Article Submitted by Lynda

For the first time veggie grower, setting up may well work out expensive, if you go for the Garden Centre pack of this and that, why not try a few tried and tested homemade odds and ends. Trying not to be too ‘Blue Peterish‘, take a look at what you throw out……or even what the neighbours and the local shop dispose of.

Cardboard inners from toilet rolls, make very good individual pots and can be put straight into the ground when the plant is ready. Peas and beans work well in these, and of course sweet peas. Use a kitchen roll inner, three from one!

Plastic trays that mushrooms and like arrive in, make ideal containers for sowing into or potting on, with the bigger ones making manageable sized salad leaf ‘bars’, not forgetting the polystyrene broccoli boxes, I’ve grown spinach quite successfully in these.

Cream and yoghurt pots, with a few drainage holes made, are useful containers. Don’t forget butter tubs, well washed and cut up, a good supply of plant labels.

Think twice before throwing out the old washing up bowl, make a few holes, another free container.

Take a soft drinks bottle, chop the top off ( about three inches), leave to cap on and you have an ‘eye protector’ to put on canes. Take another bottle, chop the bottom off and take the cap off, a self waterer for grow bags. Take another bottle, leave the cap on, cut a hole a little way up from the base, make a drainage hole or two, tie string to the top……a bird feeder.

This all may not be ‘pretty’, but just think of the savings. ( or take another bottle)