Bargain Hunting

I live near a small builder and am also friendly with a local plumber. Boith have gardens piled up with stuff they have taken out of other people's houses and are waiting to take to the tip. I wondered whether such people could be a source of suitable containers. Local builders/painters for empty paint containers? Pallets treated for rot and then made up into planting troughs? Old water tanks? Just a thought.

Are you up for making containers ? Cos there'll be plenty of pallets knocking about soon - in skips etc. Make some boxes/troughs, dismantle first, build, wood preserve them and line-out with black builders plastic with a few holes punched through the bottom. Will last a few years,.....mine do.

I use the rectangle recycling bins for my carrots and potatoes. Strong Plastic. Not pretty to look at, but they are nice and deep, and do the job.

 I made these last week out of old pallets only took me a couple of hours, I have since painted them with wood protection paint 

Does your local tip have a recycling section? I have got dozens over a few years for about 20p each.

Or you could splash out, Poundland will probably soon have some in!!

You could try going to your local tip and talking to the men about what is available. Sometimes, too, you see other people dumping things that would be ideal and can get it from them before they dump it. This isn't really allowed at our local tip, but people do it quietly.

Greenbucket wrote (see)

You buy tubs from the tip???

Just beside the tip there's a couple of polytunnels & a few odd outbuildings where a recycling centre has been set up. Anything that would otherwise go to landfill is taken there. It's like a charity shop without the clothes, but also with large items, eg doors, baths, loos, tiles, furniture, dressed stone, tools, bikes, flower pots, etc & always at least half a dozen sets of golf clubs in bags.  Somebody there also makes tables from old whisky barrels & various types of bird, etc boxes from old bits of wood.

That's a really good idea, I think the chaps at our recycling centre do stuff like that on the quiet, I once saw a woman going to dump a perfectly good guitar in one of the landfill skips (wood & old furniture), I've never seen the guys move so fast.  I think they ebay the stuff and split the proceeds.  So you could ask them to save you something suitable, or ask on Freecycle.

Aldi, Lidl, poundstretcher and Wilkos are all sources of cheap gardening things, if you have a JTF nearby that's also good (and you don't need a business card any more to get in).  You could also try charity shops, they might have stuff that's suitable.  You could probably get used tyres from a garage/car breakers for nothing, and use those for planting potatoes, just earth them up, adding tyres as you need to, and the beauty of that is there's no digging involved when you need to harvest them. 

Would tyres not contain lots of pollutants?

Outdoor girl wrote (see)

Would tyres not contain lots of pollutants?

Hasn't done Bob Flowerdew any harm-or has it???

Or Kwik -Fit

No pollutants in tyres that I am aware of

Greenbucket,this year for extra room we are useing builders merchants delevery bags,they should let you have the used ones for a couple of pounds,just fold the sides down to the depth you want ,we then put 4 pieces of old wood in to keep it square and fill it up,you can grow what ever you want in it just make sure theres drain holes in it, for water butts visit the nearest dairy farmer and ask him for any disinfecting tubs hes used,they are perfect (about 40gallon) and non returnable,they are useally glad to get rid of them or maybe a couple of pounds,

Good luck Alan4711

I have several sets of 2 car tyres stacked on top of each other, which I use for lettuce carrots etc. put potaotes in them last year and the tyres last for years. I put a square of weed matting under them to stop weeds growing up from the soil where they stand. I also use compost sacks cut in half. I have quite a large garden but the soil is very shallow, very gritty with no nutrients as I am on the edge of claypit spoil heaps land. I grow my indoor tomatoes in small compost sacks, with the tops rolled down as handles, standing in washing up bowls as drip trays.