The Great 'Re-use from the house into the garden' Hunt

WestonDave

Those bullet proof plastic boxes supermarket meat comes in make decent seed trays and the deep ones can be used as cloches.

Toilet rolls inners make good starter pots - plant them in the ground as they are as the roots will grow through them. Same applies to egg boxes.

Wiggly_Worm

Old tights: can also be used for tying up plants - soft and stretchy.

Old bicycle inner tubes: when they finally get too patched, they are *the* best thing to tie small trees to their stakes with. Wide and stretchy enough not to damage the tree, strong and 'not stretchy' enough to hold it tight. Expensive tree ties are made from the same stuff anyway.

Tetrapaks: can be cut in half and used as pots or seed trays (depending on which way you cut them.

But that's enough tiddlers, let's think BIG! Our washing machine blew itself up last year in a particularly spectacular and scary way, so being the anti-wasters that we are, instead of chucking the whole thing into landfill, we took it apart. The door window made a lovely glass salad bowl, the drum we use as a brazier in the garden, and the outer case is a small 'shed' next to the compost heap. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's dry storage for large garden tools (not expensive ones!), flower pots and other bits and bobs. The bits which did get thrown away only filled a large orange juice carton - not bad :T

Oh, and shredded paper. We keep a large sack of it from my brother's work in our washing machine shed, for topping up the compost heap. Worms love it - pure food waste can be too rich for them. Any important bits of paper you're unhappy about recycling can be composted - how's that for security?:rotfl:

Judith_Proctor

Plastic 1 litre drinks bottles can be cut in half and the base/neck removed. A plastic ring can then be placed around plants like young runner beans to keep the slugs out.

fraulein_h

You can make great seedling pots out of strips of newspaper - I have a special pot maker bought for me as a present, but you can just use the end of a rolling pin or similar, wrap the strip around the end with plenty hanging off, then jam it down/ fold the edges in to make the bottom of your pot. If you're really lazy (like me) you can plant the whole thing in the ground when your seedling is ready. I put them in the supermarket plastic tray things on my windowledge...
Oh another use for plastic pots - cloches for little plants...
and don't forget slug traps made from jam jars/yoghurt pots buried with beer inside, or crushed egg shells to deter those pesky molluscs.

Seakay

Plastic drinks bottles or milk bottles can be used as watering resovoirs for tomato plants etc. Take off the top and cut off the bottom and bury the bottle upsidedown when you put the seedling in; leave at least half an inch of bottle above soil level to avoid the bottle getting filled up.
This makes it easy to deliver water and plant food directly to the plant.
I've not seen a commercial version of this, so it's hard to say how much money is saved.

Sagar_Fuzz

Dry out your used coffee grounds and use them as fertiliser - they are a good source of nitrogen. Acid loving plants particularly like this, such as blueberries.

You can also use crushed eggshells to add calcium if you need it.

This saves you on expensive fertiliser, and works REALLY well!

tenuissent

Newspaper and cardboard. Lay thickly on field grass to supress the weeds and grass while you dig out your new allotment. Lay thickly between raspberry bushes to supress weeds. Lay thickly anywhere you might otherwise use Mypex woven plastic at £0.95 a metre (a metre wide). If you can't bear the look of it, add thin layer of woodchips/straw/soil.
/anything you can bear the look of.

viticella

This makes me laugh. When we moved into the last house, an elderly couple had been living in/hoarding in it for decades. The garden was heavily "planted" with every kind of household implement - were they plant supports/markers or just a bit confused? We pulled up coathangers, wooden spoons, spatulas, old dishmops, the lot!

So any old stick or wire can be a plant support!

Don't forget to make your own pegbag using fabric scraps and an old wooden coathanger - I did that last week.

thecornflake

Wiggly_Worm wrote:

The door window made a lovely glass salad bowl

That is pure genius!

kempie666

Chocolate muffins .. eat the muffins, save the box ... fill with compost, add seeds and spray with water. Close the lid - it's a perfect propogator to sit on the kitchen windowsill. Mine is currently helping some lavender seeds to germinate, whilst alongside, the leeks are coming along nicely in an old croisant box!

Best thing about these two as well? The food was a gift for the office from a departing colleague, so free food and then free growing containers as well!:T :j