Use Your Garden To Recycle Just About Everything
Discover the secret of turning trash into tools, to get you started - here's a Garden Recycling List to glance at before you toss anything out.
March/April 1973
By Jack Roland Coggins
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A milk carton, cut to form a drawer, makes a handy cabinet for filing seed packs according to their appropriate needs.
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Every gardener worthy of the name knows that the garden is the perfect recycling center for almost any organic waste. I'd be willing to bet, for instance, that — if you have your own garden and aren't reading this article just to enjoy the beauty of my prose — you also have a compost pile to which you faithfully cart grass clippings, kitchen garbage and any other suitable material for the enrichment of your vegetable patch.
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Perhaps, though — even if you're so used to composting that you look at cooking scraps and think "fertilizer"you haven't yet formed the useful habit of recycling inorganic household waste into real or potential garden equipment. True, tin cans and plastic meat trays may not seem much like "tools" at first glance . . . but my own experience has convinced me that every discard is usable and some are downright necessary.
I've found that the secret of turning trash into tools is to start collecting handy-looking objects well before they're actually needed. (They won't be in the way if they're stored neatly on shelves or in boxes.) That way, when you come to use the junk items, you'll have a good supply ready.
What sort of trash should you collect? That's easier to decide if you have a few potential uses in mind. You'll develop your own favorite tricks as you go along, but — just to get you started — here's a Garden Recycling List to glance at before you toss anything out.
LIGHT REFLECTORS
Do you know that reflected light has been proved effective in helping to repel plant-eating insects, including aphids? Or that some plants enjoy improved health and productivity when they're provided with additional reflected sunlight?
These bits of information are all the more encouraging when you realize that no special, expensive equipment is needed to give your plants the benefits of reflected light. In fact, many of us throw out odds and ends every day that would be perfect for this use.
Consider those shiny metal lids cut from food cans, for instance. I save mine and use them for reflectors by placing them on the ground under the foliage of sunlight-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers. As a result, I get bigger, better plants and fruit and have much less trouble with insects.
OK, what about the big squares of aluminum foil that have already been used once in the kitchen? I save mine and wrap them around small rocks which I distribute in the strawberry beds. That may sound like a peculiar thing to do, but it really does hasten the ripening of the berries even in cooler, partly shaded areas. Why? Because the rocks absorb and hold heat during the day and release it around the plants during the cool nights of the late spring ripening period.
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