Last updated on October 23rd, 2023 at 08:19 pm
In today’s post we will see how to recycle: Old wooden benches, old ropes or strips made with plastic bags, sticks, pipes, metal bars, pumpkins and old clothes.
Wooden pallets, plastic drums that can be used to make a vegetable garden or a vertical garden, containers of different types or even… a recycled washing machine! All these things we have seen in different gardens around the world.
Contents
Recycling in the organic garden
One of the advantages of recycling in the garden is that there are things that we no longer need to buy, since we make them ourselves. Or well… rather than making them, we get them and reuse them.
But it’s not just about saving money by making our garden with recycled materials: recycling is one of the most important aspects of an ecological and sustainable garden.
In addition to recycling materials and objects in the garden as we see in this and in the previous post, we can reuse natural elements: water, crop residues, dry leaves, stones ….
Well, by collecting and reusing rainwater for example.
Composting is also a technique based on the use of residues and wastes. With these materials we can make compost, one of the best fertilizers and fortifiers for the organic garden.
Another thing that comes to mind with which we can recycle in the garden is making mulching or mulching reusing tree bark, grass clippings, stones ….
Well, I have already given you some examples of recycling other types of “things” in the garden… Now we continue with the recycling of materials:
Wooden planks
In the therapeutic garden of the Carabanchel Alto Health Center they had a carpenter by profession and several handyman in the team. When the City Council donated the old benches they had replaced, the gardeners of this urban garden created beds with nails and hammers.
Strings or strips of plastic bags
Also in the garden at the health center we saw this trellising mesh that they had made by intertwining ropes and attaching them to wooden frames.
It occurs to me that for this type of trellising the system of joining strips of plastic bags could work perfectly well instead of ropes. If you have small children they might find the idea of building something like this out of plastic bags entertaining and fun:
You can also use pipes, such as those of the structure for sieving compost that we saw yesterday in the first part of the post. Anything long and resistant can be reused or recycled in the garden to make trellises. They will be easy to find in scrap metal shops, construction sites, blacksmiths…
Pumpkins
In Antonio’s garden, also in Navarrevisca, we saw these birdhouses made with pumpkins and others with wooden slats.
Wooden sticks and metal bars
In the orchards of Navarrevisca they use almost everything to make the recycled stakes or tutors: sticks, ropes, leftover construction materials such as corrugated steel bars, hollow profiles…
Birds, although they can be a danger to some of the fruits in the orchard, can be our allies in the fight against pest insects, since they feed on many of them. Besides, it is always nice to hear birds singing in the orchard, isn’t it? If we have something like this we can solve the problem of the birds pecking by putting a mesh to the strawberries, blackberries….
Old clothes
I couldn’t say goodbye without letting you see these scarecrows made with broken dolls, old clothes, mop sticks, etc. THEY’RE TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!
I hope you liked my compilation of ideas for recycling in the garden. Have you come up with more? Do you use recycled materials in the garden? You can share them in the comments or upload a photo about recycling in the garden 🙂
Finally I would like to tell you that, besides recycling in the garden, we can use other tricks to get a cheap urban garden (here I leave you the link in case you are interested in this topic).