Things you've recycled

A_Clock

I use plastic bottles to hold my fish blood and bone in :cool: The cardboard box it comes in, always seems to fall apart after awhile! Plus its easier to pour it out

angelavdavis

Plastic coated baskets from an old chest freezer to store pots in.

Carpet to cover veg beds after weeding to stop weeds coming through and keep soil warm.

Next doors' mowings into my compost bin to add more wet organic matter to the mix.

lynseydee

I've started saving my plastic yoghurt pots to sow my seeds into. Used some last year to get some cuttings rooting and also started saving the empty loo rolls to start my sweet peas off so the whole thing can be planted into the ground.

hooby_groovy

Of course the obvious one I forgot about is compost!

We take all the uncooked food waste, newspaper, shredded personal documents and add to the compost bins that we have at our allotment, even taking the waste such as used teabags from work.

We've got three bins, each holding 340 litres of compost (two of which are about ready with really fantastic rich black compost now). By my calculations that converts to a tonne of compost - which will go in the runner bean trenches.

Thats a pile of waste that would have gone to landfill, hasn't had to be collected by a diesel fuming van and has gone back in to the soil

Its got to be the best form of recycling

misspenny

another suggestion for plastic milk bottles - handle and base cut off the rest can be cut in to strips to make plant markers cut a point in one end and a curve on the other and they are exactly like the ones you buy.
the left over base makes a good drip catcher that will hold one or 2 small pots.

i have a lot of old worn out pillows that im trying to find something other than sending to land fill to do with any ideas

~Chameleon~

I love recycling things to use in the garden and you've all come up with some great ideas! I've just run downstairs and put all my seed packets into the big celebrations tin thanks to hooby groovy :T

Other things I've done or in the process of doing are:

• composting kitchen/garden waste
• recycled an old bath to store water
• recycled old bricks to make footpath and base of cold frame
• recycling old scaffold boards and pallets to make raised beds
• using old carpet as weed suppressant
• saved toilet roll tubes to plant sweet pea seeds
• saved plastic meat/fruit/veg containers to use as seed trays/cloches
• saved plastic bottles to use as cloches
• use bags from grow-bags/compost etc to line hanging baskets/pots
• when pruning hedges/trees save long thin branches to use as plant supports

Talking of old pillows, I've got a couple of old duvets that we no longer use and wondering if I could find a use for these?

purplecrocus

I brought some ready made meatballs from the supermarket, and discovered the tray they were in is ideal for holding those little jiffy plugs.......perfect fit

Jack's_mummy

I do most of the above but also recycled 2 old blanket boxes into some raised beds for my veggies. They were the cheap slatted together kind and I just lined them with black plastic, punched some holes in it for drainage and filled with compost.

In fact I might just ask in freecycle if anyone has anything similar being chucked out

annie123

we had a very long thread on this last year, full of ideas....

found it...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=372487&highlight=reuse

Horace

My dowe egberts coffee jars get washed and are then used to store cash - I have about 6 on the go with various amounts of money in each. I make plants by buying flowers and taking cuttings and rooting them - some spray carnations are good for this.

I pinch wood out of skips (or I will ask for it) and use it to make battens to put shelves on. All wood that I can beg borrow or steal is used in this way. Thanks to some neighbours chucking out their old bed slats, I now have some lovely shelves above my water tank - now an airing cupboard. I have some fluorescent pink shelves in my pantry as well as in my shed. I also pinch offcuts of carpet out of the bin as well as the occasional rug. I also found a chest of drawers that had been dumped by my shed and these now have pride of place in my bedroom (all drawers lined with Christmas wrapping paper).

Old wooden lollipop sticks are washed and kept, I use them as plant markers. All plastic bottles are recycled, cut down to make scoops, water drippers, cloches.