Why Freecycle is the Best Thing You Can Join This Week (From The Argus)

Why Freecycle is the Best Thing You Can Join This Week

11:31pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

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By Georgy Edgson - urban avant gardener »

If you’ve never gardened before, the initial prospect can seem quite bewildering. For starters, there’s the mammoth cash outlay of containers, earth, tools, seeds and the like.

But for the urban gardener, this is the exciting part where ingenuity, craft and a little lateral thinking come into play. Instead of sending so-called garbage to the recycling plant or council dump, the crafty urbanite knows how to turn trash into gardening treasure.

An excellent first port of call is Freecycle, the international Yahoo resource where members offer unwanted goods and request items. Every city around the globe has a Freecycle group, and Brighton is no exception. Boasting 15,346 members, the group covers the greater Brighton area from Shoreham to Newhaven and in the last week alone has offered topsoil, windowpanes for cold frames, plants and shelves.

The former items are self-explanatory; shelves can serve as anything from simple storage of tools and pots to a rudimentary greenhouse with the addition of some strong plastic sheeting and duct tape.

According to DEFRA (the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) 70% of the UK's annual waste goes to landfill - 330 million tonnes per annum as of 2007.

I was lucky enough to pick up a freestanding wooden hat stand a couple of days ago. The stand is in excellent condition with space for a lower additional shelf and eight separate arms on a rotating central core. I rent my flat and can’t drill on the balcony or secure any structures to the outside wall.

I can now plant shade tolerant herbs on the lower shelf and use the hat arms to hang tomatoes and sun-loving plants such as peppers and basil. This also frees up some of the balcony floor space, giving me more room to house salads and root crops in containers.

The best part of the exercise is that not only has none of it cost me a penny, but I’ve also done my bit to avoid the ecologically unsound blight of landfill.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Lateral thinking is fun. Necessity has always been the mother of invention and you’d be surprised how many uses you can find for seemingly mundane objects that are destined for the junkyard.

I’ve seen clear plastic storage boxes with lids used as cold frames, wooden vegetable delivery crates as salad containers, old birdcages as flower baskets and wooden drawers for planters.

I use small tin cans for flowers, catering sized baked bean tins for pepper plants, and old olive oil tins from the takeaway for my courgettes. Even the Styrofoam troughs that cushion the sides of your newly delivered stereo come in handy for planting out shallow rooted vegetables. Styrofoam has the added bonus of almost zero weight, so is a boon on the balcony.

The beauty of junk is the way it weathers. Metal rusts and wood takes on a silvery patina. Even coloured plastic in peacock hues fades to a gentle pastel after time and exposure to sunlight. All of this combines to make your garden look organic against the greens of the foliage and earthy tones of the flowers and fruits.

All it takes is a little thought and a little ingenuity.