My Re-cycled Garden

Summer is in full swing here on the farm!  We have been spending as much time as possible in the yard and garden.  While planning this years garden I enjoyed many trips to garden centers across the northwest.  I love looking at plans for laying out my plants and flowers, seeing the various ways to grow things and all the products on the market to accomplish this!  I found that most things were doable on my own, with items I can salvage from around the area, or I may have tucked away.  For the most part I only had to buy new on just a couple things, the rest has been reclaimed and given new life.  As you know I like to live a more "green" lifestyle, so where better to start than in the garden!  Here is a tour for you.  Enjoy!

 

This is an old head board I bought from my friend Carol, I was so Happy when Nathan said we had the hardware to hang it without having to contact a welder!  To me it is a grand welcome to our home!

In the garden we decided to not till up the whole thing, but instead mow the grass between the rows for an easier way of tending to and less soil compaction in your rows.  Instead of buying new plastic tomatoes stakes we used old tree branches and small trees that had to be thinned out a couple years ago and have seasoned to a nice sturdy stake.  Same with the bean pole tee pees.  The black plastic was from hauling supplies when we built the house and now heats up my pumpkin patch nicely!

Peppers like warmth!  So to do this I gave them a bed in an old metal trough, filled it with some wonderful old rotting straw (producing heat while it decomposes) and then built an A-frame of just two windows I picked up from my Friend Carol.

The result is some very happy peppers (this photo was taken when they were first planted, now they are pressing the top of the window!).

An old headboard I picked up from Marianne for $5!  It works perfect to tie my tomato plants to!  More black plastic reused for heat and cover.

The inside of an old dryer, Dad had used this years ago for flowers and I decided it would be perfect for my tomatoes!

My favorite project was using this old wedding tulle for covering my cabbage plants and Kale.  I have a problem with moths eating the plants every year and my friend Scott said he used old gossamer left over from a party, for row coverage successfully!  So, with a ton of this tulle left from our wedding (11 years ago!) I decided to give it a new life and it works great!

Nathan calls this my "ghost garden", and the tulle is working great to keep the moths away!

                          An old horse shoe and some old logging chain worked for a gate latch! 

Using a found window like this adds some color to my garden when the sun shines through it!

My concrete bull, I will tell the story on this guy someday.  For now all I will say is my sister Errin has his mate in her bee garden and they are wonderful to see!

Old logs left from a slash pile from one of Dad's logging jobs, they work great for fence posts at the corners.  The rest are railroad t-posts from an old friend down the road that had no need for them anymore.  Another fun re-cycled project is my peony garden, they are all from old homesteads in the area and saved from developments or homes that were being sold out of the families.  I love that they can still be found here.

The only real "new" purchase this year was 300 ft of 7' high deer fencing, I bought strong enough fencing to reuse this fall for a pig pen.  Pigs work great for stirring up your garden and prepping the area for the next year!

These re-used fence posts were put into the berry patch 8 years ago and are still holding strong!

And with all the work done and everything planted I get to enjoy the best part of my garden...the view!

Thank you for visiting, enjoy your Summer!!!  Love, Jennifer