Gardening

Frugal Gardening: Smart and Safe Re-Purposing

Today’s post is one that I’ve had on my mind for awhile now, but one of those topics that may cause a bit of upset. If you’re reading this site, chances are you care about saving money. I do, too! When it comes to gardening, there are many ways one can recycle, re-purpose, and up-cycle.

However, I’m seeing more ideas shared on Facebook, Pinterest, and social media forums about ways to reuse items in the garden that make me…concerned…and sometimes, just puzzled.

So before I get very far into this Frugal Gardening series, I wanted to share some of what I’m seeing with you and ideas for how you can safely re-purpose items in your garden.

When Re-Purposing Might Be Harmful

I love that more people than ever are getting passionate and creative about growing their own food, particularly in urban and small spaces. But I’d like to raise a bit of a red flag of caution about some materials you probably don’t want growing right next to your edibles!

How to Freeze Your Greens {and a couple ideas for how to use them!}

What do you do if you end up finding a tremendous deal on leafy greens or end up with a surplus from your garden? Well, one simple thing you can do is freeze them! Yes, that’s right – greens such as kale, collards, and spinach can be frozen.

I found several nice bunches of greens at my local grocery store recently – they had a few varieties of organic kale, plus rainbow chard, and spinach, all at very good prices, and I couldn’t resist.

Now there are two schools of thought when it comes to freezing greens. First, you can freeze them as-is, raw. This is going to be the easiest, quickest way to achieve your goal. The second way involves blanching them. This helps the greens last a bit longer in the freezer. As you’ll soon see, this method also helps reduce the space in the freezer your greens will take up.

7 Lessons the Forest Can Teach you about Gardening

7 Lessons the Forest Can Teach about you about GardeningI’ve been spending a lot of time lately in this forested trail near my house.

forestgarden2

It’s lush, beautiful, and full of life. And yet, no one tends it. No one spends hours weeding it, dousing it with Sluggo, pruning down the branches, or planting annuals each year. Somehow it manages quite fine on its own thankyouverymuch.

I’ve spend some time pondering this and reading books such as Gaia’s Garden (about $17 on Amazon), which suggest that maybe a better, simpler way to garden would be to work with nature instead of fighting against it. After spending some time making observations, I’ve come up with 7 lessons that the forest can teach us about gardening.