Recycla has written before about how she is an avid gardener. Her goal for this year is to grow as much of her family’s food as she can fit into her 10′ X 40′ plot, as well as some containers and a few other locations in her yard.
Even though it’s still cold and snowy outside, Recycla and some of the other Eco Women are already working on various gardening projects, all of which involve reusing materials and saving money in the process.
For example, Recycla is saving her plastic gallon milk jugs. She’ll cut off the bottoms and wash them thoroughly and then have cloches to protect her tender plants this spring. A gardener could also use 2 liter plastic bottles for this purpose.
Recycla is also saving her Stonyfield Farm yogurt tubs. Later on, she’ll cut the sides into strips to make ID markers for her plants. After that, when the markers outlive their usefulness, Recycla will recycle them with the rest of her #5 plastics.
Recycla will occasionally have an aluminum pie pan and she’s saving those to tie to her tomato cages and (cross your fingers) scare off the deer. If any of her CD’s chip or scratch badly, she’ll use them for the same purpose.
Recycla also saves all her newspapers, tears them up, and puts them in her compost bins to add as more “brown” matter. Eco Lassie is saving her newspapers too, in order to use for suppressing weeds. She puts down a thick layer (8-10 sheets) and covers with mulch, compost, pine needles, straw, etc. In addition to killing weeds, the newspaper also attracts earthworms, which will not only eat the newspaper, they’ll improve the soil with their castings.
Enviro Girl reports that she is saving her egg cartons to start seeds in. She also uses ice cream cartons, sour cream tubs, and other food containers to collect her harvest in and then share the bounty with friends and neighbors — particularly when it’s berry season and she has pints and pints to share.
These are just a few of the many possibilities available to you. Tell the Eco Women: What materials do you save and then reuse in your garden?
Ooh! I’ll be watching this for ideas – was drawing diagrams and dreaming last night…
Jess, me too! Last night I sketched out my plan for 2010 (including how I’ll rotate the rows from last year) and then went online to order necessary supplies. I’ve ordered two kinds of seed potatoes so far, two kinds of bean seeds, loads of peas, a rainbow of flower seeds, and so much more. I. Can’t. Wait!!!
We save clementine orange wooden boxes to start seeds. There are holes already on the bottom for drainage and are perfect for planting seeds. Since they are small, you can have many boxes for different types of plants.
The deer in Carp laugh at pie plates. Laugh, I tell you.
Newspapers make the BEST weed barrier.
I was in Fleet Farm on Sunday and they have their SEED DISPLAYS up already! I think I should start saving egg cartons and toilet paper rolls for starting seeds. I plan to start more from scratch this year.
I use toilet rolls for seed raising. I stack them together in a an icecream container or similar and them when ready to plant pop the whole toilet roll and aeedling straight into the ground. Picture here: http://littleecofootprints.typepad.com/little_eco_footprints/2009/10/a-basket-of-toilet-rolls-and-vege-seedlings.html