Reused-repurposed-recycled

If you have read more than one of my blog entries, you are aware that I use whatever works.  I have somethings in my gardening gear that I bought new and paid a dear price for it.  Those tools have been worth the extra money I have spent.  I still have the same two trowels I bought 25 years ago, and they are not showing any signs of giving out.  Other times I use found items to work for my gardening needs. Plastic sheeting from old greenhouses is still good enough for drop cloths and tarps.  Containers are tops on my list.  Do not be too proud to stop and pick through someone else's discards.  People put good containers at the curb because they changed their color scheme.  Other items found at the curb that weren't made for plants can also be used for potting up.  Just make sure there is drainage out the bottom, make a hole yourself if you have to.

Rummage sales are the next best place to add to the garden treasures.  My tomato cages were twenty-five cents a piece and still going strong two decades in. Plant stakes can be fashioned out of all kinds of things.  I have bamboo salvaged from a garbage heap.  The orange snow fence was found in a ditch from an old construction site.  This year it is a pea trellis.  Our city forestry department has wood chips for the scooping at their self-help disposal site.  Other communities near-by compost their leaf collections and put them out on a first come, first served basis.

Our gravel base has moved twice in our yard.  It was put down by the previous owner around the pool.  The pool came out and the gravel and sand went into different piles.  The lumber from the deck has been used three different ways already.  The latest project is a wood rack for the fire pit we recently updated for our backyard.  The wood to 

fill it has come from downed trees and branches removed from our own yard.  (The wood still has to be moved from the old location.  Might get the teenager to do that.)
There is still a stack in the garage with various projects in mind.

The previous owners also invested a bunch of money into tons of Lannon stone, a local commodity.  We have dug it out of collapsed hills and walls to rebuild the terraces in the yard.  My husband put in block steps which were from a display at the local stone company, purchased at a fraction of the original price.  Materials are every where if you just look.

With a little thought and creativity, you can do some fun things with the right materials.  Do some reading and learn how to do it right so you don't have to do it again. My neighbor told me how a landscape company put in the original Lannon stone walls.  They didn't do it right which is why they were buried under eroded slopes instead of holding them back.

Be on the look out for things at the curbs and alleys at this time of year. People are cleaning out their garages and yards, so the materials will be out there for the taking.  Even if you get just one season out of an old chair, it just might make a great plant stand for that urn you found over on 14th Street.  Bed rails can be a bean trellis.  Garden gates could hold up your cucumber vines.  Use discretion.  You don't want to become Fred Sanford.