Step 1: Watch a ton of gardening Youtube videos
Step 2: Find a local nursery
Step 3: Locate their plastic garden pot recycling
Step 4: Dive into their recycling dumpster
Step 5: Locate suitable pots
Step 6: Bring home the gold.
We’ve been gardening. Ok, that might be an understatement; we’ve been urban-micro—farming.
There are a lot of options on where and how to plant your garden. Depending on if you rent or own your property, you will be pulled in different directions. As renters with about 3/4 of an acre of yard, we have been working to maximize our growing space with as little long term effects (and investment) as possible, planting high-yielding annuals. So far, the garden has:
Garden Beds
Permanent Raised Beds
DIY Hoop House
Indoor Garden Shelves
Outdoor and indoor potted plants
How did we end up using all of these techniques?
Last year was our first venture into gardening. It was abundant with tomatoes, peppers, kale, squash, basil, cilantro, and we basically had cucumbers stashed on every surface of the kitchen. We learned a lot about succession planting as well as the importance about pre-planning and documenting everything (read: we planted everything at once and had absolutely no plan for when, where or how to plant it). This year, we decided to kick it up a notch and over double the space we used to include a 52 x 112 ft plot building on top of the garden beds we dug, and transformed our raised bed into a DIY hoop house. In order to enter into the world of succession planting, we furnished our basement with 6 grow lights and a shelving system to get everything started early so they could go to ground as soon as the danger of the last frost dissipated.
After amending the soil for another 52 square feet this year for our permanent raised beds, and investing in over four cubic yards of delivered dirt, there are still about a hundred or so plants that still need to be transplanted from the indoor shelving units to the outdoor garden. After careful consideration, and a lot of Youtube videos and Googling, we came to realize what needed to happen.
So how are we going to do the rest of our crops? Pots. They are mobile and get this— FREE.
Some nurseries have a used pot recycling program— an entire dumpster full of plastic pots that are just waiting to be full of life again. Not only will you be helping to reduce waste, but one of the most expensive parts of getting dirt is the delivery charge, and even with a truck, it’s difficult to load in and load out. With pots, you can take them to the pickup location, fill them, stack them easily, then take them home. While this isn’t the most sustainable option, it is a great way to keep up with producing a whole season’s worth of produce while renting. The best part is that when you move, the investment in the dirt, and some perennials, can easily be picked up and taken to another pot, or their forever home.
If you’re in the St. Louis area, Rolling Ridge and Garden Heights have a ton available for your dumpster diving pleasure.