Recycling Tips for Gardening

Recycling used to be a novelty or considered clever, eccentric, or frugal.  Now we know it is necessary to protect our resources and environment.

Here are some useful ideas:

• Use old pantyhose, cut in lengths crosswise to tie up tomato plants

• Many discarded household items make good plant collars that foil cutworms.  Try bottomless and topless cans, paper cups, strips of newsprint and cardboard tubes from paper towels cut into 3" sections

• Plastic and cardboard egg cartons serve well as containers for starting seeds indoors.  The plastic cartons retain moisture and last longer, but cardboard ones are biodegradable so you can put them right into the garden along with your new plants

• Empty egg shells make good pots for seed starting; crushed, they are fine plant food - put them right into your compost heap or garden soil

• A heavy polyethylene bag makes a perfect plant cover on chilly nights

• Use popsicle sticks to mark off individual plants.  For row markers, try straight branches pruned off trees or shrubs; make a few holes in the seed packet used for that row and thread it on the branch tip

• Don't throw away fireplace ashes!  They should be put straight onto your compost heap - or your garden soil.  Do the same with coffee grounds as they attract earthworms

• Grapefruit hulls make terrific slug traps.  Place them, dome-side up, in your garden at night.  In the morning, you'll find the slugs underneath

• Airtight film canisters are great containers for saving seeds

• To ensure that there is an insect-eating toad in your garden, make a "toad house" from an inverted flowerpot.  Dig a small hole underneath and keep it watered

• Create a mini-compost heap by putting refuse in a plastic garbage bag.  Use household and garden leftovers, sprinkling with fertilizer and lime every 2-3 shovelfuls.  Keep adding materials until the bag is full, then pour in a quart of water and fasten.  The mixture will compost very quickly and you don't have to turn it.  This works really well and is very tidy.

Courtesy of Gardens for All, the National Association for Gardening.