More Thrifty Gardening

Today, I could wait no longer to plant something. Luckily, for Christmas, my daughter Meg bought me a fabulously cute little herb planting kit so I spent 15 minutes pottering and planting my lovely herbs. They are now sitting on my kitchen windowsill waiting to grow.

I then spent a good 30 minutes looking through my all my gardening books and dreaming of what seeds I'm going to plant this year. I haven't finalised me seed list yet so that will be another post but I did manage to find some lovely ideas in one of my books which I had no idea I had. I found it tucked away at the bottom of the bookcase and I don't even remember buying it. When I looked through it though, I can certainly see why I bought it. I am all for thrifty gardening. I love re-purposing old things, things that would probably just be thrown out. Last year, I planted some herbs in an old wicker basket that had been scratched to pieces by the cats and I planted some tomato plants on an old enamel bread bin that I found in my field. 

My garden is still very much a work in progress, although due to the awful weather last year, there hasn't really been very much progress in the last 12 months. I really want my garden to be a riot of colour and scent. I made a concious decision last year to only buy plants that are scented. I planted lavender and rosemary, delicately scented roses and lusciously scented sweet peas and my mission this year is to continue this theme but on a tiny budget. And by tiny, I mean almost nothing. I will be learning how to take cuttings  courtesy of Monty Don and Gardeners World (which, being the sad person I am, I recorded all of the episodes last year) and I already know how to take basal cuttings so I will be trying to take some of those this year and I will be growing pretty much everything else from seed so, I apologise, in advance, for all the boring pictures of seeds and plants that might pop up on my blog this year. 

Anyway, the book I found, Planted Junk by Adam Caplin, has some fabulous ideas to turn household junk into beautiful, shabby chic planters. All the following pictures are from the book. I think there are some fabulous ideas and I get the feeling some of these will be popping up in my garden.

I love the idea of using old enamel teapots and coffee pots and I really love the gorgeous colours.

These catering sized tins are perfect for planting flowers of herbs in. Cafes are more than happy to give away their large empty cans. 

It saves them recycling them because businesses have to pay to have their recycling taken away. 

I used the wooden crates that I got free from my local greengrocers to plant salad leaves and shallots last year. You can read the post HERE. 

And this is an ingenious way to utilise old breeze block type things (sorry, I have no idea what these things are actually called lol)

And lastly, another one, like the wellies from the last post, that appeals to the child in me :-)