How to Recycle Glass Bottles and Jars to Make Mini Greenhouses For The Garden, Edible Landscape, or Food Forest

Save time, effort, and the environment by upcycling your glass bottles to propagate cuttings and start seeds directly in your food garden.

What is the purpose of using mini greenhouses in the garden, edible landscape, or food forest?

You can use your recycled glass greenhouses to create a tiny microclimate with a high humidity. This is useful for germinating seeds in place in your edible landscape, propagating cuttings directly where you want your future plants, and for decreasing transplant shock when transferring indoor seedlings to the outdoors. 

The high humidity of your tiny greenhouses will provide plenty of moisture to young seedlings to keep them moist until they can put down good roots and begin drawing water from the soil. 
1

What kind of glass bottles or glass jars should I use?

Tree Collard Cutting rooting beneath glass "greenhouse" in edible landscape
Tree Collard Cutting rooting beneath glass "greenhouse" in edible landscape
That is totally up to you! No need to change your shopping habits in order to be more environmentally friendly. Some great examples of bottles and jars you can use include:

1. Wine & Liquor Bottles

2. Olive Jars

3. Coffee Jars

4. Pickle Jars

Of course, the larger your bottle or jar is, the longer you can leave it in place to help your seeds and seedlings along without crushing your new plants. 
2

Cutting the Bottles

Though the instructions I received with my bottle cutter say to score the bottles only one time, I made a second round of the bottles. I learned that this helped me make a cleaner, more even cut. 

3

Cutting (Drilling) Holes In Your Bottles or Jars for Aeration

Above View of Tree Collard Cutting rooting beneath glass "greenhouse" in edible landscape
Above View of Tree Collard Cutting rooting beneath glass "greenhouse" in edible landscape
Here comes the noisy part. 

Do you have to do this? No, of course not. I just find that allowing seedlings to have free access to flowing air helps to keep them healthier. Otherwise, you might want to remove the jars or bottles a couple times a week to let in fresh air. Drilling holes for aeration also allows your seedlings to freely adapt to changing weather conditions on the outside of their personal glass greenhouses. This is good for when you are attempting to adapt plants to colder weather or warmer weather, whichever may be the case, without throwing them into shock and killing your precious plants. 
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