals of hydrogels which can hold 200-300 times their mass in water! I took one of my son’s unused diapers and took it apart. On the inside of the diaper there is some type of mesh and a cotton padding. Below the padding, there is a sealed pouch containing the absorbent crystals.
The picture on the right is the inside of the diaper, which has some type of mesh and a cotton lining. Behind the cotton lining, there is a pouch containing the hydrogel crystals
The pouch absorbed all the water and swelled up enormously! After tearing open the pouch, I dumped the contents in the bowl
The hydrogel crystals had swelled up to a jello-like consistency. I dug up some soil around my existing plants and blended the hydrogel into the soil. Eventually I will re-pot the plants using a mixture of the hydrogel and soil so that the hydrogel is spread out evenly around the roots. Hydrogel products for plants are also available off-the-shelf, but if you have a baby at home then you probably have a couple of diapers lying around that can be re-purposed for your plants.
Give it a try, and let me know in the comments below how it turned out.
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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2 of 25 comments
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I tried this and it works great! I got a 12 pack of adult diapers at a yard sale for a buck...and they are huge which means I got lots of hydrogel out of just one! Score!
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You can purchase just the water absorbing Chrystal’s from Amazon, or in the garden section at big box diy. Soil Moist.
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