Old towels, in my house, have traditionally had a pretty short life once they stop being soft. I prefer mine fluffy, so as soon as they start resembling sandpaper-rough rags, I’d either gift them to my greyhound-cross (he’s not fussy) or, I’m ashamed to admit, chuck them.
My husband, though? He’s been a professional gardener for well over two decades, and apparently sees potential where I see an old towel. According to him, there are several surprisingly useful ways to reuse old towels in the garden – and, annoyingly, he’s got a point.
Usually, I’m the recycling queen in our house, turning old teacups into bird feeders and milk cartons into bird houses (birds, it seems, do rather well out of my craftiness). So it was a bit of a kick in the teeth to discover I’d been bested by the same man who can cook up a storm in the kitchen and coax even my most stubborn houseplants back to life after I’ve neglected them. Leave something for the rest of us, sir!
7 Ways To Reuse Old Towels In The Garden
All that being said, I wasn’t convinced. How on earth could an old towel possibly be useful in a garden?
“Think about it,” my husband told me when I put this question to him one weekend. “A towel is designed to deal with water, it’s hard-wearing, and it’s easy to cut or fold. Why throw it away when you can give it another job?”
Annoyingly, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. And so, with that in mind, here are his tried-and-tested methods for putting old towels to use in the garden..
1. Keep One Handy For A Surprise Frost
This was the first suggestion that made me realise my husband might actually be onto something. “I always keep a couple of old towels somewhere in the shed,” he suggested to me. “You never know when you’re going to get one of those unexpected frosty nights.”
An old towel can be used as temporary protection for a vulnerable plant when frost is forecast, the idea being to cover the plant and trap some of the heat coming from the soil around it. However, there is a small but important caveat here: he wouldn’t simply dump a heavy towel over delicate foliage and leave it there. “It’s not breathable and it doesn’t let light in,” he says, “and it should be supported so it isn’t pressing down on the plant. Make sure, too, to remove it once temperatures rise above freezing.”
It’s a useful emergency measure rather than a replacement for proper winter protection, basically; something like these Plant Covers Freeze Protection from Amazon will be far more effective. But, if your delivery isn’t due until the day after the first frost snap, then trust me: you’d much rather have a slightly tatty old towel ready to hand than let your favorite plant spend the night looking like it’s been left in a freezer.
2. Create A Water Wick
Yes, you can use old towels as a slow watering hack, and it’s a particularly clever trick if you have container plants that dry out quickly. “This is a good one if you’re going away for a few days,” says my husband. “You can use a strip of old cotton towel to move water from a container into the compost.”
It works through capillary action; just cut a narrow strip of absorbent cotton towel, soak it thoroughly, then put one end into a container of water and the other into the potting mix. As the compost dries, the towel can draw water from the reservoir towards the plant.
It’s not going to be as effective as, say, a Back to the Roots Self-Watering Terracotta Olla Pot (which promises a week of watering), but it’ll do in a pinch. Just remember to test it out before you go away, as different towels wick water at different rates, and you don’t want to return home to either a parched plant or a pot that’s been turned into a swamp.
3. Use It As A Potting Mat
Oh sure, this may not be the most exciting use of an old towel, but it’s one I can see myself adopting immediately.
“This is less about helping the plant and more about saving yourself a mess,” my husband says. “Lay an old towel underneath your pots when you’re repotting, dividing plants or filling containers. It’ll catch loose compost, spilled water and all those tiny bits of soil that somehow manage to travel several feet away from where you’re actually gardening.”
When you’re finished, you can shake the towel outside and give it a wash if necessary, making this hack particularly handy if, like me, you occasionally attempt to repot a plant indoors and then spend the next hour discovering compost in increasingly unlikely places.
4. Give Weeds A Blackout
For particularly stubborn weeds, an old natural-fiber towel can also be used as a temporary light-blocking layer. “If you’ve got an area you’re clearing, you can cover it for a while and stop the weeds getting any light,” says my husband.
The principle is the same as other forms of weed-smothering: block the light and you make life considerably harder for the plants underneath. Still, I’d use this as a short-term tactic rather than burying towels permanently beneath a border. Choose a 100% cotton towel, weigh it down so it stays put and remove it once you’re ready to deal with the area (or use something like Amazon’s Biodegradable Weed Barrier).
And, as ever, check what the towel is actually made from before putting it in the garden. (Synthetic fibers aren’t what we’re after here).
5. Make A Free Kneeling Pad
“This one’s obvious,” my husband says. “Why buy something when you’ve already got a perfectly good piece of padding?”
Take an old towel, fold it several times and you’ve got a surprisingly comfortable kneeling pad for weeding, planting bulbs or doing those jobs that require you to spend far too long with your knees on the ground.
The beauty is that it can simply go in the washing machine afterwards. If the soil is particularly wet, I’d put something waterproof underneath it rather than expecting the towel to keep you completely dry. Still, for ordinary gardening jobs, it’s a wonderfully simple way to give an old towel another lease of life.
6. Keep A ‘Mud Towel’ In The Shed
If you have an old towel that nobody is particularly precious about, relegate it to the shed for muddy moments. “Have one in the shed for your tools,” my husband suggests. “You can wipe the mud and moisture off them before you put them away.”
This is less glamorous than some of the other ideas, but it’s exactly the sort of habit that makes sense when you’re gardening regularly. A quick wipe helps keep soil from drying onto tools and removes excess moisture before they go back into storage. And because you’ve deliberately designated one towel as the garden towel, nobody is going to accidentally grab it after a shower.
At least, I hope not.
7. And Let It Go To Compost
Eventually, even the most dedicated garden towel will reach the end of its useful life, but if it’s made from a compostable natural fiber such as cotton, wool or linen, that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to go straight in the bin.
“Once it’s completely worn out, check what it’s made from,” my husband says. “If it’s natural fiber, cut it up and it can go into the compost.”
I’d check the label first and remove anything synthetic, such as polyester-rich sections, decorative trims or labels. Cutting the towel into smaller pieces will also help it break down more readily.
Shop Composting Essentials:
And there we have it: my old towels have gone from unwanted household clutter to emergency frost protection, watering aids, kneeling pads and compost material.
I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a threadbare bath towel in quite the same way again… although I’m drawing the line at letting my husband keep the good fluffy ones.
