Common household items you use to grow fruit

General Fruit Growing
#35

Baking cooling racks for drying scions after sterilizing

Used 2.5 gallon ice cream buckets from local shop (25 cents each), food grade with lids and stackable for storing fertilizer, grafting supplies, picking produce, etc.

Masking tape for marking scions

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#36
  • Paper binding 1’’ metal clips - absolutely mast have for securing nets on frame. Also connected together can be used as adjustable weights for young branches bending. I was lucky to get two buckets of them few years ago for free on a yard sale, still using them.
  • Old cotton t-shits cut in strips make perfect bio-degradable ties for tomatoes and other veggies.
  • Gallon plastic jugs from medical solution to prepare for colonoscopy (square with handle) make perfect loose fertilizer storage, easy to carry, waterproof and compact
  • Plastic jars from drinkable yogurt with hole on a side can be used as fruit maggot traps
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#37

I think your comment here is appropriate for this thread. How to get ants to stop climbing your tree - #11 by galinas

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#38

There are people trying to build things with it, marked for recycling or not. You might want to reconsider your policy.

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#39

I am counting on guys like you to save the world from guys like me.

There are currently a million plastic bottles per minute being used and discarded on Earth. Do the math on that.

Recycling isnt the answer…they couldnt build skyscrapers or battleships fast enough with the amount of recyclable waste on Earth.

Ask your policy makers to stop making plastic… What happened to Reduce/Reuse/Recycle? How did Earthians survive for thousands or tens of thousands of years without it?

Oh and recycling is a lie. Forgot about that.

plastic
plastic940×627 203 KB

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#40

kiddie pool + Sawzall for this hack.

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#41

Blowtorch for black knot removal…

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#42

Kitchen chip clips to hold plastic sheeting onto PVC supports in raised beds started early.

Soda cans and aluminum siding for labels

Toothpicks to pick up and sow tiny seeds indoors

Plastic meat trays as pot water coasters

Cheap apples coated with sticky trap hung as a lure

Plastic or glass bottles to hold cuttings of one blooming tree branch placed in the crotch of another tree to pollinate it

Hay bale string to support tomatoes grown with vertical support

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#43

Regina, many clever ideas! I use meat tray to catch the water of the pots too. When do you put out sticky trap apple out and what insects do you catch? I think use apple is a good idea, save the lure cost.

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#44

Clothespins/binder clips to hold together hardware cloth tree cages.

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#45

I use the walmart moving totes to grow horseradish and saplings. Makes horseradish easy. Just flip and replant with strays.

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#46

Toilet paper core to sow seeds, I put a bit of peat moss and then throw my seeds in there. No need to buy any starting pots, lol.

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#47

Cheap red plastic Christmas tree ornaments. Buy them by the canister after the holidays. One container-full is about a four-year supply for me. Coat three ornaments with Tanglefoot and deploy in the backyard at end of bloom to detect the presence of apple maggot flies. Thins the herd, too.

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#48

Clever trick!

I would be willing to bet that if the “Tangle-trap” stays sticky throughout its useful life, it could be removed with either mineral spirits or pvc primer or something like that and you could paint the ornaments again. Or, buy whatever color ornaments are available and paint them red then apply the Tangle-trap.

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#49

Yes, but the red ornaments are cheap, paint thinner is environmentally hazardous, and the Tanglefoot is among the most messy substances known to man. I handle the traps with vinyl gloves and throw them (and the gloves) away at the end of the season (actually the beginning of the next season).

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#50

Duly noted!

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#51

I’m sold! Great idea. They can be rather fragile, so placement on the tree would be important. Cheaper than a bag of red delicious or those plastic red balls.

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#52

I’ve had the loops break out a couple of times, but the ones I use are plastic. I pick them up and throw them away.

Placement is, of course, important. Visibility is important. My trees are dwarfed so I can reach all the way in. I hang the lures in an interior open spot 3/4 of the way up (or so). I hang three lures in separate trees out of 20 trees.

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#53

I was thinking of the glass ones. I’m a frequent visitor to Goodwill. I’ll have to keep my eye out for plastic ones.

#54

I use a lot of milk jugs. painted black and made into ecobricks. or filled with warm water or hot water to put in the hoophouse on cold nights. then I can water with it the next day. I do winter sow any flowers so they get used for that too.

I’ve used paper towel rolls to start a pawpaw in, it worked pretty well. and toilet paper rolls for corn starts but that ended up more trouble than it’s worth.

leftover tin foil becomes pot bottoms so I can bottom water starts. any plastic cup or container gets used for starts. the big ice cream containers, the plastic ones, I use those as pots, just poke holes in the base

I have an old big aquarium that I’m trying to figure out what to do with.

my hoophouse is entirely built of cardboard layers and bubble wrap from packages with a 6mil greenhouse plastic layer on the outside. all but the door is reused junk from mailers etc.

I make cones out of cardboard or newspaper for starts I’m going to give away- I tuck those into old cell trays to hold them upright.

old fabric that’s stretchy, t shirts etc, becomes strips of cordage to tie branches or tie up tomatoes. this year I’m growing a lot of squashes so I’ll be using that stuff for trellising.

I have an old coat rack I used to tie the red runner beans to last summer. it’s still out there I’ll do it again this year.

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