Sustainable Gardening

I thought it might be handy to have a thread where we can share sustainable gardening tips. Things around the house that can be re-used in the garden, for example.

Here's a few to get us started:

• The plastic punnets that strawberries / raspberries / etc come in make good seed trays - both as bases and as unheated propagator lids
• The plastic bottles that drinks come in make good cloches
• Egg shells can be used as biodegradable seed pots, as can egg boxes
• Egg shells can also be crushed and worked into the soil to add calcium
• Newspaper can be used to make biodegradable seed pots

I'm sure there's absolutely loads more things - other than the obvious compost and water butts. Please do share your tips, I'd love to do more in this regard.

 

The stronger plastic trays used by supermarket for packaging meat also make good seed trays - punch some drainage holes first, though.

I cut old pairs of tights (the opaque ones are stronger) into strips to make nice soft, stretchy plant ties. Cut off the foot and part of the leg and fix that over the inlet on the inside of a water butt, to prevent that getting filled up with gunk.

I also cut up yoghurt pots to use as plant labels.

Blood fish and bone and other fertilisers often come in cardboard boxes, which are vulnerable to damp/ damage by mice. Decant the contents into plastic bottles - milk bottles with their squared off shape take up less room on a shelf.

I noticed yesterday that one of my neighbours had topped some plant stakes with old champagne corks, to prevent those poking anybody's eye out. It looked rather stylish!

 

I've used damp cardboard and newspaper as a way to suppress weeds, I also recycle my alcohol intake on the compost heap......

 

I gather windfall sticks in the autumn to use to ward off pigeons from tender young plants in spring, you need loads snd he’s it looks messy but it’s very very effective. No need for plastic netting. You can recycle the sticks to grow sweet peas.

Tiny shards of well-broken eggshells scattered very liberally around a young plant not only adds calcium but deters slugs which do not like the very sharp edges.

Someone gave me a gift basket full of wood wool, I saved it for ages and eventually it has found a good use under my strawberries to stop them picking up dirt from the soil.

Save yourself a lot of work, and leave old seed heads on plants over winter and don’t clear up fallen leaves. Insects and frogs will find homes in the dead plants. Similarly, make a home for bugs behind a large shrubs by chucking some big chunks of branch back there, it’s out of sight

 

When taking cuttings from plants take plenty, and offer them on Freecycle or similar if you end up with too many.

Leave a corner of your vegetable patch bare and sieve the soil so it is very fine - small birds absolutely to take a dirt bath to scratch off all those pesky mites.

If, like mex you hate a cold shower, capture the cold water in a bucket when you are running it to get to warm water, and use the water to top up your water butts. Ditto capture any small amounts of “grey” water and chuck them on your garden, it’s surprising how much water you can capture this way.

Toilet roll holders are great root trainers for seeds like sweet peas - stand them in an old plastic veg or meat tray and fill the toilet rolls To the brim with soil.

Never, ever use a leaf blower, it’s lethal to insect life, they can’t get away in time,

 

So it was you. Flounder. Peeeeeeing on the compost heap. LOL

 

Being on furlough I've had more time for gardening and wasn't set up for the sheer amount of extra stuff I needed. Hating waste, I've been looking around for things to reuse instead of just recycling them.

So, another use for shallow plastic food trays (too shallow for seedlings) and also plastic lids is this:


An alternative to string and it adds a little separation distance to the tops of the canes and sticks.

One thing about using egg boxes as seed trays: my experience was that it was the least successful of reused household 'waste'.

I thought the absorbance of the material would help hold water and that they could even be planted straight into the ground afterwards, but... it actually seemed to speed up evaporation, so these seedlings dried out quicker, suffering and struggling more than any of the others.

Egg boxes now get torn up and put in the compost, we tend to have too much 'green' for the compost anyway, so it's a handy addition.

 

I've heard this too and started collecting egg shells to do it, but then I found this and now I'm not so sure:

Will Crushed Eggshells Keep Slugs Out?

I do this with my extra plants - I always grow a few more from seed than I need, just in case, and any backups I don't have room for get left on my front wall for neighbours to take.

Oh no! Well - they can be used to hold egg shells if planting into those. They tend to roll away otherwise

 

Ha, I like it.
It's almost like they were made for the job...