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germain_gw

You know youre a frugal gardener if...

germain
18 years ago

- You've ever come home at night with a pocket/ coinpurse/ sandwich sack full of seeds you gathered from an overgrown garden.

- You've ever asked friends to save their compost for you. Bonus if you've ever asked strangers.

- You can't remember ever having bought a planting pot or container even though you have 50.

- Youve ever planted plants in egg cartons, tin cans, yogurt containers, shoes, broken TV's, plastic bags or whatever else would hold dirt

- You've ever grown your own kitchen sponge.

- You have a garden tool you made yourself from scrap.

Any more?

Comments (11)

  • roseyp8255
    18 years ago

    Your friends bag their leaves and bring them to you - at work.

    You dumpster dive for leftover plants, when businesses clean out their planters (even if perennials) for the season

    You ask ALL your friends for their leftover mini-blinds (for labeling plants)

  • Janet
    18 years ago

    - You gripe at family members who throw away stuff that could go into the compost pile ("Wait! Don't throw that perfectly good dinner napkin in the *trash*!")

    - You pick up other people's bagged yard debris for your compost pile - and search through it for fragments of perennials that might still live or cuttings that might still root.

    - Your idea of a perfect weekend day is to shovel free horse manure into your pickup. Bonus points if you do this in the rain.

  • bruggirl100
    18 years ago

    - You stop at perfect strangers' houses and ask for cuttings (I've made a lot of friends like that)

    - You volunteer to do yard work to get plants/cuttings.

    - You drive around on yard trash day and dig through the piles in front of people's houses.

    - You ask the local golf course if you can have their grass clippings.

    - The people at the county site where you get free compost and mulch know you by name, and have your phone number so they can call you when a fresh batch comes in.

  • beachbarbie
    18 years ago

    Janlep - I've done the last one on your list - and yes, it WAS in the rain!

    I've also asked the people at my vets office if I could get the seed pods and volunteers from their Rose of Sharon bushes.

    My husband had to stop me from weeding the planting area in front of our local aquarium. I actually have weeded in front of the store where he works......

  • suzieh
    18 years ago

    You answer a craigslist post for free bunny poop. You drive over in recycled manure/potting soil plastic bags. You bring your own shovel. You bring home bags of FREE bunny manure! You save the bags in case you need 'em.

  • dfaustclancy
    18 years ago

    You ask your friend for some of her chicken manure for your tomato plants and she brings you a big bag full in her Volvo that sits in the sun all day and you transfer in evening to your car at commuter rail station. Husband astounded! (Tomato plants huge and still producing...)

  • garden_witch
    18 years ago

    *Your dish drainer is full of used ziplock baggies

    *You yell at DH for throwing away the ziplock baggies, then dig them out of the trash and rinse them again

    *Your dumpster diving habits rub off on DH, and he brings home a sliding glass door (then builds a deck to go with it,) a 50 year old furnace that still works, a busted cabinet, and 3' wide bamboo hoops ("Can you use these? They were throwing them out.")

    *You dig through the back of DH's pickup before he takes a load to the dumpster at work, just in case =)

    *You dig seed pods, clear clam-shell containers, and coffee grounds out of the trash at work

    *DH brings home a busted cabinet from a jobsite and fixes it up for a laundry counter, you turn it into a potting bench

    *You take your kids for walks for healthy excersize, quality bonding time, and seed snatching (not necessarily in that order)

    *Your friends and coworkers bring you old windows in exchange for seedlings

    *Your plastic meat tray collection would make the local butcher envious

    *You consider plumbing fixtures to be garden art

    *You save the subscription cards from gardening magazines (that you picked up in the freebie bin at the library) for compost, then procede to cut out every useful side bar in the magazines for your garden journal and the color photos to make seed packets. After the magazines are little more than bound confetti, you still refuse to throw them out because "I might need them for something."

    *"I might need them for something" is your most often used phrase

    *"Don't throw that away!" is your second most used phrase

    *"I think I can use that" is a close third

    ~*GW*~

  • garden_witch
    18 years ago

    *You've ever driven up a stranger's driveway at 10pm to pick up a utility tub, so you can have running water near the potting bench/laundry counter that DH brought home. I did this last night, left a box of plants in return =)

    *You plan your pay-day errands around the yard-sale route.

    *When the Public Works dept. cuts down trees around your powerlines, you beg them to dump the wood chips on your lawn.

    *You make friends with ppl who work at transfer sites.

  • newbieroselover
    18 years ago

    I love this thread! How about:
    retrieving cardboard toilet paper 'cores' from the trash to use to sprout seeds? Squeeze them, upright, into a cardboard box and you've got compostable materials when you've transplanted the seedlings.

    saving styrofoam peanuts to use instead of gravel in the bottoms of plant pots

    By the way, can you tell me good uses for:

    1) foam meat trays? We don't eat that much meat but I hate throwing them out when we do.

    2) metal screw-on lids from jars? (and why don't recycle centers take them)

  • suzieh
    18 years ago

    You retrieve boyfriend's dusted hiking shoes and think about

    1) Planting in them (yes, I belong to Garden Junk)
    2) Cutting out the back and making new "garden" shoes
    3) Re-using perfectly good thick shoelaces (that's a given)

    FOAM MEAT TRAYS
    I only keep a few (like the pink or black ones as they look so nice).

    I put my coffee filter with tomato seeds on trays to dry in my back room

    I use them to water little seedling pots/plants that I want to keep grouped together, but don't want water going every which way inside the house

    METAL SCREW-ON LIDS
    I keep a few that have interesting art. Glad I did, companies no longer in business or they've gone plastic

    Might be fun to use the interesting looking lids in a mosaic project (with tile or broken dishes). Embed into something? Pots, stepping stones?

  • garden_witch
    18 years ago

    I buy meat in the deep sided plastic trays now, they make excellent flats and drip trays for pots. I got one at Wally word this summer that had hamburger patties in it, it has four round depressions in it that are the perfect size for 6" pots =) Foam meat trays are nice for drying and sorting seeds too!

    Metal lids, if you mean the kind that come on mayo or pickle jars, are great to use as saucers for small pots. If you don't like the way they look, a little acrylic paint works wonders!