Toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls, the cardboard tubes that are left over when the toilet paper or paper towels are used up, are a rigid tube that can be used as starter containers for your seeds and small plants. 

To use them, start out by getting a flat tray container with an edge that extends up about a half an inch.  I use a window box drip tray.  This tray will be used to hold the tubes as your plants grow.  Now take a toilet paper tube and cut it into three equal height tubes and arrange the cut tubes on the bottom of the tray.  If you use a paper towel tube, cut it into six equal size tubes.  Fill each of the toilet paper tubes about half way with clean quality garden soil from a garden center or hardware store.  Do not use ordinary dirt from the ground since it has all kinds of vegetation already living in it (weeds, grass, etc.) and you will not know what is your seeds and what is weeds.  Place your seeds on the top of the soil and then cover the seeds to the top of the tube.

The beauty of the cardboard tubes is that they will absorb and hold water for a longer period of time keeping the seeds or small plants wetter for a longer period of time.  In order to water the plants, pour the water into the bottom of the tray and not on top of the tubes.  Pouring the water on top of the tubes will bore holes in the dirt and may displace the seeds.  By pouring the water into the tray, the water will fill the bottom of the tray and the tubes and dirt will suck the water up through capilary action keeping the seeds or plants moist.

Starting your seeds in this manner will allow you to bring them inside if cold weather or frost is suspected extending your growing season by starting earlier.  Once your seeds have sprouted and grown a couple of inches, you can take the whole cardboard tube and plant it in the garden or other final destination.  Any roots that the plant grows will extend below the bottom of the tube and into the ground without problems.  The tube can also easily be removed if desired before transplanting.

Pea Seed In Toilet Paper Roll

The picture shows the toilet paper rolls in the window box drip tray with a pea plant growing from seed.

Preparing your home for painting can be broken down into two areas: tools and surface preparation.

Tool preparation is necessary to get all of your tools in one place, a central work area, for your project. Gather all of your tools you will need for the job and put them in one place. Some of the more common tools that are necessary for an exterior painting project are:

• Paint Brushes
• Paint Rollers & Roller Naps
• Sand Paper & Sanding Blocks
• Paint Stirring Sticks
• Ladders
• Scrapers
• Masking tape
• Sponge or mop
• Paintable Caulk
• Wood Filler or Putty

For the surface preparation, you must create a sturdy, clean surface for the paint to adhere to. In order for the paint to adhere, it must be clean and dry. If there is mold on the surface it must be removed before painting or the paint will not stick. Any rotten wood must be repaired with wood putty or replaced prior to painting.
Remove anything that you can from the exterior of the house including house numbers, shutters, signs, wreaths, and any other accessories that can be removed easily. Anything that can not be removed will have to be painted around and will make painting more difficult.

Scrape the surface using a paint scraper to remove any loose old paint. Next sand the area where flakes have been removed to make the ridge between the old paint and the underlying surface less pronounced. The idea is not to necessarily sand off any paint that did not come off with scraping, but only to make the edge less pronounced once the new paint is applied.

Trim any shrubs or bushes so that they are at least a few inches away from the house. You will need to paint behind them and trimming them now is better than when there is wet paint near the wall with shrub trimmings flying into the fresh paint.

Once all the scraping and sanding is complete, wipe down the surfaces with a mild solution of bleach and water. This will remove loose flakes of old paint, spider webs, bugs, and any standing mold and mildew that may be on the surface. This can be applied with a sponge, a mop, or a brush and rinsed by spraying down with a garden hose.

Caulk any cracks between windows and doors and the siding. Hammer in any protruding nails and fill in any holes in the siding and trim with wood putty or paintable caulk.

Give everything about a day to dry and you are ready to paint! Proper surface preparation will make the painting go more smoothly since you will not have to stop and remove paint, bugs, nests, etc. but will be able to continuously keep a wet edge of paint while coating the surface.

I

n Today’s throwaway society, there is absolutely no need to go out and purchase mulch material for your garden, unless it is for the particular aesthetic appearance, “The Look”, sake of the mulch material.

Were you aware that there are a number of mulching materials that you can obtain from around your own community that are free, and some of which can even be even delivered to you for nothing as well?

Impossible you might say. Well I mulch my gardens fairly heavily, and I never pay a cent for the mulch material. As a matter of fact, most of the mulch is willingly delivered to my home for nothing. As the former owners are only too glad to see the back of it, as it would cost them money, time and effort to find other ways of getting rid of it.

I also combine these outside sources of mulch with my own compost, weeds and other organic matter mixed through to achieve a great result in my garden, and so all that it costs me is time and effort.

So what am I talking about? While some of the below list is delivered free, other items I pick up myself, depending on time, circumstances, importance etc.

Grass Clippings from other people in the area or from lawn-mowing contractors.

Wood shavings from local wood turners and carvers, ( Do not use shavings from treated timber).

Small amounts of solid fill from friends who are excavating. This is to assist in raising garden beds, in my heavy clay soil.

Light prunings from shrubs which is shredded by me or put whole into garden

Heavier sticks and logs, which are turned into trellis, garden stakes, garden edges, seats, frames, log planters etc. while they slowly decay.

Newspaper, cardboard, non-rubber carpet underlay, and even carpet and carpet squares. Which is put under other mulch to prevent grass and weed regrowth

Animal manures sometimes mixed with straw from places like Racetracks and Showgrounds, Pony Clubs, Stables etc. I contact them well beforehand to see if any is available.

To this I also add my own weeds, throwing away some which can still be a potential problem, or burying them below the bottom most layer of mulch material to stop them regrowing.

Another item I add is any old potting mix from deceased plants or when repotting plants.

Being a fairly lazy gardener, I throw the material around a bit at a time, as they are available, and let nature mix them for me. On a couple of occasions I have received a bit too much wood shavings so these became path material between some of the garden beds, with a heavy underlay of newspapers. People even tell me that it looks and feels good underfoot.

Never put a large amount of fresh animal manure on any garden, as it will burn any plant around it. Be extremely sparing or let it age first for a few months before applying it to the garden.

I have been living in my new house for about fifteen months, and the mulch layer in all my gardens (there were no gardens originally), is about 10 cm or 4 inches deep. None of which I have paid for and little that I have had to even pick up for myself.

People are even starting to comment on how fast the plants in my gardens are growing in the local heavy black clay soils, and they are surprised when I tell them that I have never bothered to fertilise the plants. The reason for this is that the earliest laid mulch material, is now broken down into plant nutrients and is now feeding my plants as a plant nutrient soup aided by the soil life which has suddenly started appearing in my gardens.

Another benefit that has started to appear in the last few months is the arrival of insect eating wildlife into my garden. Predatory insects and birds are now visiting my gardens on a regular basis, where I saw none this time last year. Bees and butterflies are also starting to visit many of the plants, which have come into flower for the first time this year.

So what can you do to start locating your own supplies of free mulch material, well here are a number of suggestions.

Put a little sign near your gate, something along the lines of ‘Organic mulch required’, or ‘Lawn clipping wanted’. There are sure to be a number of local people who are currently throwing theirs away in your community or even local area. Never mulch solely with grass clippings as they form an impenetrable layer that air and water cannot get through. Always mix it with other things to stop it ‘thatching’, just like a roof over the soil.

See if you can get into contact with local people who are into woodturning and carving, or even local sawmills. And come to some arrangement about unpreserved wood shavings.

Check the local phonebook for local showgrounds/racetracks/stables etc, to find out if any have stable or manure waste to give away, for people willing to pick them up

In other words, start talking around the place that you are after mulch materials and they will soon start coming to you.

The only caution with using other peoples waste material is the chance that you might also import other peoples pests and weeds. I have rarely found it a problem because of heavy mulch on mulch routines. But it is possible.

One point being that when you first start applying mulch to your garden you may see some nitrogen deficiencies occur in some plants. This is because the organisms that are breaking down the mulch material are using up all the available resources of it during the initial breakdown. Once you have gotten past this time the old composted material provide more than enough nitrogen for future processes.

Another thing to be careful of is not to bury or mulch up against the stems of wanted plants, as it may cause further problems for your plants in rot problems around the collar of the stems.

So get out there and talk around the community, find the contacts, believe it or not they will be as grateful as you to solve their particular problems of waste reduction. As well as that, you may start making some new friendships out of the deal; I know I have.

About the Author:

The Bare Bones Gardener is a qualified Horticulturist and a qualified Disability Services Worker. He hates spending money on stuff which doesn’t live up to the promises given. So he looks for cheaper, easier, simpler or free ways of doing the same thing and then he passes these ideas on to others.

Garden Blog – http://barebonesgardening.blogspot.com/

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Mulch and Feed your Gardens for Free

fter tripling the size of my garden from 8 foot square last year to 8′x24′, I extended my single 50′ soaker hose to three 50′ soaker hoses connected end-to-end to support the larger garden however, the hose became quite unwieldy. Having to straighten out the entire 150′ of soaker hose was becoming a nightmare with the whole hose moving when small sections needed to be rearranged knocking over plants in the process. I will detail the steps I took to remedy the situation by building a hose manifold from common parts found at the local hardware store to create a number of short runs of hose that are much easier to manage and control.

150 Foot of Continuous Soaker Hose

My design for the solution was to create a manifold at one of the 8′ ends of the garden fed by the garden hose, and split the soaker hose into 24′ lengths that would run from one end of the garden to the other. Since I had a total of 150′ of garden hose, that would make a total of 6 lengths of soaker with a little extra on each end. I planned on planting the rows of crops width-wise along the garden which made this layout ideal.  In addition, I wanted to be able to control the water flow in each of the runs individually, so valves were needed on each manifold output.

I decided to use PVC pipe and fittings for this project. I had done some home pluming in the past, and found PVC easy to work with, lightweight, and low cost. The manifold sets on top of the garden and will be put away in the shed for the winter time once the garden is hibernating so i used the white indoor PVC as opposed to the more expensive outdoor gray PVC.

I used the following parts for this project.  You can add or subtract parts for larger or smaller manifolds:

• (1) 8′ 1/2″ PVC pipe
• (6) 1/2″ PVC T fittings
• (6) 1/2″ PVC Ball Valves
• (7) 1/2″ PVC Threaded nipple connectors
• (7) 1/2″ PVC Threaded barb connector
• (7) hose clamps
• (1) PVC end cap
• (3) 50′ rolls of soaker hose
• (2) universal hose male end repair kit
• (1) 1′ piece of garden hose with a female connector attached to one end

Parts for the soaker hose water manifold

And the tools needed:

• Hack Saw
• Small square of sandpaper
• Slotted screwdriver
• PVC purple cleaner
• PVC cement

Begin by cutting the PVC pipe.  My garden is 8′ (96″) deep, and I wanted the soaker hoses to be spread out evenly across this total dimension, and I wanted to leave about 6″ of room for the hose connection in the front of the garden.  Doing some math, 96″-6″ = 90″ total length.  I want to have 6 rows and each PVC T connector eats up about 1″ so subtract another 1″x6 or 6″-> 90″-6″=84″.  Dividing that total by 6 is 14.0″.

Using the hack saw, cut 5 (even though there will be 6 runs, the length will not include the end cap piece, so we use 5) pieces of PVC 14.0″ long and set those aside.  These will be used to connect each of the runs together.  Now cut 14 pieces of PVC pipe 1″ long.  These will be used to connect 1) the T connectors to the ball valves, 2) the ball valves to the PVC threaded nipple connectors 3) the last T connector to the end cap 4) and the input line PVC threaded nipple connector.

Using the sandpaper, sand the inside and outside of all of the PVC cuts so that there are no burrs or hanging pieces of cut PVC.  The end cuts do not have to be sanded flat or even cut straight, as long as the T’s, end caps, and threaded connectors will cover any angle that may have been introduced by making crooked cuts!

Now crack open the PVC pipe cleaner and clean the outside of all pieces of pipe and the inside of all Ts, ball valves, and threaded connectors and the end cap.  Do not use the cleaner on the threads.  I prefer to use the purple cleaner since it gives a visual indication as to what has and has not been cleaned.

Attach the pieces together using the diagram below and the PVC cement.  Spread the glue all around the outside of the pipe, and the inside of the fittings.  Push the pipe into the fittings and give it slight twist back and forth as you push them together.  This will allow the glue to setup and take hold.  Once the pipe has been pushed in, hold it in for about 10 seconds to give the glue time to dry.  The pieces will have a tendency to push apart, so some pressure should be added to hold them together while waiting for them to dry.

Block Diagram for connecting the manifold parts

Now screw the barb fittings into the nipple fittings and tighten with a wrench.

Cut each soaker hose in half and remove the female ends from the soaker hose as these will not be needed.  Leave the male end as is and keep the hose end cap on the male end.  Place a hose clamp over the raw end of the soaker hose and push the hose over the barb connector.  Tighten the hose clamp around the hose and barb connector.  Repeat this for each of the soaker runs.

Replace the male hose connector on the soaker hoses that have no ends opposite the manifold using the universal repair kits.  You should not need one for all of the ends since the soaker hose factory ends should still be on three of the sections.  Place a hose cap on these newly installed ends.

Next place a hose clamp on the garden hose piece and push the garden hose onto the input barb connector and tighten the hose clamp with a screwdriver.

Completed Soaker Hose Manifold

That’s it!  Hook it up to your garden hose and turn the water on and check for leaks.

Now you have the ability to control how much each row in your garden gets watered.  By shutting valves where less water is needed, and opening valves where more is needed, you can have more control over the amount of water that your garden is getting.  In addition, the shorter lengths of soaker hose are much more manageable within the garden.