This post is dedicated to garden hacks and DIY garden projects. If your a thrifty/poor gardener like me DIY projects for the garden are right up your street.
It’s great to reuse and recycle things around your house to get the most old things destined for landfills or extended the life of recyclable items. This post will feature information to save you money on unnecessary garden centre purchases like plant labels, pots and containers.
I’ll keep adding the more hacks i find (or make up), so look out for “Thrifty gardening – DIY garden hacks special” part 2 sometime in the coming weeks. For similar posts on DIY projects (like making your own concrete planter) or general garden hacks. Go to the Guides section of the blog.
DIY Alternatives for
Thrifty Labelling –
Plant labels come in many different shapes, styles and materials. Some good for the environment others not so.
The cheapest plant labels you can usual get are made of cheap plastic and imho should not be used. Although convenient I can’t bring myself to buy essentially a bunch of single use non recyclable plastic.
Below are loads of alternatives to buying plant labels.
Alternative plant label #1
Any hard plastic- I’ve used all sorts of things over the years as a diy plant label.
Sweet pots, noodle pots, milk bottles. Basically anything durable to be poked into soil that you can write on with a sharpie.
Cut whatever it is you’ve selected into 12-15cm strips a couple of cm wide. Job done, use them, clean them (plastic lasts for 1000 years!) and once your done or they’ve degraded pop them in the recycling.
Alternative plant label #2
Broken pegs
I find them strewn all over the lawn if I can’t fix the broken ones the salvageable bits get turned into plant labels
Alternative plant label #3
Crockery/ tiles
We recently renovated our kitchen (I say renovated, I still haven’t finished a lot the jobs completely) I removed a lot of old tiles these can easily be recycled into long lasting plant labels for flower beds
Alternative plant label #4
Pebbles
Pebbles can look great when used for larger plant labels. Get creative and then weather proof.
Pots grow bags
Thrifty Pots, Bags and Planters
Alternative grow bag #1
Last year instead I couldn’t get hold of any tomato grow bags, I’d never grown my tomatoes on anything else but was forced to try something else. Basically what i did was convert standard compost bags in to planters.
- Cut them in half and make sure they have adequate drainage holes (scissors required)
- Added a thin layer or pebbles from the garden to aid drainage
- Reinforced the top of each bag with a bit of duck tape
- Re-filled the compost bags ensuring to flatten the bottom for stability.
- Planted out the tomatoes when they were ready to pot on.
They performed just as well as a Tomatorite style growbag, in fact in some cases better due to the greater depth the roots could stretch. BUT cost less and had more half bags than needed. I also used them to pot up my chillies too. Again worked just fine.