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Eco-Friendly Gardening: Recycling Guide

We gardeners are generally a resourceful lot when it comes to eco-friendly recycling, and here are a host of the tips and tricks we use.  Some of them are a touch weird (- mostly Laura’s judging by the presence of a banana skin on a fern in our feature picture above) , but you’d expect that, wouldn’t you…?

Elaine

1.Newspapers.  Recycle newspapers into pots – it’s good fun!  I’d recommend making them double thickness for a bit more sturdiness. (We sell the kits in our shop by the way – there’s a link to a short video on how to use it, at the bottom.) Newspapers are also super-useful as a mulch, for lining runner bean beds, to line pots to reduce the need for watering, and in no-dig gardening. And did you see Monty wrapping his dahlias in them on Gardeners World last night?!

Making paper pots to fill with compost for my seedlings – plastic-free recycling at its best!

2.Loo roll holders.  These cardboard tubes are ideal for seedlings in the spring, especially those that like a long root-run like broad beans or sweet peas.  They disintegrate quite fast, but that’s okay because by then you’ll be planting the seedlings outside into their flowering positions – no root disturbance, because you’ll plant the tube as well!

3.Wooden pallets.  These can be recycled to make garden furniture, raised beds, upright pallet planters – all sorts.  We use them to divide the sections of our compost heap, but a pallet also made a very acceptable wall and stand for the counter and ‘cooking’ area in the grandchildren’s mud kitchen!

Old pallets make the perfect walls for the little ‘uns mud garden!

4. Tights as tree ties. Don’t chuck away tights once they are holed and therefore useless for all the festive discos you’re invited to.  They make excellent tree ties, saving money on the fancy bespoke ones, and not cutting into the bark the way that wire would.

5. Re-use plant labels.  I’ve never found a better way of labelling seedlings, cuttings, etc. than having a heap of the cheapest white plastic labels and an HB pencil.  Every winter, I collect up all the used labels, wash and dry them and use an ordinary rubber to erase the writing.  Lots of mine have lasted for many, many years.

A very low-tech solution to the problem of plant-labels

6. Coffee grounds.  We do drink a lot of coffee in our household, but only recently found out that the grounds poured into their runs deter moles (my husband’s lifelong foes!). It worked!  At least this summer it did.  Used coffee grounds are also extremely useful for making soil more acidic, if you’re hankering after azaleas, Pieris and the like.

7.Leaf mould.  Do not waste this magic material!  Collect those damp leaves into a holed plastic bag, close it and leave it for a year.  Hey presto! Superb mulch, soil conditioner or addition to homemade compost.

Recycle those leaves into this gorgeous stuff!

Laura

8. Top dress your pots. I think we all now know that making our own potting compost is a Good Thing. However without the factory sterilisation process your resulting concoction will have an inordinate number of weeds popping up. So treat your pots as you would your borders and top dress them with something like wood chip or grit to reduce the competition these weed seedlings create.

Adding a top dressing to a pot
Adding a weed-seed-free topping dressing to a pot of your home-made compost will keep the weeds at bay.

9. Rainwater. Similarly, harvesting rain water should be second nature nowadays, but don’t think you have to have state of the art galvanised tanks for this purpose, any large receptacle will do and an old beer barrel can be beautiful as well as functional

Harvesting water in a beer barrel
Recycling an old beer barrel – note also the re-use of pig netting in place of bought trellis and the use of home-grown bamboo canes

10. Embrace imperfect clay pots. The wet and frost can work away at clay pots splitting pieces off over time. But they can still be used to house plants such as primulas or sempervivums, or can just be used as a decorative installation for little invertebrates or maybe a toad or two.

Broken clay pots
Terracotta clay pots can be useful even when broken, not least by providing a safe dry haven for mini-beasts

11. Save string for plant ties. I know this makes me look like a mad cat lady but I never throw any pieces of string away – they’re in a special drawer to be used for tying up climbers in place of that almost criminal single-use plastic item – the dreaded cable tie ☠️

String holding up a climber, Lapageria rosea
Any piece of string, no matter how tatty, is preferable to a single-use plastic cable tie. I always use a bow as my knot so it’s easy to take off without cutting to use again elsewhere.

12. Take up beach combing on Atlantic coasts. Winter walks on windy western coasts have yielded many garden installations from driftwood to beach buoys, but the real Red Letter find is a storm-blown fishing crate. Seemingly made of the toughest plastic material known to man the shallow ones are perfect for carrying around young plant pots and the deeper ones make excellent hard wearing planters.

Beach combed fishing crates are ideal for the garden
Beach-combed nirvana! I love to look at the company names and geographical origins of these sturdy additions to our tray and planter collection.

13. Recycle old bras as melon/ squash holders. Whilst Elaine is tying up trees with laddered tights, vertically grown fruits such as melons and squash can benefit from the extra support an old bra can provide to lift and separate.

14 Re-use banana skins to fertilise hanging ferns. Well Elaine did warn you that some of my suggestions may be a bit left of centre, and I’ve found that banana skins draped across the back of my stags horn fern act as the perfect slow release fertiliser for this otherwise hard to reach specimen. So if you were wondering what our future image was all about – now you know!


Caroline

15. Plastic juice bottles. Never let the opportunity of a large plastic juice bottle pass you by (although I do have more of the glass wine ones at my disposal). Sawn through with a bread knife they make excellent strimming collars for vulnerable infant shrubs and a frontline defence for seedlings against slug attacks in spring.

16. Pillows. And please don’t throw out pillows once they’ve reached the stage where you dread guests ‘stripping the bed’ and discovering what they actually slept on. No, follow advice we learnt from Sue Kent on Gardener’s World. Use them to put at the bottom of your bigger pots then top up with your compost. Pillows hold moisture and add mass but next to no additional weight.

A pink rhododendron flowering in a large pot
My Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ flowering very happily on top of a feather pillow!

17.Scouring sponges. Similarly after these have been worn out cleaning up after the The3Growbags’ questionable culinary skills (Laura’s are quite good TBF), we’ve been popping them in the bottom of our smaller pots. Make sure they are the eco-friendly ones and not plastic. They retain moisture exactly where you want it – at root level.

18. Wood ash. While we’re still able to have woodburners, think about saving the ash. Slugs are NOT keen on oozing their way over the top of it 👍, and being strongly alkaline, it’s a useful additive to compost for plants that dislike acidic conditions.

19. Yoghurt pot labels. And finally, if you’re germinating seedlings for charity plant sales, just label them with strips from yoghurt pots. Your customers might not recycle the white plastic ones like Elaine, and the writing on the inside of a yoghurt pot will certainly last for the four or five weeks it needs to in its new home.

strip cut from yoghurt pot with the words 'Cosmos 'purity' written on it
Empty yoghurt pots (0% fat obviously) provide an excellent partnership with a sharpie pen to provide medium-term plant labels

Have you got some great ‘green’ ideas for recycling items for garden use? We’d love to hear about them!


Here is the short video on how to make paper pots using the lovely little wooden kit we have in our shop.


They may have been slow to get going, but these lovely flowers are perfect for giving you a marvellous lift in the dark, dank days of November – a worthy choice for Louise’s Great Plant of the Month:

hanging blooms of Fuchsia 'Delta's Sara' with the words Great Plants the Month overlaid

NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.


We’re really excited about these bee socks, and we think you will be too! They’re crafted from recycled yarn and feature a classic heel, just like granny used to knit. Plus, they have a cool, offbeat design that’s all about bees. Check them out here – we’re sure you’ll love them as much as we do!

Crossed feet, wearing socks featuring bees, on a table

By the3growbags

We're three sisters who love gardening, plants and even the science of horticulture but we're not all experts. We'd love everyone even remotely interested in their gardens to be part of our blogsite.

8 replies on “Eco-Friendly Gardening: Recycling Guide”

I always keep old shoe and bootlaces as ties for plants. Old net curtains,if you have any ,for that extra protection in an unheated greenhouse. I’ve even put old trainers in the bottom of big pots to save on compost!

Hi Sylvia, Elaine here. That’s three we hadn’t thought of! Some of the footwear I use in the garden are fastened with old bits of string anyway – somehow looking like Worzel Gummidge doesn’t seem to matter so much when I’m out there (though Caroline has been known to be a little scornful….) I don’t think I’ve got any old net curtains, but I’ve certainly got a few pairs of ancient holed trainers that could be put to better use than going straight to landfill. Happy gardening and thank you for writing in.

I scrunch up the sport’s section of my Saturday newspaper and put it into my kitchen waste bin, prior to putting into my compost bin. Best place for all that football nonsense

Your comment really made me laugh, Helen! Elaine here, and I feel much the same about most football. I don’t restrict my recycling of newspapers to only the sports pages, though that does seem to be a very eco-friendly use for them! All the best.

Good idea, Jackie! Elaine here. You’re right that these lolly sticks do rot and become unreadable quite quickly, but as long as you warn people that they are pretty short-term, no problem at all. All the best from the3Growbags

I,too,recycle plastic plant labels..I gather them up, buy a tester matt paint pot in white or pale yellow and give them one or two coats. Black Sharpie on yellow is best for less than perfect eyesight.

Thank you for writing in, Jil. Elaine here. That is a really good idea, and I, for one, much appreciate the extra detail about what colours are best for those with rather dodgy (or ageing!) eyesight…..need all the help I can get, frankly! All the best and happy gardening.

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