I save bleach bottles and cut them for plant labels. I save the rolls from paper towels, stuff them full of plastic WM bags and leave 5 or 6 in an oversized mailbox in the garden. I always have a bag handy to pick into and send home with friends. Keep one in the car too. This year I cut toilet paper rolls in half and planted pea seeds into them. I will be planting them today using a spatula to slip under the open bottom. Empty milk cartons make good plant waterer/fertilizer jugs. Cut the top off, fill 1/2 full of compost, poke a few holes in the bottom and water through it. You can move from plant to plant, dripping "manure tea".

My ultimate recycling--When our 40 year old chest freezer went out, we hauled it into the garden, stood it up and turned it into a storage cabinet. It already had plywood dividers in it that we use for shelves.

And the greenhouse that I keep talking about has recycled tin from an old barn on the north wall and all the wall glass is recycled windows.

Anybody else have any recycling tips? Anything we can scrounge, we don't have to buy.

We like to pick up the sushi-to-go in the grocery store sometimes. The trays/lids that it comes in are perfect for holding little paper cups for seed starting (granted, this is on a small scale and would likely be more trouble than its worth for those starting seeds on a large scale, but it works for me). Also, the wooden chopsticks that come with it are great for poking holes in the soil for planting the seeds.

I've used newspaper and cardboard as a weed/grass barrier layer before laying down mulch on top of it. It was a great way to use up some of the moving boxes left over after our move a year and a half ago.

Our trash pick-up doesn't include recycling, so we collect all the recyclables that we can't re-use ourselves in some way and take them to the big Edmond recycling center off I-35 and Covell.

Suzie

I don't have a lot to add.

I compost card, food scraps, and newspaper as time and weather permits.

I got this tip from the forums. I am making toilet paper tubes into seed starters for some plants I an starting from seed. The link for directions is below.

Here is a link that might be useful: toilet paper roll seed starter.

I don't have a lot to add.

I compost card, food scraps, and newspaper as time and weather permits.

I got this tip from the forums. I am making toilet paper tubes into seed starters for some plants I an starting from seed. The link for directions is below.

Here is a link that might be useful: toilet paper roll seed starter.

I save all of our old, stained or worn out jeans. I cut the tops off and use the legs as weed-barriers in the pathways of the garden. I cover them with straw and they work great!

I recycle all kinds of containers.

Molasses Feed Tubs make great large (about the size of a whiskey half-barrel) containers. We drill drainage holes in the bottom, fill with a good-quality soil-less growing mix, and grow indeterminate tomato plants and other things in them.

Galvanized Steel stock tanks can be filled with a good growing medium and used as a planter. I have one that is 4' in diameter and I've grown tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, flowers and herbs in it (though not all at the same time). If you're starting out with a brand-new one, you'll have to drill drainage holes in the bottom (there usually is one drain in the bottom but I don't think it would drain well enough by itself if you were using the tank as a planter. If you find old ones that local ranchers want to get rid of since they no longer hold water, then you may not have to drill drainage holes because they bottom probably has rusted out to some extent anyway.

When we lived in Texas, my first water garden about 20 or 22 years ago was a couple of water plants and a handful of gold fish in a 4' diameter stock tank. The same tank is now a planter here at our place.

I save cat litter buckets, drill drainage holes in the bottom, spray paint them with Fusion paint for plastics, and grow peppers in them. I get huge yields. I've also grown some dwarf tomatoes and other veggies, herbs and flowers in them.

I save Tidy Cat cat litter jugs and use them to haul water here and there as needed when I don't want to drag a water hose around. If you poke a few small holes in the bottom, you can fill them with water and place them next to new young trees that need to be watered and let the water slowly soak into the ground near the tree.

I plant strawberries in discarded wading pools. Usually they have cracks in the bottom, but if they don't, you can poke or drill drainage holes in them. Fill them with a growing medium and plant your plants. The strawberries I have in the wading pools don't have disease or pest problems nearly as much as the plants in the ground.

I save bleach bottles, laundry detergent bottles, etc. and use them in many ways. Sometimes I cut them into strips for plant labels. sometimes I cut them in half to make scoops that can be used with animal feed, compost, potting soil, fertilizer, etc.

If you buy one of the really large containers of laundry detergent at Sam's Club, CostCo or some other warehouse type store, you can turn the rectangular ones with a spigot into a hand-washing station for the garden. Clean it out well, spray paint it an attractive color with Fusion paint, fill it with water, and place it in the garden. Mine is on a small, recycled steel patio table painted to match. I use a leg cut from a nylon stocking to hold soap. Tie the soap inside the stocking and tie the stocking to the handle of the laundry jug or to the table. You'll always be able to rinse off your hands without leaving your garden.

It goes without saying that 5-gallon buckets can be used for many things....as planters, tool-holders, harvest buckets, etc. I also use them as plant protectors to cover up tomato plants if frost threatens after they are in the ground.

I save old textiles like sheets, blankets, bedspreads, curains and tablecloths to use as plant protectors if a late frost threatens. I keep them folded and piled up on a shelf in the garage so they're ready whenever they're needed.

This isn't exactly recycling, but it saves me money. Instead of buying plastic 1020 seed-starting flats, I use large disposable aluminum pans that are sold on the housewares aisle in stores. If I remember, I save the ones used for turkeys and other large items at Thanksgiving or Christmas. The aluminum pans are sturdy. I buy them in large quantities (about 15 or 20 per pack) and they last a few years. They're much sturdier than 1020 flats.

Instead of potting up into plastic pots (I'd never have enough!), I buy paper, plastic or styrofoam cups. The styrofoam or plastic cups can be reused from one year to the next. Just be sure you wash/sanitize them with a 10% bleach solution before reusing them.

Instead of buying plantable peat pots (which I don't even like anyway because of the issues with them), I buy inexpensive paper cups. I poke large drainage holes in the bottom, start seedlings in them that don't like to be transplanted, and at planting time I plant them cups and all. They biodegrade just fine. I used to cut the bottoms out of them, but then discovered that by the time the seedlings are large enough to transplant, the bottoms are so soft from the soil/moisture that I can stick my finger in a drainage hole and pull the bottom right out of the cup. As a bonus, the cup serves as a cutworm collar!

Speaking of cutworms, instead of making collars for each plant, I place one "stick" on either side of a new seedling when I transplant it into the ground. The sticks can be actual twigs found on the ground, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, or bamboo skewers. (I break each skewer in half so it gives me two sticks to use.)

Nylon pantyhose can be used in several ways. I cut the legs from a pair of stockings, cut the foot portion off so I have two long tubes, and use the tubes around squash plants when I transplant them into the ground. I make sure the part of the stocking leg is below ground, then leave the rest of it bunched up on top of the ground (like the collar of a cowl-neck sweater). As the squash grows, I pull the stocking higher and higher up the stem to protect it. Once the stem of the plant is as tall as the piece of stocking that I have, I tie the end of the stocking to the stem with a piece of garden twine so the squash vine borers can't work their way down between the stocking and the plant stem. That way, at least several inches of the squash plant's stem is protected from SVBs.

I also use knee-high stockings, or legs cut from pantyhose, as slings to support melons grown on trellises.

Old windows and glass or plexiglass doors (including shower doors) can be used as the top of a home-made cold-frame.

My potting table is made from an old steel door.

My potting shed is a recycled storage shed. It used to sit down on the edge of the woods (a mistake, because snakes liked to live in it) but we didn't use it much after building the barn-style garage in 2004. After a lot of nagging, Tim finally moved it up the hill to the flat land near the house. Then he put in a new, snake-proof floor, painted it to match the barn, added 4 small windows and a small front porch and turned it into a really nice potting shed. You wouldn't believe how nice that rusty old (ancient!) storage shed looked by the time it was all fixed up.

Friends of ours removed a picket fence a few years ago and gave most of it to one of their friends who'd asked for it. They called and asked if we wanted the rest. Of course we said yes! That picket fence is cute and surrounds the small garden next to my potting shed.

Last year, at our VFD Garage Sale, I bought a hanging pot rack someone was getting rid of and hung it in my shed to use for the drying of herbs and flowers. I also bought an old wooden ladder for $2, painted it plum purple to match my metal lawn chairs (purchased for $5 apiece at an earlier VFD garage sale) and grew purple hyacinth beans on it last year. It looked great.

I save old rusted-out wagons and wheelbarrows, fill them with soil and grow plants in them. Since an old wheelbarrow can be rickety, I hammer rebar into the ground and attach the wheelbarrow to it to give the barrow some stability.

When old watering cans turn leaky and beyond repair, I spray paint them to match my other containers, fill them with a growing medium, and grow plants in them.

Of course, all compostables are composted.

I use cardboard and newspaper on the surface of the ground as a weedblock, and heap mulch on top of it.

We recycle our chicken coop litter (straw plus chicken manure and urine) into the compost pile.

For mulch, we collect grass clippings from the lawn and add them to the beds every week. In the fall, I rake up leaves and run over them with the lawn mower to chop them up, then use them as mulch too. We also use them in the garden pathways with paper or cardboard underneath. All season long that mulch decomposes. In fall or winter after the garden production has ceased for the year, I scoop up all the compost from the pathways and add it to the beds. You wouldn't believe how much a decade of doing this has improved our formerly red clay soil. In some areas that consistently receive an annual dose of compost, we need have a blackish-brown clayey loam.

Whenever possible, I save old furniture and kitchen utensils to use in the potting shed or garage. Old measuring cups, for example, can be used to measure out soil amendments or fertilizers. Old shelving or tables work well in the garage or shed for storage.

I recycle my DH's old cotton long-sleeved dress shirts as garden shirts. I wear them over my regular clothes to protect my arms and neck from excessive sun exposure. When they are too stained and torn up to wear any longer, I compost them or send them to the barn's rag bag.

I save colored glass bottles for my bottle tree.

There's so many ways to save and reuse so much of the stuff we Americans typically throw into the trash. The ones I mentioned are some of my favorites. My parents and grandparents learned to be thrifty during the Great Depression so I grew up in a family that believed in reusing everything they could. So did Tim. To this day, Tim and I save and reuse all sorts of things, including the little twist ties that come on loaves of bread, yogurt cups, etc. We grew up familiar with the old slogan:

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

Dawn

I've been collecting the cups from our church dinners. Saves me from buying them for planting seedlings.

I ran out of plant labels, so I cut up a Styrofoam cup. When I wrote on it, it etched the letters in, so even if the ink washes off ill still be able to read it.

Plastic coffee canisters make good containers for kitchen scraps. So do plastic ice cream jugs. The lid keeps it from stinking and keep bugs out.

Microwave dinner trays make great drip trays. I especially like the Healthy Choice steamer ones; they're round and the perfect depth for most of my med and small pots. And the strainer is good for drying herbs.

Last year I tried the newspaper as weed barrier trick but ran out of newspaper, so I finished with an old phone book. We get 4 a year, so I need to find ways to recycle them.

I use an old dish strainer to collect vegetables. I can rinse them off and leave them to dry.

I never throw away old mop, broom, or tool handles, but re-use them as plant stakes or for vines.

I cut strips of pantyhose for plant ties.

One of my "splurge" items is coffee beans because I grind my own, and this year I'm saving the sturdy bags to use as pots for seedlings. Wash them in 10% bleach, poke holes in the bottom and I'm ready to go. The plastic grocery bags can also be used for small plants or seedlings, or seeds can be planted in them, and they can be hung up on a fence by their handles.

Susan

We use old sheets to pick up leaves, tie them in and can stack 15 full to king size filled sheets in the back of the pickup. Then we dump them into a wire enclosure in the garden. It takes a year for them to break down in a normal year. We throw chicken litter from the chicken house on them to hasten the process. We take them out and spread them on perrenial beds before refilling the enclosure each year.

We have 55 gallon plastic barrels under the eaves of buildings to catch rainwater. A square of screen wire over the top keeps out mosquito larva. This summer I am going to buy cheap goldfish from WM for that purpose.

DH brought home a slab of formica countertop from work a couple years ago, from a remodel job. That will become my potting bench when the greenhouse is ready. The shop he worked at also was the source for the large mailbox in the garden. And several lengths of discarded pipe that support tomato trellis.

The tub of an old, old wringer washer on its original stand sits next to the faucet in the garden. Every garden needs a rinse tub.

Dorothy,

Your goldfish idea reminded me of the fish in our lily pond. The current fish range in age from 8 to 10 years. When people see them, they get all excited and say "oh, you have koi in your pond" to which the only honest reply is "no, they're just goldfish". In fact, they're feeder goldfish that probably cost us pennies apiece when we bought them. They keep the pond mosquito-larvae-free. I never expected those tiny feeder goldfish to live so long, get so big or reproduce as well as they have. Despite the fact that lots of wild things come and feed in our lily pond, we still have lots of inexpensive, non-Koi, non-fancy giant goldfish in our pond. They were quite a bargain and well worth the few cents we spent on them roughly a decade ago.

Dawn

I got the idea because a friend of mine has a half barrel "water garden" with a water lily and some goldfish that have lived for several years in her yard. I don't know if they survived this year's -7 degrees, but for only a few cents if they die I can replace them each year

People who use old sheets and blankets for stuff: what do you do with them when not in use? I am afraid to leave blankets and sheets outside or in the shed in case spiders or snakes hide in them, so every time I cover my plants I put on gloves and drag the blankets/sheets inside and wash them on HOT. In the fall last year I was washing ten garden blankets eevery day.

The black widow in my garden was under a blanket on a night I covered my wintersown tomatoes, so I am super freaked out about leaving stuff around.

Ditto the wintersown containers (milk jugs soda bottles)...so you make new ones every year or re-use them? They were a pain in the butt to make, so I'd rather save them, but don't relish the idea of all the spiders that will hide under them in the shed.

EEEK.

I am a frugal person but squeamish.

Jo

Dorothy, We only dropped down to 3 degrees and the pond froze over on top but not all the way down. All our fish must have survived just fine (I didn't see any floating dead bodies when the ice melted). I've heard of people putting them into rain barrels but haven't tried it myself.

Jo, I fold them up and stack them on a high shelf in the garage. I've never had anything get into them or into the floating row covers stacked on the same shelving unit.

If the thought of pests or rodents getting into your stored stuff (it hasn't happened to me, yet....) bothers you, you could buy a storage bin with a snap-on lid and store them inside of it. I do pick up things carefully (most of the time), but that's because I'm more likely to find a coppehead or a rattlesnake than a spider.

Either last year or the year before, I picked up something off the ground in the garden and something that was underneath it stung me or bit my finger. It hurt worse than anything (except possibly childbirth) I've ever experienced and I was petrified it might have been a snake. When I finally stopped jumping up and down and screaming "Ow Ow Ow", I looked at my finger and there were no fang marks. In the meantime, Tim was using a stick to lift mulch and stuff and see if he could find the culprit.

My finger and hand started swelling and turning red so I ran inside and took children's liquid benadryl (to get it into my system ASAP). The redness and minor swelling persisted for a couple of days, and my finger and hand hurt for almost a week. I guarantee you that after that occurred I was once again very, very careful about picking up anything.

I think it likely that a scorpion got me, or perhaps one of those big yellow-and-black hornets. Both have stung me in the past and the pain was similar. It was a good lesson to me to watch where I put my hands in the garden and one I will not soon forget.

You can discourage spiders in your shed by spraying with a Spider Web Eliminator product. There's also a product called Spider Not that you might liket. I used to have to order them online, but now I see them in some local stores. I'll link one below to show you what I'm talking about. I spray the garage, sheds and back porch (formerly a screened-in porch and now a sunporch) with a spider web eliminator a couple of times a year. In general, I don't worry about spiders at all except for the venomous ones like Black Widows and Brown Recluses. We have about a million spiders an acre here and I appreciate all the non-venomous ones because they help control pest insects.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Spider Not and Spider Web Eliminator

So many great ideas here!!! I especially like re-using the large laundry detergent container as a washing station in the garden. I can never think of a good use for those, and always just send them to the recycle center.

I have a question about the goldfish that I hope someone can answer. We have a small-ish fountain that has a base about 2 1/2 feet x 2 feet that holds water and the depth when full is probably 6 inches or so. The pump then pulls the water up and it trickles back down over a couple of tiers made to look like rocks and falls back into the bottom basin. Could goldfish survive in that bottom basin? And would they eat the algae that tends to build up in there? I'd never thought of putting goldfish in there until I read the goldfish ideas above, and now it has me wondering.

Suzie

greenacreslady - I think they would survive in the summer but if the base is above ground it might get too cold in the winter. I had some that lasted through the winters here, but the pond part was lower than ground level so it never totally froze, although there was a thick ice layer on top. That was several years ago and I didn't have it during this last winter which was much colder. You really don't have much to lose by trying since they only cost a few cents.

I wouldn't try it unless the pond part was at least 18 inches deep because the cats and wild things will catch the fish in a shallow one.

Suzie,

I agree with Carol. I think the base is too shallow for fish. They'll roast to death in the summer heat unless it is well-shaded, and otherwise they'll be eaten by every wild thing that comes along and a few domestic ones too. Normally, when threatened by something that wants to eat them, fish retreat to the cover of plants or rocks and they wouldn't have any protection in your fountain.

Dawn

Dawn and Carol .... thank you for the feedback and advice! I won't try it in the little fountain. It sounded like it might be a fun idea, but it definitely is too shallow to give the fish any protection.

Suzie

WoW! It seems I missed lot of things in couple of days. Lot of ways to reuse/recycling ideas flowing here. Some of them Dawn mentioned are pretty cool.

Goldfish in small pond/tank is interesting too, I thought they will not survive in winter, so not attempted yet. I have small pond with diameter of 6feet and depth of 1feet periphery and 2 feet center. I think that is pretty good size to introduce few common goldfish. I have small water fall and one sprinkler head in the center.

Any suggestion on plants and natural filters for that size pond? Thank you -Chandra