inishindie
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What can you re-use in the garden?Use polystyrene beads from packaging to mix with your compost when filling containers, they create pore spaces for water and allows air to flow, it will make the containers lighter too.
Make an interesting addition to paths walls and borders by incorporating bottles. Push the bottles into the ground or wall until only the base is showing, use different colours for a pleasing effect. There is crushed glass on the market at the moment, these look like shiny pebbles and are effective in pots as well as the garden.
Combine broken concrete, old bricks, wood and natural stone to form walls with texture and form in the garden.
Old railings can be turned into fences or trellises
If you have old paint in the shed this can be used to paint the railings or any old furniture that raised beds are made from.( I can’t think of anything else to do with old paint that would be safe)
Don’t discard your old bathroom, plant up the old toilet with petunias or turn the sink into a birdbath. The bath could make an interesting water feature; it would make an ideal home for a water Lily
any more??
cheers
Ian
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Yarrow
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sheet plastic for clearance mulches, to exclude weeds.
tyres and bins to plant potatoes.
hatstands for beans to grow up.
fishtanks/ jars/ glass panes for cloches and coldframes.
pots, paint tins and vases for forcing tubs.
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Treacodactyl
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There are many things that can be reused but personally I'd take great care what's introduced in case it causes long term problems. Polystyrene and plastics, for example, can stay in the soil for years and I'd worry about what it might leach. Glass bottles might look nice but what happens when they break?
I do re-used include those little pro-biotic drinks cartons to cover the ends of garden canes. They even catch snails and ear wigs in them which I feed to my hens.
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LynneA
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Not that I have access to as many these days, but the uses for plastic bottles are myriad. In fact I once did a presentation on it at college.
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Yarrow
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that reminds me, apparently in China they cut plastic bottles down their length and use them as guttering.
It's Not Easy featured crushed glass, filling a hole in the floor of a greenhouse, as a heat sink to warm the place at night and in winter.
CDs make a good bird-scarer of course, and old cables etc can be hung down a wall to train tomatoes/ cucumbers.
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dpack
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pallets are multi use whole or as planks
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Helen_A
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| Yarrow wrote: | that reminds me, apparently in China they cut plastic bottles down their length and use them as guttering.
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Thank you! I've got what I need to fix the guttering now... and feeling rather  that I didn't think of it myself....
(and no I didn't buy the bottle - I have relieved the neighbours recycling boxes of theirs, with their consents!!)
Helen_A who now just has to work out when she will be able to send DP up the ladder in daylight.... 
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jamsam
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we have a disused baby swing for roses ( minus the swing part) and old canes repainted and sealed with wax at both ends for light weight fence posts around soft fruit. ( the wax stops them absorbing too much water and splitting..essential in wales !) also broken earthenware cooking pots for plants and old hanging baskets for growing tomatoes in.
will have a think next time im out there....
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jamsam
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| dpack wrote: | | pallets are multi use whole or as planks |
this months country living has a pallet that has been sanded and varnished, hung on the wall back to front as a plate rack...im off to get pallets tomorrow!!
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Pea
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| jamsam wrote: | | dpack wrote: | | pallets are multi use whole or as planks |
this months country living has a pallet that has been sanded and varnished, hung on the wall back to front as a plate rack...im off to get pallets tomorrow!! |
Oooo Ive not opened mine yet, Im off to have a peek.
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LynneA
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Pallet plate rack very good, but Howard's pinched the mag off me to look at the chocolate cake recipe.
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