Gardening 2.0
The other day, I discovered that my friend Tim, despite his pretty huge income, is an extreme frugalista. I will only talk about the most noticeable one and currently his favorite hobby: gardening. Comically, his girlfriend hates his strategies because his collection of plants has become quite an eyesore compared to the rest of the apartment (which looks like a very clean and organized artist studio). So if you have a girlfriend/boyfriend that is OCD when it comes to home décor and everything matching perfectly, then you may not want to take these tips.
Seeds can be expensive, but are pretty essential to the process, so there’s not much room to get around that. But pots are definitely a space where a bit of time and ingenuity can take you a long way in terms of savings. Normal pots can be ridiculously expensive, especially as plants begin to outgrow them and start demanding bigger, more robust pots. How does my friend get around this? Two things: plastic soda bottles and steel cans.
Cans are pretty simple. As soon as you’re done with whatever food/paint/varnish was packaged in it, all you have to do is make a hole or lots of tiny holes in the bottom of the can, put it on top of something that can function as a plate (to catch excess water), and then fill it up with your gardening essentials (dirt, seeds, and sunlight). He has also been experimenting with 20oz beer cans, implementing the same technique. Plastic soda bottles are pretty simple too. After finishing your sparkling deliciousness, punch a hole in the bottle cap, slice the plastic bottle in half and flip the top part into the bottom. The cool thing about this design is that it gives your plants more access to sunlight, the top portion works as the pot, the bottom portion as the catch, and plastic bottles come in a huge variety of different sizes.
Again, the materials may be a bit unsightly, especially if you have a ton of plants, but this can be taken care of pretty easily. Take your can or soda bottles, your old paint brushes and acrylics, and paint some awesome pictures on the surfaces. And voila! There you have it, art and green stuff.
Happy creative gardening!