Upcycling and Recycling Items for Your Garden, Tips for Increased Sustainability

Home vegetable gardening at it's core is about sustainability. A sustainable venture of any kind requires the least amount of inputs from the outside. Upcycling and recycling are both fantastic ways to make your gardening experience more sustainable and to reduce the amount of inputs.

Below you'll find some ideas to re-purpose items to be used in your garden, as well as ideas to collectively improve your sustainability.

• Old cd's that are too scratched to play or are otherwise undesired can be strung up in the garden to frighten pests.
• Old cassette and VHS tapes can be used as a pest deterrent as well. Simply cut lengths of tape and hang them around the garden area. You could even go so far as to string the tape all the way around the garden. A combination of the reflected light and the sound the tape makes in a breeze makes your garden a scary place for some pests.
• Old nylons and mesh vegetable sacks can be used to hold scraps of bar soap near an outdoor faucet for clean up after gardening chores. Now you have a use for all those bar soap slivers you thought were too small for anything.
• That old soap on a rope you received as a gift years ago can be placed near an outdoor spigot for cleanup as well.
• Use old newsprint covered in straw or leaves in place of landscape plastic or fabric. This will conserve water and break down to compost to enrich soil. Best of all, it's not made from petroleum.
• Allow a portion of your yard to go natural. This will increase the number of beneficial insects, as well as reduce the time, money and effort you spend mowing. This will in turn reduce emissions and fuel usage. You may also receive some flak from family and neighbors with this one, simply because this is out of the "norm".
• Old concrete from demolition projects as well as some boards, can be used for walkways and paths in the garden. Some truly unique Flagstone esque paths can be created with broken concrete.
• Old linens can be used as floating row covers to protect from frost and freeze. The cover can be supported with wire, saplings, branches or anything that will keep the fabric from touching the plants.
• Scrap wood, saplings and branches can be used to make fence and trellis structures. Some really amazing fences and trellises can be made with woven saplings.
• Scrap wood, brick, concrete, rocks and even logs make wonderful raised beds.

• An old sink or tub can be set up on a pedestal and can be used to clean garden produce. We have a tub set up here for this purpose, and it also makes a great place to bathe the dog in the summer.
• Old cardboard paper towel and toilet paper rolls can be cut down and placed around transplanted seedlings to prevent cutworms.
• Short lengths of saplings and small diameter branches, when combined with recycled twine make great row markers and planting bed markers. This will keep your planted rows straight and keep you from walking into your planted beds.
• Compost yard waste and kitchen scraps. Don't use yard waste that has been treated with chemicals (lawn fertilizer and the like).
• Old translucent drink containers make great mini hothouses, perfect for frost and freeze protection.
• Old clothing and branches combine to create a once standard, but now largely forgotten garden heirloom, the Scarecrow. Which may not really work as a pest deterrent, but it sure does look neat.
• Human and pet hair can be used to deter burrowing pests. Simply plug a clump of hair into the underground path.
• Old fencing materials can be turned into a vegetable trellis. While an old wire fence may not be strong enough to keep the dog in the yard, it will likely still support a row of Sugar Ann Snap Peas.
• Save egg cartons and other small food containers for starting seedlings in early spring.
• Old kitchen tools make great garden tools. And it will give you an excuse to get those awful plastic utensils out of your kitchen.
• Chickens are excellent for controlling garden pests while contributing nutrient rich manure at the same time. Guinea hens are even better at pest control and make fabulous watch dogs (better than some dogs in fact). Be warned, Guinea hens are very noisy when they see something that excites them.
• Old tin cans loaded with some full flavored beer spell doom to garden slugs.
• Let your chickens work your compost pile. You could even consider putting the compost directly in the chicken run. Not only will they mix the pile, they will add manure, with no extra work on your part. This will also reduce food consumption, another bonus.
• At the end of the garden season, and early in the spring, let the chickens till your garden. A dozen chickens will make short work of tilling most backyard gardens.
• When pulling garden weeds, share the "bounty" with your feathered friends. They will love you for it. The same can be done with any insect pests from the garden.

These ideas just scratch the surface in our quest to increase our sustainability. Recycling, upcycling and employing the help of our animal companions all help reduce our dependence on a system that is too fragile to depend upon. Growing our own food and producing our own inputs not only leads to increasing our health, it also makes us feel good. And feeling good, is priceless.