Reuse and recycle to make your pennies go further
No matter how hard you try to avoid it, Christmas always seems to leave us with mounds of packaging to dispose of. Cardboard, bubblewrap, wrapping paper, polystyrene, cards and envelopes, food cartons, plastic drinks bottles, the list goes on and on before we even get to mentioning the Christmas tree, door wreath and optimistically hung mistletoe.
When I was young my parents used to get their turkey from a local farmer and it arrived well wrapped up in a sturdy cardboard box with handles. We still use these boxes, several decades later, to store our Christmas decorations – but what can we do with the rest of the debris?
The good news is a lot of the rubbish can be used constructively to save money in the garden and in various areas of plant propagation and growth. Not only does this dodge the need to buy products when the growing season starts in earnest, it reduces landfill and feels very, very good in the process.
TOP TIP As you can’t recycle shiny Christmas paper, cut it up to use as fluttery bird scarer’s
Cardboard hacks
Top tips for the garden
1. Flatten out cardboard boxes and use them in spring to warm the soil and block weed growth. Anchor them down and afterwards, shred them and add to the compost.
2. When starting a no-dig system, build up layers of organic material (compost, leaf mould and well-rotted manure) on opened out cardboard boxes. It it better for soil health than digging it over and gives an instant bed for planting new flowers and crops.
How to put rubbish to good use
1. Break up large pieces of polystyrene and use them instead of crockery crocks in your containers. They drain well and are lighter, making it easier to move pots when needed.
2. Keep bubble wrap to insulate the inside of the greenhouse, and also use it to wrap around vulnerable plants in freezing conditions.
3. Plastic bottles can be cut in half and used as cloches for small pots of growing seedlings and supermarket fruit and veg punnets make excellent trays for swing seeds.
4. Don’t ditch your old, scratched unwanted Christmas CDs – they make excellent bird scarer’s when hung around the garden.
Find more tips, advice and articles like this at the Amateur Gardening website. Subscribe to Amateur Gardening magazine now.
