Michigan Gardening: Money saving garden tips posted here, 1 by Loon

Loon wrote:
I use popcicle sticks to mark things with. I buy them for my little granddaughter and just save them.

I also use the white styrofoam cups to pot up seedlings into. I start them in the peat pellets. I poke a hole in the bottom of the styrofoam coffee cups first. Works great and they're sterile and cheap if you buy them at the dollar general store.

Recycle everything you can. Use unusual items to plant things into. I have a galvanized double wash tub I got off freecycle to plant veggies into. I keep it right by the house so it's handy to snip lettuce or pull an onion out of for supper. You can plant flowers into old boots or whatever you have around. Let your imagination be your guide. Saves on buying pricey containters. Just make sure it has good drainage. I'm thinking of recycling my granddaughter's potty chair to a planter when she's done using it. It is wood and well made by the Amish and I think would be a sweet reminder of her filled with pretty flowers.

You can use an old ladder as a trellis for growing pole beans on or beautiful morning glories. Sometimes you can find them in the garbage. People just throw them away. I'm using an old wood ladder now as a roost for my hens. They love it. The rounded rungs are just right for their feet.

Look around at yard sales for anything you can make use of in gardening. I was able to collect about 20 galvanized watering cans over the years that way. Got them for a buck or two. They come in handy for me now to water things too far from the house hose. I load them all up in the back of my RTV and fill them with the hose then drive around watering everything. You can paint them up cute and use them for garden art and fill them with water too and save yourself dragging the hose out all the time. Keep some fertilizer on board and add a bit before you water.

Take an old 5 gallon bucket and fill with course sand. Add some old motor oil to it. When you are finished using your shovel or hoe or shears, dip them up and down into the oily sand and it will sharpen your tools and keep them from rusting. You can even leave a shovel in there if you want. It's a good way to recycle old oil. Invest in good tools and take good care of them.

If you wife wears nylon hose you can talk old hose and cut it into strips and use it for plant ties. Works great and it's gentle on the stems and stretches as the plants need it to.

If you have an old stump and don't have the money to have it ground up use it to stage a bird feeder or use it for a plant stand.

Recycle old pieces of carpet or rugs into the garden. You can lay them in the pathways or wherever you want to smother vegetation. I keep an old wood picnic table by the gate of my vegetable garden. I keep an old piece of carpet under it to keep the weeds and grass down and save me from having to try to mow under it. We use that old table for everything. Makes a good spot to sit and rest and a good work station for various chores we're doing out in the garden. It came in so handy we put another table out there last year.

Old bushel baskets come in handy for when you're weeding or pruning or gathering veggies. I have about 5 of them and would be lost without them. They are lite and yet study with handles. Old buckets work good for the heavy gathering like apples.

Don't be shy in asking friends, neighbors or strangers even for a cutting or division of something you spot at their house you like. Most gardeners are more than happy to share and it's a great way to get free flowers. As a young bride in my first new home I had neighbors come over and bring me a piece of this or that for a garden. They are all dead now and I still have some divisions of things they gave me decades ago and think of them fondly when I come across their gifts in the garden. Visit garden clubs annual plant sales. You can get great plants cheap there.

You can make a sturdy fence cheap. It's hard work though. My neighbor took some trees out of his woods and used them for poles which he sunk deep in the ground. Then he attached good wire fencing to the poles all around. Keeps the deer and rabbits out. It's 8 foot high. Around here you have to fence or you won't get anything to eat. The animals will rob you.

Well, that's all that comes to mind this morning. I'm sure I'll think of more later. Oh, some folks start seeds inside egg cartons. I've never done it though.