Make a container garden from things that you might consider as “waste” and to be tossed into the trash
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
As spring has sprung now in most places of the northern hemisphere it is time to prepare our gardens and also and especially our container gardens. Container gardens are a great way to grow food in small spaces and you can use that system as much in a garden, a paved yard, a patio, a balcony or even a flat roof.
The best part is, you don't have to go out and buy pots at the store to get started. Put on your "reuse it" thinking cap on and find things around the house that are free and would make great pots. Here are some ideas to spark your imagination.
Woven baskets still hanging around from the holiday gift basket exchanges are an option. You'll need plastic pots to sit inside them, since the basket itself will decompose if something is grown directly in it.
Work boots that are too old to use as footwear might still be in good enough condition to grow some herbs.
Old tires make for great containers that aren't going to be moved around much, since there isn't a bottom. If used on a patio, for instance, a liner can be added in the tire or tires to hold the soil.
Galvanized tin containers often arrive during the holidays as gift basket containers. Keep them around since they're perfect for growing produce. Tin or aluminum cans from your pantry can end up as containers rather than getting tossed into the recycling bin.
Wire baskets, wooden boxes, cracked bowls or vases that have been glued back together, even novelty items like sinks, children's wagons and wheelbarrows. Just about anything can be turned into a container for a garden.
The washing-up bowl that you tossed in the shed because it is old and grubby and has been replaced long ago. A couple of holes punched – or in my case shot – into the bottom (I use a .22 air rifle) and you have a great planter for veggies such as salad leaves.
So this spring as you plan your garden, look around the house at everything that could end up being transformed into a great container for herbs, spices, and produce for your kitchen.
If you want to go further afield as to from where to get “containers” there are what are called “builders' bags” in Britain. They are made of woven polyethylene fibers and are great for sort of big round raised beds. I am employing a number of them in my vegetable growing.
You will, if you but look, find stuff that other people are tossing into dumpsters often make great planters.
For food growing I have a little reservation as to tires as I understand that the steel radial belted ones release cadmium into the soil and which is then absorbed by the crop and finally by use who eat the food.
Being no scientist I may worry too much about that, maybe, but... I am a little reluctant to do my potato growing in them, for instance.
I know that many people do and I even know of some market gardeners in the US for instance that do. But... better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.
© 2009
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Turn trash into container garden pots
