Recycling And Re-use In Garden - Need Your Help Please!!!

I recycle garden fencing and compost bin mesh and stakes to re-use again and again. I don't have tomato cages, but I'm sure people re-use those.

I recycle all my yard wastes and turn them into compost. I recycle leaves, grass clippings, brush clippings, weeds, old flowers, sticks, twigs, etc.

Don't know if this is what you're looking for, though.

I live in the High Mojave Desert on the edge of Rosamond, CA. My garden has been carver out of the desert field next door to this trailer park. The dirt is poor at the best, so even the weeds get recyceled into it to help make it better. And I watch the trash bins and I've put chairs, tables, and other things out there to add to the " Look " of the garden.

Anything that was once alive is good and anything that made it through someone's digestive system is better. Still rock powers are of value and so are helpful hands.

Bill

I make planters out of discarded milk crates by lining them with weathered wood ripped to size with my table saw. Last year someone did a gut job on a building down the street. While replacing all their floor joists they threw a bunch of 5' long scrap I beams (the heavy trusses made of 2x4s) in the dumpster. I loaded them up in my van and this spring used them as the frame for a new 3'x10'x18"(high) wildflower planter. I'm always looking for through dumpsters on job sites for interesting pieces of scrap wood that can be made into a planter. Yesterday I saw a bunch of wood pallets in a dumpster down the street that gave me an idea and then realized I made too many damn planters this spring.

where i grew up people would take an old tire and cut it and turn it inside out to make a planter. Let's see if i can dfind a picture of what i mean...

Wow - this is NOT what I meant but how interesting!!

On the subject of pallets: They can be taken apart, run thru a planer, if you have one and the wood used for furniture like coffee tables.

Where I grew-up, people used old bathtub to make shrines for the Virgin Mary. The "fancy" ones had a light wired in the drain hole!

I'm thinking of getting a planer; they seem very useful. One of my neighbors dumpster dives these gut jobs of 100+ year old buildings and pulls out very old wood. The wood he pulls out kind of looks like crap or to the normal eye, garbage. After running it through the planer it looks great and he makes furniture out of it. Some of this wood has been aged for over 100 years and you can't buy this kind of aged wood anywhere even if you wanted.

invest in a good metal detector as well... a nail/screw etc can wreck havoc on plainer blades.

Look for a plainer that has some side to side adjustment in the blades... so if you get a nick in them, you can offset one (or more) of the blades to eliminate it.... otherwise, it'll be buying another set of blades or reshaping the edge on the ones you have.

We just built a Margarita Bar out of pallets for our fiesta!