When your strainer has seen its last days, it’s tempting to bid it farewell and throw it away. But, think twice before you toss it in the trash. If you love to garden, you’ll be able to give your old strainer a second life outside of the kitchen. Just like a colander makes a great planter, a strainer makes a great soil sifter thanks to all the holes in the bottom of the container. And when it comes time to prep your garden for planting, you can turn that strainer into a tool that will make clearing rocks out of the garden bed much easier.
How to use a strainer to clear rocks from your garden bed
A rock-free garden bed is a place where plant roots can grow uninterrupted. Just like creating a nutrient-rich soil composition (you can’t just use backyard dirt for a vegetable garden), it takes work to get all the rocks out. You’ll need tools like a pickaxe and a garden rake to remove bigger rocks or to get ones buried deeper in the soil. Once you’ve gotten the bigger rocks, though, you can whip out your strainer and sift through the dirt to really make sure the soil is perfect for planting. Once all those rocks are out, you’ll be that much closer to planting those seedlings you picked up from Aldi or propagated indoors during the winter.
