Some Garden DIY

For those of you who know me, I do quite a fair bit of gardening. For those of you who know me better, I'm pretty huge on homesteading (or feeble attempts at it) and recycling junk into something useful for the garden.

All these little DIY projects have helped me saved some serious moolah. Let's take this nice little garden apron, for example:

This was originally from an old pair of jeans that no longer fit me. Mind you, it's a 7-year old pair of jeans so I don't think I actually put on weight.

Yeah. The jeans must have shrunk. That can be the only reason.

Anyways, I took a nice pair a scissors and snipped up the back portion of my jeans, and voila! A nice, durable garden apron. This apron even has 2 nice little pockets to store my tools, sans balls stabbing.

I tried it on and found that it was still slightly too tight so I added a few rubber bands as an elastic extension.

Nifty, eh?

My knack of storing junk for repurposing at a later time has met much chagrin from the mother, though. But can you blame me when even an exhausted Thirsty Hippo container can be turned into a wicking container?!

The best part is that the container was essentially free (it would've been thrown away anyway) and I now have a plant that I know I won't have to worry about if I want to go on an extended holiday.

So what else did I repurpose and upcycle?

One of the largest offenders of plastic waste entering the oceans, of course! Plastic bottles!

I was reading up on vertical gardens and how they can maximise air space and reduce water wastage when it came to watering the plants inside. I mean, considering global warming, the recent scorching weather, global water shortage and Singapore's lack of real natural resources, I figured this was worth looking into.

One can never be too sure when a zombie apocalypse will occur.

That one tower became two towers.

As you can see, a single tower looks pretty ugly by itself but it looks better when done as a group. The entire railing will probably be filled up with more vertical planters as time goes by.

Here's how it works. Water is fed into the green bottles (holes have been poked into the base) and it all flows down the bottles, ensuring water reaches all the plants. The end result? Everything gets watered with less than 500ml flowing down the drain per vertical setup. This is significantly less compared to if we were to water with a watering can. Imagine all the savings in the water bill!

I'll keep you all updated on the evolution of this plant wall. Keeping my fingers crossed on this being a success!

Have any other ideas? Post them below and we'll chat!