Last fall while out thrifting and yard sale shopping I bought a box full of crystal glass serving plates and cookies trays and pie plates. All vintage and all with really pretty etched or cut designs. They cost me a whopping one dollar. Hubby thought I was nuts when I bought them and was not best pleased. But then I told him my plan. They were not for inside the kitchen but for the garden! I was going to use them under the potted plants! Genius! Can’t even buy those flimsy plastic pot holder plates for $1 especially not that many! And plastic ones won’t last as long or look as nice, nor is plastic a good option for the landfill! I really bought them for the bigger pots that go on the patio so the pots won’t stain the patio and at the same time retain moisture for the soil to soak up better. But they also make a great place to germinate plants from seeds!
Now for the recycling part: we had a bunch of styrofoam cups given to us. We don’t like to use styrofoam but I don’t like to see them go in the landfill either. They make great seedling pots to start plants. You can write on the cup (and reuse them as well). Combined with the glass plates and a little water in the plate with a hole punched in the bottom of the styrofoam cup with a broken tine from a plastic fork (also recycled and given to us) so that the moisture can soak up from the plate into the cup. The styrofoam cup keeps the soil nice and warm on chilly spring nights which helps those seeds germinate. I then place a recycled sandwich bag over the cup (some people use steam wrap but I don’t buy that nor is it easy to reuse) to retain moisture like a mini greenhouse effect! This works great to germinate the seeds and as soon as I see sprouts in the cups I simply remove the bags (saving them to use again for the next set of seeds to be germinated) and keep water in the plates.
The more temperature sensitive plants like tomatoes get germinated and allowed to grow in the cups sitting on their plates on top of a plant specific heating pad from a garden center (I got mine on Amazon) which is temperature controlled by a thermostat sensor stuck into one of the cups soil. Only turning on if it reaches a preset “low/too cold” temperature.
I have finally found the perfect way to germinate and get my garden plants started inside (you can do this inside your house or in a greenhouse) so they will be ready to be transplanted into the big garden when the temperatures get a bit higher outside. The cost savings over buying starter plants at the local green house is tremendous doing it this way. I also save seeds from last years crop or from grocery store fruits and veggies to get starters for next year. So a lot of the seeds are free. Many places have seed exchanges for people who save seeds so that’s another option. I’m trying an heirloom rainbow tomato from a seed saver person this year as a new variety.
Now for the last bit of genius recycling. We also have chickens. Yes chicken poop. We do that too. But that’s not where I’m going. We hatch baby chickens in the warmer spring months and to keep the babies warm we use a brooding plate (you can google that, but it has a temperature setting that turns off if it gets too warm to keep from overheating the baby chickens and is a radiant heater so it’s pretty safe to use). During the colder spring months (before it’s time to hatch baby chicks out) we put the brooder plate in the greenhouse to provide warmth on cold nights to keep the baby plants from freezing! Brooding plates also work nicely to keep pipes from freezing if you get an especially bad cold snap in the winter months lol. Hundred year old houses and winter camping in the RV sometimes need a helping hand lol. I’m sure it’s not recommended by the manufacturer but my thought are: when needs must and there is no product that will do the job then this feels safer to use than an electric heater or the old light bulb method. It works for us. I keep two brooder plates not used for chickens that are used solely for keeping bathroom/kitchen pipes from freezing in the winter (clean and free of chicken poop lol). But I figure if it’s safe enough to use around baby chicks with food, water, straw next to it (and they can be messy little things!)… then it’s probably safe enough to turn on during a cold snap to keep the pipes from freezing. But any heat source can be risky so do so at your own risk.
Thrifting, recycling, gardening… yep! It goes hand in hand! And can be very prettily done.
Conestoga Chuck 