Feel Free: Budget-Friendly Garden Ideas

Cleaning out our car last week, I decided we're treating our little hybrid hatchback like a haulin' a&# truck for garden duties.

There are scraps of bamboo, scrapes from cement-laden fenceposts, and splinters from wood shims scattered around the car's interior. At first I was a little irked at the mess, but now that the garden is producing, I kinda see these things as little signs that we're using what we've got to do something right.

In crunchy Earth-friendly and frugal fashion, Scott and I found ways to avoid buying brand-new tomato cages (which can be surprisingly expensive when you need 10+ of them), fancy trellises, potions for keeping insects at bay, and shiny objects to deter birds from tasting our tomatoes before we get a chance.

Reduce, reuse, and recycle these ideas for making spare items function for free in your garden:

DIY with Bamboo: For once, the site Nextdoor is good for something other than watching your neighbors out-snark and gripe at each other. Thanks to a woman in the Montavilla neighborhood in Portland, we loaded up our car with 30+ tall dried and freshly-cut bamboo stalks, free of charge. Using twine that I previously bought for a failed craft project (admittedly, all my crafts are fails), Scott constructed one large trellis for our two cucumber vines and more than 10 tomato cages in about 2 days time. I think they look great!

Take Soap Out of the Shower & Into The Garden: Ordinary liquid soap (Dawn, Dr. Bronner's, etc.) can help keep pesky pests like aphids, whiteflies and more off your plants. Use the ratio of 1 tablespoon soap to 1 quart of water, and mix it up in an extra spray bottle (I reused one for window cleaner). Do a test spray first to see how individual plant varieties react, and spray it either early in the day or later, to avoid dry-out in the heat. 

Wood You Believe It - Keep An Eye Out for Scraps: Scott found this pile of wood shims discarded at a construction site for a new pizzeria here in Gresham. Nailed together, they'll make a great new trellis for our other cucumber plant, assuming it survives the damp corner we planted it in, next to to the water spigot that has a major leak. Watch for items on trash days left at dumpsters, curbs and other spots, and if it looks like fair game, take it and make it your own.

Use Old CDs for Bright & Shiny Bird Deterrents: I had a bad habit of ordering far too many Columbia House and BMG music club CDs in my college years (and maybeeeeee not paying for them? Those years were a bit sketch in terms of fiscal responsibility). I took them out of Ye Olde Heavy CD Binder That Never Gets Opened, and took the more scratched up or rarely played CDs to the garden instead. You too can hang your copy of REM's Automatic for the People, David Bowie's Greatest Hits, the Original Broadway Recording of Evita, or any shiny Compact Disc you please with some twine atop your tomato plants, and hopefully Don't Cry For Me, robins and goldfinches, because you're not getting any more of my tomatoes.

Say Yes To The Kindness of Strangers: A very nice City of Gresham employee walked by our plot at City Hall and offered her compost bin to Scott. He accepted, and now we're back to collecting fruit and veggie scraps, eggshells and coffee grounds for composting. The same model we used back in Charlotte, the bin fits in the back rear corner of our plot, and we're hoping future soil amending will be easier with a little natural compost help. So if someone offers you something, take it!

Have garden hacks or freebie ideas to share? Let us know, and hope you're all staying cool. The weather finally turned here and it's been in the upper 90s. Off to cool off with a frosty beverage ASAP!