Five Clever Ways to Use a Bar of Soap in Your Garden

Even if you prefer washing your hands and body with soap in gel or liquid form, there are still plenty of reasons to have a few bars of soap on hand at home.

As we’ve discussed in previous Lifehacker articles, a simple bar of soap has many different household uses, including making drawers easier to open and close, and fixing a stiff lock. The bar continues to be useful, even when it’s reduced to several small slivers, which can even be combined to make a “new” bar of soap.

But wait, there’s more: A bar of soap is also a versatile, inexpensive gardening supply. Here are five ways to put a bar of soap to work outdoors.

Stash a bar of soap (or a few) wherever you keep your gardening tools and supplies so it’s handy when you need it. Here five ways to put it to use:

Before getting to work, scratch a bar of soap so it gets under your fingernails. This will keep dirt from getting under there, and make it much easier to wash your hands when you’re finished.

Gardening tools like handsaws and shears are typically kept in sheds, garages, or basements year-round, and the fluctuations in temperature and humidity can make the metal components stick. Rub a bar of soap on the hinge for some lubrication, and you’ll be ready to roll.

Some gardeners also coat the blades of saws or shears with a bar of soap. Though it does make sawing and snipping smoother, soap can harm plants when it’s not diluted, so skip this step on your pruning shears, or any other tool that comes in direct contact with plants that you care about (though you can certainly use them on weeds). Lubricated saws and shears can also be used safely on wood.

Use a vegetable peeler or cheese grater to shave or grate a bar of soap, then sprinkle the shavings throughout your garden, adding more a few days after it rains. While it won’t deter all unwanted critters, it can help keep common garden pests like aphids, slugs, and earwigs away.

Plus, deer and mice don’t like the smell of soap, so it can help stop them from chowing down on your garden. If keeping them out is your main goal, you don’t even have to grate the bar of soap: Just press a sturdy stick into the bar, and then put the stick in the ground.

Cut biodegradable bar soap into chunks—or use up leftover slivers—and mix into your compost pile. It should take around six months for the soap to decompose, and while it does, it makes the other materials in the heap more resistant to mildew.

It’s important to note that this only works with biodegradable bar soaps, like those made from hemp seed oil, beeswax, avocado oil, or babassu oil. Liquid or gel soaps, or any kind of soap that’s not biodegradable will hurt the composting process.

Gardening can be messy, so having a bar of soap around to wash your hands, tools, or other supplies right away with a garden hose or utility sink makes life a little easier.