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erdnuss_gw

frugal gardening (container ideas)

erdnuss
15 years ago

I have quite a few gardens around my house. I have a veggie garden, 2 melon gardens, and many different flower gardens. I also have random spots in my yard that I'm growing different types of veggies. Why all the gardens? Because my yard wraps around the house (or I guess I could say the house sits in the middle of it) rather than having an actual front and back yard like most houses in the city.

I also have my container gardens because the house my husband and I live in is a rental and in 1-2 years we'll be moving and some plants I want to take with me :)

Not to mention the herb garden I want to be able to keep in the kitchen :)

Because of the fact that most of this gardening is just starting off (since we just moved here a couple months ago), I've had to come up with cheap ways to get "pots" for my plants. Here are some of the items I have currently using or am thinking of using:

I buy butter in a plastic tub. When it's empty I give it a good washing and take it outside to spray paint.

Empty coffee cans work great (both metal and plastic).

the kitty litter I buy comes in a plastic tub. I give them an extra good cleaning and also line it with a plastic trash bag if I feel I can't get it clean enough. These work great for growing carrots in a container!

For all containers, I spray paint with a cheap can of spray paint (about 1$ at walmart). I only spray paint the outside though so that it doesn't get in with where the plant/roots will be. The color I get is caled "primer red." It makes containers look like a clay flower pot!

I will then drill holes in the bottom and on some pots the sides also.

I've been considering buying a cheap baby/kids pool, one of the smaller ones, because those would be good for some veggies that are very picky about the soil, but I will save that for next year.

For seed starting containers, I save the plastic containers that my grapes, strawberries, and even cookies from the store come in! The frut containers already have holes for draining water and they work as a mini green house. The cookie containers and stuff like that, I have to poke holes in the bottom, but they work great too!

Other things I've used for pots are milk jugs or coke bottles. I cut the top part off and drill holes in the bottom.

As for ways to collect all of these items, I save containers I've used and I also ask friends and family to save them. I'll usually show them about the size of containers I'm looking for and if they bought any food or drinks that came in what I'm looking for, they'll save it for me.

I've also posted a wanted ad up on craiglist.com for in my area asking if anyone had extra coffee cans they didn't want. Plus, many people around here tend to hang onto that stuff and list it under the free section.

Depending on how think of a coat of paint you want on your "pot" and how large it is, you could easily get about 6 pots for a container garden for the price of 1$ just by saving containers :) Try beating that at a store!

do any of you have creative ideas like that you've done for your garden? Please share your ideas!

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