5 Easy Ways to Save and Recycle Around the House

There are always people selling products that you can make yourself. I have found some easy ways to save and recycle around my own garden that you may help you.

A simple trickle watering system is an easy way to save money and water.

Plastic Milk Jugs as Watering System — I have used these to help me save time while I water my plants and water more effectively. I put a few small holes in the bottom of the bottle and fill it with water and then set it at the base of my berry bushes. The water seeps out slowly allowing the water to sink in and water deeply instead of just on the surface forcing the roots deeper in to the ground for a healthier plant. If you use just one small hole at the bottom and one at the top it is a great homemade drip irrigation method. You don’t lose water to evaporation like you can with sprinklers and you don’t water where you don’t want plants so weeds have a tougher time growing.

I have also buried half gallon jugs in the ground again with holes poked in the side beside the plant and then filled it up with water and capped it. The water seeps out slowly again watering the roots of the plants and making for stronger plants.

Homemade Mulch — We have a large mulched area in our back yard and we also had a bad ice storm tear through our area that took down a lot of our trees. So we rented a chipper and went to town, in just an hour we had a lot of mulch to help cover our garden. I wouldn’t recommend putting it near the house because of insects but this is at the back of our property. The money I spent on the chipper was less than the cost to have the waste hauled away, or to buy enough mulch to cover the space.

Compost – If you have houseplants or a garden you probably already know the value of compost, but did you know there are ways to compost that don’t involve large piles of waste and that smell? There are plenty of plans on the Internet to build a worm compost bin. Worms eat your food scraps and produce great compost. I recycled two plastic storage bins to build my compost bin. As we were cleaning our out our house and eliminating junk we had extra bins.

Plastic Containers — A lot of cold cuts not come in clear plastic containers that are perfect for washing and using again. In fact they look exactly like a name brand storage container. Why pay for new plastic storage containers when you already have some in your meat drawer.

Newspaper pots – If you still actually get a newspaper, I pick up a few just for this tip now, you can make biodegradable seedling pots from them. Here is a great instruction over at instructables.

5 Easy Ways to Save and Recycle Around the House