Use Your Garden To Recycle Just About Everything
(Page 4 of 5)
March/April 1973
By Jack Roland Coggins
Many gardeners faithfully add their helpful kitchen scraps to the soil during the warm months, but fail to do so in the winter when the garden is snow-covered or inaccessible. If your climate discourages expeditions to the vegetable patch in cold weather, just fill milk cartons with garbage and staple them shut. Then put the "bricks" of organic matter in boxes and store them in unheated garages or sheds, where the wastes will freeze and keep perfectly until spring . . . exactly when they're needed for use during tilling and planting.
RELATED CONTENT
By the way, while you're preparing your garbage for use at planting time, remember to keep coffee grounds separate and store them in milk containers of their own. Then, in the spring, when you're planting small seeds, thoroughly mix a cup of grounds with the contents of each packet so that the seeds will automatically be distributed better as you sow.
The common milk carton can also be one of your best garden tools in another way during spring and summer planting. Did you ever make a point of ordering seeds of some unfamiliar variety, and then forget to put them in at the right time because the packet was tucked away in a "safe" place? This needn't happen if you use the dairy industry's leftovers to organize your future flowers and vegetables.
Cut out one side of each of several milk cartons and use a different one of these "drawers" for storing each class of crop: one for roots, one for vines, another for flowers. Sort your files according to appropriate planting times and label them "Earliest Spring Planting", "Late Spring Planting", "Summer Planting", etc. This system is convenient and time-saving . . . and you won't forget to put in that row of oyster plant or parsnips when the seeds are "filed" along with more commonplace varieties such as carrots, turnips and onions.
GARDEN MULCH
Nowadays few of us are so unthinking as to burn fallen leaves or clipped grass. These organic materials usually go directly into the garden. If immediate use isn't practical or conven ient, however, you can store such treasures in the big double shopping bags supermarkets "give" you. Then, when you need organic mulch, you'll have it handy.
Paper, of course, needn't be just a container for mulch. Magazines, newspapers, old cardboard boxes and paper sacks piled thickly between rows of plants make an excellent moisture-saving cover and look neat when weighted down with stones. How many pounds of wastepaper have we thrown away or burned . . . and how many times have we complained later because we didn't have enough material to mulch the garden adequately during a scorching summer?
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
Next >>
