
How to Reuse Old Newspapers
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(1) When my family used to save coffee cans all year to redistribute with tamales during the holidays, we'd stuff the cans with crumpled newspaper to get rid of the coffee smell. They sat in the laundry room all year, with an occasional change-out of paper until needed.
(2) Years ago my mother gave me a little gadget that presses four layers of newspaper into a seedling cup. You start a seed in it (with a little soil) and when it's ready to plant it can go right into the ground where the cup disintegrates as the plant grows. I want to say she got it at Lillian Vernon but I may not remember that correctly and I can't find one there now. Maybe Vermont Country Store? No matter. There are many tutorials of how to fold them by hand anyway.
jh
Does the paper attract earwigs? They can hide in paper can be a problem?
Using newspaper or any other layered material in the garden can be a refuge for creatures like earwigs and isopods (“roly-polys”), but these aren’t worth worrying about unless they appear in a significant numbers. If that’s the case, then you may want to remove the paper for a time.
Surprised no one uses newspaper for food odors left in plastic containers or jars after they have been washed. Crumple a few pages, stuff them in the containers, cap them, and the food odors will disappear in a few days. Also for the window cleaning w/vinegar - best to use black and white printed sheets and not the colored sheets. This goes for the food odors, too.
I use newspaper to make starter pots for seedlings. They can just go into the ground.
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