Money-Saving Tips for the Organic Gardener–Guest Post
Jul 29, 2010 cheap, organic, recycle
Organic gardening is a hobby many find relaxing and rewarding, and you can take a bite out of your produce bills by eating the delicious fruits and vegetables your efforts yield. However, between the many different planting and gardening tools and supplies you’ll need, the costs can really add up, and anything you can do to save a buck or two here and there will help. Fortunately, there are all kinds of simple money-saving gardening tips for the organic gardener looking to keep expenses under control.
Save Money on Seeds and Planting
If you’re looking for plant trays, hold off before buying brand-new ones. Many garden centers and nurseries will be more than happy to give you their used ones, so be sure to ask if you’re heading out there to pick up seeds or supplies. You can use them as starting pots; they work especially well for kicking off a hardy plant’s growth cycle.
Reusing household items for your gardening whenever possible is one of the best ways to save a few bucks. For example, rather than purchasing seed storage containers, you can use empty film canisters, which you can label to ensure you know which seeds are which. Separating individually started seeds in yogurt containers, plastic bakery trays or ice cube trays is another strategy you can use.
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Create your own hydroponic window farm
Jul 12, 2010 cheap, hydroponics, recycle
If I didn’t have a big house blocking my southern exposed window, otherwise I would have completely tried this myself. The basic idea is to take come recycled plastic bottles, use an air pump and some tubing to create an air water pump to push the nutrients to the top and gravity takes care of the rest.
The great part of this is that it is an open design community making and sharing new innovations as they are discovered. Here are the complete instructions of the most recent (version 3) of their system. They also offer a complete kit, you just have to provide the recycled bottles.
Via LifeHacker [via Window Farms]
Make a greenhouse out of plastic bottles
Jun 4, 2009 cheap, greenhouse, recycle
Not sure how long it would take to accumulate 1500 2-liter plastic bottles but if you happen to have that many piled up in your garage you have some makings for your own greenhouse.
Basic idea is you take the labels off the bottles, cut the tops off slide a pole through a hole in the bottom of the bottle, and repeat. After over a thousand iterations you have yourself a pretty cool looking greenhouse and saved most of over 1500 plastic bottles from ending up in a landfill.
This is not practical for construction for me though am considering a smaller version for a cold frame…I better start drinking up this summer.
If you want to see the full instructions check out the detailed plans.
via New World Geek
