What are your best 'resuses?

[DidymusAmbrosius]

I'm trying to make a bigger effort to reuse things for the garden, rather than buy new/specialist items. e.g. I've found that 6 toilet roll pots fit into the cut-off bottom of the milk carton neatly to make mini-seedling trays.

Hoping to steal some top suggestions from you all to aid me...

What unsuspecting items do you find most useful to reuse in the garden?

What are your best 'resuses? SHOULD BE What are your best 'reuses?

Milk cartons here too... I use them as cloches for seedlings which have already been put in the ground, in the event of a cold spell (Scotland, so quite common!)

Ah - that'll give me a use for the tops when I've cut the bottoms off the carton

I use empty snail shells to put on the top of bamboo canes. Except actually I hardly ever use bamboo canes because I just search for straight or forked sticks or twigs that have come off the trees and use those to prop my plants

I use the inside cardboard bits from toilet rolls to plant seeds in, when they get bigger they are transplanted into old pot noodle pots

The biggest and best reuse is to use everything that you can to make compost. Anything that was once a plant can be used to make compost for future plants.

I use yogurt pots for pots, just slice a hole in the bottom, use any plastic tray to put things on to water, I've put leek and onion roots in the ground to carry on growing, Same with celery if you have a tiny bit of root it will re-root and carry on growing. I use mowings to mulch potatoes. I grow from seeds from fruit and veg. I cut sticks from random hazels growing in the woods to grow peas up, I used an old basket, lined, to put my sweetpeas in to grow up the hazel sticks.

I also seed save relentlessly so I only buy a variety of seed once.

I think once you are organic, you try and find a use for everything and try and buy nothing apart from new seed and planters, with compost until you have enough of your own. Which I make from leaves mowed, bagged and left for 18 months .

Not actually garden, but plants - the really big yogurt pots are good for pots of supermarket herbs on the windowsill. You can either repot them or just use them as a secondary pot, for holding water in. The tiny pots that the supermarket use are far too small but if you keep them quite moist they can last several weeks, more if you repot them with more compost.

Love the image of empty snail shells tottering on top of canes.

Also love the excuse to eat more pot noodles

All our garden waste is sent up to the compost heaps on the allotment to make compost to feed the soil there. However, I definately need to try regrowing veggies from the roots of ones I've already eaten

I use large size plastic bottles cut into slices and wrap the top with copper tape for cheapo copper slug rings. They seem to work ok.

I plant seeds in egg boxes and then plant the seedling in the egg box compartment in the soil when it needs potting up - the cardboard decomposes.

I use plastic fruit trays as drip trays - obv only the ones with no holes in.

LFT test strips can be made into plant labels - I have a huge bagful (too many bloody children needing testing in the house 🙄)

DH has deconstructed folding wooden garden chairs to make bug hotels, wooden Auricula Theatre and has now plans for decorative fencing. He turned an old pine bedstead into an Arbour seat.
My contribution has been to put China birds, with holes in the bottom on top of the canes. They must have been a fashionable ornament once, as I keep finding them in charity shops.

I'm reusing any plastic food trays for seed trays in the greenhouse and on windowsills, with other ones upturned on top to make little mini greenhouses. I've also put small seed trays (reusing ones offered for free on our village whatsapp) inside supermarket plastic bags to germinate seeds. I've also manged to move the unused workbench from the garage to the greenhouse and it's perfect to work at, plus the old brick oil tank stand outside now has a wooden top made from old decking to be an outside potting bench. Very satisfying to reuse things!

The plastic containers you get from takeaways make good seed trays. If you poke some holes in the bottom you can then sit them in their lids for the water to drain into.

I cut up plastic milk containers into pointy strips to make plant labels.

The garden at my old house was filled with all sorts of reuses. The metal gate on the wall was used as a trellis for honeysuckle. The handle broke off an old wok so I filled it with stones and water to become a bird bath. Toilet bowl, colander and a teapot as a planter. Old tent poles to make a fruit cage frame. Upturned bottle half buried into the ground to make the boarder edging. I used to work in a kitchen so could easily get hold of big catering sized tins of beans and used those as planters. Cut up milk bottles to make plant labels.

Am loving these suggestions. Plant labels is a great one as I have many seedlings and too often don't want to 'waste' a proper label so just try to remember what they are - with the predictable outcome that I forget!

Tent poles for a fruit cage frame also one I could use, I think.

Using more food/fruit trays as seed trays/mini greenhouses sounds like it could be good here, too.

Thanks!

Plant labels from old milk bottles is genius - just done that now!

I also make plant labels from milk cartons. How do others mark them? - I use a Sharpie but it tends to wear off when exposed to the elements.
I also make plant labels from ice-cream sticks.

Quality Street (other brands are available!) tubs from Christmas - both the lid and the tub hold 6 x 6cm pots perfectly

Excuse the untidy state of my growhouse!

I cut the bottom off plastic bottles, then when planting a new shrub, plant the old bottle pointy end down, so when watering I can reach the roots - must do when planting on a slope

Quality Street drip trays and water funnels for new shrubs are both excellent tips!

I use the clear plastic grapes containers from Costco to grow seeds in - they have hinged clip down lids so are like mini greenhouses in themselves and brilliant for starting seeds off. I use supermarket grapes containers without lids upside down as lids for seeds planted in pots, to protect from slugs - both they and the Costco ones have ventilation holes.

So many good ideas, I am definitely pinching the China birds and snail shell cane topper ideas. My best idea was not recycling the wire shelves from various plastic grow houses over the years, they are perfect for baffling squirrels and foxes trying to.dig up bulbs, eitherlaid directly on the ground or slotted together over a group of pots, just weigh them down with something.

Love these ideas. I use an old bbq to grow wildflowers, use an old yoga mat as a kneeling pad, and use a wooden hanger to store twine.

The old hanger for twine is genius!