Recycling in your garden – whatever the time of year, why not make a “New Year’s resolution” for your garden that’s easy to keep, good for your purse and good for the planet?
Yes, we’re talking about recycling. Although I think a more descriptive phrase than recycling is ‘re-using’. It’s easy to accomplish with minimum effort, certainly once you’re in the habit. So if you were to start today, it would be a habit by the end of the month, and so virtually second nature.
To begin then, let’s outline a few different types of recycling and re-using everyday items.
Recycling food and garden waste: Composting
Composting is the most obvious method of re-using ‘waste’ and turning it into something useful. Rather than repeat myself, a blog with more details on compost can be found here. And there’s more in our eBook “In Your Winter Garden” too. Briefly then, compost is where waste food, dead flowers, prunings, lawn clippings and so on, are turned by worms into a rich substance that improves and enriches your soil and enables you to grow food crops for your table and flowers for adornment.
All you have to do is layer green, nitrogen rich items (grass, vegetable peelings) with brown, carbon rich ones (paper, dead twigs). This can be into a compost bin either bought or homemade. Then you add worms and wait. However, if you don’t have the room for a compost bin, many local councils now offer both food and garden waste collections, so you can still develop the good habit.
Recycling in your garden: packaging
Cardboard egg boxes can be added to your compost or paper recycling. But why not use them as containers for chitting your seed potatoes first? Placing the potatoes, bud uppermost, in the egg compartments keeps the delicate newly formed buds on the potato safe. Chitting, by the way, is where you start off your early potato crop before planting them in the ground by encouraging little shoots and roots to form from the buds or ‘eyes’ on the potato tuber first.
Another use for egg boxes is as mini plant pots. Once the seedlings get going, the seedling and ‘pot’ can be transplanted together into a bigger pot or seed bed. Watering the seeds and seedlings will of course cause your egg boxes to get soggy and potentially fall apart, even if you use the lid as a base. The answer? Put the egg box into an empty, washed plastic meat or mushroom container. The perfect drip tray and another method of re-using items! Naturally these plastic trays can be used as drip trays for pots and plastic seed trays too. They’re also useful when you go away on holiday (ski-ing anyone?) as they can act as water reservoirs for house plants and in the greenhouse.
Recycling: plastic plant pots
Ok, you’re sitting there, reading this and thinking “that’s all very well, but what do I do with that teetering pile of plastic plant pots?” One solution coming up. Sort through them, putting split, or really dirty ones to one side in a recycling box. Yes, some of them are recyclable, although possibly not collected from your house. They may have a section for them at your local council depot. But you’re most likely to find the best place is your local garden centre. Many garden centres have a ‘bin’ for unwanted plastic plant pots, even the black plastic ones..
Go through what’s left, being ruthless about how many you really need. Those you don’t need put in a bin liner, and offer them to others who may need them. This may be through a recycling site such as Freecycle; or a local charity, school or church that does plant sales. If nobody wants them then recycle with the broken pots: sorted.
You’ll notice I haven’t overwhelmed you with ‘re-using’ ideas – I rather like the approach of ‘little by little’. I personally find that one or two new habits for recycling in your garden are more likely to be kept up. Feel free to ask me for more ideas on re-using, and I’ll put them into another blog.
And if you have Christmas money to spend, but don’t fancy hitting the sales in the shops, we’d like to remind you about our Gardening Gift Vouchers. Gardening Gift vouchers can be used for gardening lessons in your own garden and for all Plews services. Or you may like one of our gardening eBooks.
Do continue to email us with your queries and we will continue to resolve your gardening issues.
And for further gardening advice and inspiration, check out Plews Potting Shed blogs, including the selection below and our monthly Tipsheet – You could come and find us on Instagram Pinterest and Facebook too.
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