5 Surprising Ways to Use Recycled ‘Garbage’ for a Better Organic Garden
Growing your own organic food is extremely gratifying, but adding recycling to the mix is like winning the lottery two days in a row. When you mix the self-sustaining practice of growing your own food with the environmentally supporting habit of recycling, you are helping the world two-fold, and you get some tasty offerings in the process.
Here are 5 ways to incorporate recycling into your gardening habit:
- 1. If you don’t use a clothesline – don’t throw away the lint from your dryer, either. Save the lint in an air-tight container and till it into your garden to help the soil retain moisture.
- 2. Recycle the fine print. After you read the newspaper, or junk mail printed on newspaper, shred it and put it in your compost bin.
- 3. Re–use fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps. Though you can just throw your kitchen scraps straight into the compost pile, you can also put them through a food processor, and use them around tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, pumpkins and more to feed growing plants. Peppers really love this trick, and you can expect bumper crops for feeding your plants so well.
- 4. Don’t throw the water away after you boil or steam vegetables. Once the water has cooled, use it to water your vegetables growing in containers. You’ll be happily surprised by how your growing vegetable plants respond to this recycled water.
- 5. To make azalea flowers bloom brighter, put leftover tea bags and coffee grounds around the roots of your plants. You can also just dig a hole near them and bury your used tea bags. It is up to you if you want to share your secret with the neighbor who ogles your incredible blooms.
Also be sure to check out this related article revealing 5 plants that you can grow from food scraps. Sometimes garbage just isn’t garbage.
Do you have more surprising organic gardening tips that involve recycling to share with Natural Society readers? Please share them below.
Growing organic goes way beyond using organic seeds and not using pesticides. You must always carefully consider what exactly is being put into the soil. Here are some things to be aware of….
• 1. If you don’t use a clothesline – don’t throw away the lint from your dryer, either. Save the lint in an air-tight container and till it into your garden to help the soil retain moisture.
I would not do this unless it’s from organic clothes, otherwise you are incorporating GMO cotton into your soil, also, polyester and other synthetic materials. And what about those toxic chemicals from your dryer sheets if you use them?
• 2. Recycle the fine print. After you read the newspaper, or junk mail printed on newspaper, shred it and put it in your compost bin.
Keep in mind that nearly all soy in the US is is GMO. Soy is used for ink. Also, what about all those toxic ink dyes?
• 3. Re–use fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps. Though you can just throw your kitchen scraps straight into the compost pile, you can also put them through a food processor, and use them around tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, pumpkins and more to feed growing plants. Peppers really love this trick, and you can expect bumper crops for feeding your plants so well.
Only if these scraps are organic. Again you are incorporating GMOs and pesticide residue in your soil.
• 4. Don’t throw the water away after you boil or steam vegetables. Once the water has cooled, use it to water your vegetables growing in containers. You’ll be happily surprised by how your growing vegetable plants respond to this recycled water.
Again, only if the vegetables are organic.
Again, only if the vegetables are organic.
• 5. To make azalea flowers bloom brighter, put leftover tea bags and coffee grounds around the roots of your plants. You can also just dig a hole near them and bury your used tea bags. It is up to you if you want to share your secret with the neighbor who ogles your incredible blooms.
Find out what your tea bags are made from. Some are most likely made from GMO cotton. Use only if the tea bag company says it’s from an organic source. Coffee grounds also can contain pesticide residue and other chemicals if it’s not organic.
So what exactly is wrong with cotton or soy being GM and putting the processed product in the ground?
I recycle my used paper towels into my compost pile. I buy recycled paper towels (Marcal) and use them in my kitchen for small “clean” jobs (like drying hands or dishes) several times until they’re almost falling apart (letting them dry in-between uses). Then I use them to wipe food off dishes one last time. From there they go into my compost pail/pile with food scraps to act as a “brown” ingredient (in lieu of leaves and such, though I also use shredded leaves since I don’t use enough paper towel). I realize the issues with BPA contamination in recycled paper products, but I choose to compost the paper towel anyways to keep the waste out of the landfill.
I’ve torn up greasy brown paper bags and non-coated paper plates and tossed them onto my pile (I recycle bags that aren’t dirty). Old potting soil goes either in the compost heap or spread out onto the yard to fill in any low spots (sometimes I put it in the garden beds). Plain brown cardboard boxes line the bottom of all my raised beds. It can be used as a foundation to lay down to start a new bed (with or without borders). Make sure to remove all the tape and labels first.
At the end of the growing season, I dump the contents of my compost tumblers into my raised beds and bury it in the soil–even if the compost isn’t broken down. I then cover the beds with several inches of shredded leaves to put them to rest for the winter. It gives something to the worms to eat for several months. In spring, I remove a little over half of the leaves and dig the rest into the bed; the scraps are nearly “gone” by that point. And yes (Cynthia), most of the food that goes on my pile is organic and non-GMO. If I have vitamins or supplements that I no longer need or that have expired, I toss them on the pile, too.
I do reuse the (cooled) water from cooking when possible, to water plants. I also rinse out my (raw) milk jugs with filtered water and use that to water tomato plants in the summer. (Also, a milk solution of 10% milk and 90% water can be sprayed directly on plant leaves to try combating powdery mildew.)
Dryer lint can also be stuffed inside empty toilet tissue rolls and be used as fire-starters, or it can be left outside in a bowl for birds and squirrels to pick through while looking for nest material. I have previously put lint on my compost pile. I prefer to use it as tinder, though. If you had enough of it saved up at one time, you could also use lint to make small throw pillows (as the stuffing, of course).
I’ve read tips where people have taken old carpet scraps and used them to smother grass and weeds in the garden to make pathways for walking. Though I haven’t done that, I have put old throw rugs out onto a brick patio to smother the weeds growing up through the cracks.
Small (clean) plastic yogurt cups and the like can be repurposed as seed-starting containers, once you poke some small holes in the bottom for drainage. Broken porcelain can be used in the bottom of clay pots to cover those big drain holes. It could also be used to make mosaic projects for the outdoors.
Little seed-starting vessels can also be made from empty cardboard tubes or newspaper. You can find tutorials on youtube for that. Old sheets can be used to temporarily cover frost-tender plants in emergencies. Old clothing can generally be cut up and used for various purposes. Old pantyhose can be used to tie climbing plants to their support posts. The net bags from onions can be used to sling melons that are growing up supports (for those growing melons vertically). The melon gets put in the bag and the bag gets tied to the support structure. Old T-shirts can also be used as melon slings.
Old shoes and boots can be used as planters, as can the drawers from old broken-down dressers. Used 3 and 5-gallon buckets from a bakery can be turned into plant containers. Glass jars and vases can be used for terrariums. The lids to cans could be metal stamped and used as plant markers (if you use a “safety” can opener). Letter stamps can be found at craft stores. Old forks can be bent and used to hold the plant markers. Old, but intact, windows can be used to create small cold-frames.
Three things that I had to purchase–but have been invaluable to me as a gardener–are window screen, burlap, and chicken wire. I bought big rolls of all these things, along with a bunch of those U-shaped garden pins. I use and reuse the material over and over each year. It’s a must for people like me living in urban areas where squirrels and other small animals live. I have to cover my beds (either the entire bed with the plants or just the soil) in order to keep squirrels (and cats) from digging in my nice loamy soil–even though there’s mulch on the soil. I also must cover the soil in any containers I use. It’s a huge pain when it comes to planting the crops but it keeps the squirrels from damaging the roots of my plants while burying their food, and it stops the cats from using the beds as litter boxes. I use the burlap in this way for some projects but mostly I use the burlap for plant protection. I’ve used it as frost protection and as a type of shade cloth in the summer.
My goodness, you do like to yap, don’t you? I bet no one likes to read your ridiculous soap box speeches.
Are you following me around now for no reason other than to bother me,
little kitty? Talk about unbalanced….. Why don’t you answer the
questions I’ve asked of you in the GreedMedInfo article before you go engaging
me in conversation in additional articles. It doesn’t seem like you
can manage that much so I’m not sure why you bothered. I can only
figure that you *really* don’t have a life.
Oh, and btw, the author *asked* people to list the things we do to recycle items into the garden. I had a reason to comment, in other words. And you didn’t.
Blah blah blah…..more blah blah blah…the rantings of an ignoramus are only funny on the rarest of occasions.
Uh-huh….So little kitty, what are your ideas for recycling normal garbage waste into the garden? That *is* the topic of the article. Let’s hear what you have to say about the actual topic….
troll…
ROFLMAO. Why don’t you try answering the question without making yourself look so pathetic?