henna lion / Flickr
This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.
Making your own seedling pots is an easy and inexpensive way to get your garden started for spring. This weekend I’m making pots out of newspaper to start my basil plants. I’ll show you how to make your own pots below.
Arty Smokes / Flickr
This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.
Weeds can ruin a garden, but buying weed control formulas to kill them adds up when one application is not enough. They’re called weeds for a reason. Plus, think of all the toxins you’ll be adding to your garden. Here are five suggestions to keeping your garden weed free while avoiding toxins and high costs.
- Grubbing - This is the best know method for removing weeds in the garden. It doesn’t cost much, but requires a lot of elbow grease. Break up
Soil in the making!
We picked up a huge composter for $45 this past weekend at a recycling event after outgrowing our $4 homemade composters. What excites me – other than rotting food waste in my kitchen – is the tip booklet that came with it. A complete guide to composting!
Making rich soil saves me a ton of money on dirt and shortens my grocery list – I’m growing my food! So don’t pay attention to compost rumors.
Convenience is the number one factor in locating your composter. If it’s too far away, you won’t use it, especially if you get nasty winter weather. One solution is to keep a smaller homemade composter near your kitchen door. When it fills up, make one big trip to your main composter.
A kitchen pail with lid is crucial. Fill it up with food waste during the day, then dump it into your composter as part of dinner cleanup. A lid keeps fruit flies away. We got bugs last summer so I’m dumping it after lunch, too.
Hair, dryer lint, and paper napkins
jspatchwork / Flickr
This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.
With the weather getting warmer, gardening season has officially begun. You may already have seedlings growing in containers that are ready to be transplanted, but before you do that here are four things you need to accomplish to reap the benefits.
- Remove weeds - These little suckers will sprout anywhere, even from cement and they will suck the life out of your plans by feeding off of the soil’s nutrients. Spending a good amount of time removing weeds will pay off. Make sure to get to the root of the problem by digging them out and not just pulling them.
- Take a Soil Test – Check soil
elana's pantry / Flickr
This post is brought to you by Best Kept Secrets, online supplier of candles – ideal for pumpkins!
This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.
Halloween is only a couple days away. If you�re still looking for cheap Halloween custom ideas there�s no time to waste and if it�s pumpkin carving ideas you�re in search of we�ve got them. But what will you be doing with all the leftover pumpkins you�ll have after Halloween has come and gone?
Here are some ideas to make your dollars stretch. (more…)
HomeDepot.com
If you’ve ever contemplated composting at home you know that the plastic bins that hold household and yard waste are expensive, impossible to move, and rodent-prone. I know a low-cost solution!
Store-bought compost bins, like the one above, cost more than $100. (Would you believe Home Depot sells a composter that is $398?) Once the bins fill with waste, they can burst at the seams but are too heavy to relocate. The containers are open on the bottom, enticing raccoons and rats to dig a hole for easy trash access.
However, it is very easy to make your own composting bins from empty buckets. DIY power! Here’s what you need:
- 1 or more 5-gallon empty Homer buckets with lid (they are about $3 at Home Depot)
- A screwdriver
- A 1/4 or 1/2 inch drill bit
Put the lid on the bucket and drill 11 holes into it with the screwdriver and drill bit. Try making an inner circle with 5 holes and an outer circle with 6 holes on the lid. Next, turn the bucket on its side and make 15 more holes, spreading them out. Flip the bucket over and make seven final holes.
Voila! You have your very own composter. The holes let moisture out and the 5-gallon buckets are light enough, even when full, that you can easily turn and shake them to hasten the composting process. The tight lid deters vermin. If you want to collect the juice from the composter, it is smelly but great for plants.
Once you fill your bucket with a mix of food waste and green debris, the compost will be ready in about six weeks. Expect the volume to shrink to half its original heft.
hoyasmeg/Flickr
This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.
Composting is a free source of organic fertilizer essential to properly take care of your garden. For many, composting is a daunting task because they think it is messy, pricey and time-consuming, but in my experience not one of these myths are not true.
Myth #1: Composting is difficult.
Composting can be difficult if you do not know what you are doing. Once you get the hang of it there isn’t much to it and messing up is pretty hard. Composting is simply the process of breaking down plant materials to form humus, (as opposed to hummus, which you eat). Homemade compost is the best fertilizer your plants ever had. There are different types of composting: hot composting, cold composting and vermicomposting.
I am most familiar with vermicomposting as that is the kind done at my community garden. Vermicomposting is very similar to hot composting in that you must mix wet and dry waste in a bin and turn it every now and then to create heat and accelerate decomposition. The difference is that hot composting does not require worms. In cold composting grass clippings and leaves decompose and as you may have guessed it, this process takes more time. There are specific things that are appropriate for composting and certain things you should never compost.
Myth #2: Composting attracts flies and smells.
One of the reasons many people don’t want to compost is because they think it attracts flies and is smelly — after all it’s a pile of waste decomposing, right? Wrong. I have a small compost pail in my kitchen and it hasn’t once smelled bad when I have properly taken care of it. The same goes for the flies. I did once have an infestation of fruit flies but it was because I forgot about my pail for about a week in a half. My pail has a filter so it didn’t stink up the place but it did smell pretty bad when I went to drop it off at the community garden. Haven’t had any problems since but I try to consistently take out my pail full of food scraps every two or three days.
Myth #3: Composting requires a lot of space.
Composting can be accomplished by apartment dwellers. It’s just a matter of finding the right spot in your home. I was composting at home before I decided to take my food scraps to my community garden. I decided to stop composting at home for selfish reasons. If I contribute food scraps to the community garden compost I am able to use more compost for my plants.
Do you compost?
By Mike Barclay of 10CentsWorth.com
hipsxxhearts/flickr
How many times when growing up did you hear, “Eat everything on your plate. There are starving people in Africa”? If it was anything like my household, it was almost daily. Interestingly enough, I recently had my own paradigm shift about food waste. What started out as “I don’t have the money to toss out food I don’t eat” has turned into a realization that none of us do!
Statistics show that Americans throw away about 25% of the food we prepare. That amounts to about 96 BILLION pounds of food tossed into a dumpster (video). The food service industry (restaurants) estimate that 4-10% of the food they prepare is wasted before it gets to you. That’s a lot of food! “There’s a huge disconnect,” says William Rathje, a Stanford archaeologist who ran the University of Arizona Garbage Project for years. “People don’t pay attention to their food waste because it goes straight into the garbage or disposal. It’s not like newspapers that stack up in the garage.”
According to the USDA, the average weekly amount spent on food for a family of four using a low cost plan (we’ll go with kids in the age range of 6-11) is about $170. That breaks down to about $24 per day. Remember that earlier stat that 25% of the food prepared in America is wasted? What’s a quarter of $24? $6. A family of four is essentially throwing away enough food for an entire person each day!
So how do we get that 25% waste down to zero? Recycle it! The most obvious option is just not to throw it away! If you have leftovers, think of ways to reuse them. Make sure they’re in a clear container so that you can see what’s in them, and try your best to keep them up in front. You’ll have a better chance of not forgetting about them that way. And who says you need to eat the same dish four nights in a row? I found a great site for leftover recipes that lets you plug in the main ingredients and populates a bunch of recipe ideas. (See BargainBabe.com site review here.)
Ripened fruit? No problem! Toss them in a blender with ice and make smoothies.
Obviously some things aren’t reusable and some food needs to be tossed. But even then, it doesn’t necessarily need to be wasted. You can easily make your own homemade kitchen composter which will allow you to save those scraps and turn them into fertilizer for plants around the house, or even your garden in the backyard.
So the next time you start to scrape your plate down the disposal, pretend it’s cold hard cash that you’re inserting down the drain, and think again.
