Frugal Living
Gardening in Pots, Tubs, Buckets, Bins & Containers

Peas grown in square foot wooden planters in 2008

With problems ranging from insufficient space, marauding cats, no planting space and many other such reasons for not gardening, I thought I'd dedicate a page of the Frugaldom website to alternative methods of growing your own food. Never throw out anything that's suitable for using as a planter. I have salvaged all sorts of tubs and containers and they are so much easier to protect from cats, insects, birds, slugs & snails. These are pictures of various pots, tubs, barrels and buckets I have planted an assortment of fruit & veg in this year. I also got a huge selection of smaller planters and plant pots through Freecycle.
An old bread basket covered with plastic makes a great cold frame for lettuce / salad leaves Old buckets work just as well as plastic planters. I have a potato in each of the above examples.
Freecycle other people's old plastic planters. This corner one has my garlic in it. Egg cartons make great seed trays, I'm using them for tomato and pepper seeds just now.
From egg carton to yoghurt carton when I pot up the tomato and pepper seedlings A broken animal feed bucket has enough space for several potatoes to grow. This one has 4 in it.
Flexi-trugs from animal feed merchants are much cheaper than large potato planters. Mine have about 5 potatoes in each of them. Old chests of drawers or wardrobes make great raised beds or coldframes. This one has Artichoke, Spring Onion and Cabbage seeds in it.
Fruit cartons from supermarkets make excellent mini propogators. This one has pepper seeds in it Another large bucket that was Freecycled - more potatoes in this one.
Plastic disinfectant barrels from dairy farms make great veggie planters. Potatoes, carrots and beetroot are what these ones are growing. Plastic stacking boxes, this one was Freecycled last year and, once again, has a polythene bag over it and is filled with salad leaves.
Homemade, square foot, wooden planters. I have 10 of these: 4 x strawberries, 1 x beetroot, 1 x onions, 1 x spinach beets and 1 x lettuce so far. Feed supplement buckets are great. This one now has cauliflower seedlings in it and I have a couple as nest boxes for the broody hens.
This birdhouse had lost it's lid, so it's been hung on the fence and planted with mint. Old drawers with the bases removed make great border beds. These ones surround fruit bushes.
05/04/09 - Some of the containers on the patio: garlic and two mixes of assorted salad leaves. We're already eating the salad leaves. 25/04/09 - We rehomed this wishing well from a garden clearance. It's now weeded and planted up with spring onions.

4 hanging baskets now attached to fence and a further 4 attached to an old bird table that has become a planter. Buckets and tubs on the new patio adjoining the greenhouse. Mainly carrots, onions, potatoes, beans, peas, herbs, lettuce and tomatoes.
Freecycled wooden wheelbarrow with radishes, this just gets refilled each time we use the radishes. Another one has mixed corn that grows for the chickens to eat and yet another has nasturtiums and an assortment of herbs & mint. June 2009 - We've built a potato 'well'. It's 2' x 2' and made up with 5" boards that can be unscrewed from bottom upwards as the potatoes grow. It's reported that this system can produce over 40kg of potatoes, so I'd only need 12 square feet to grow enough potatoes to last this family a full year.
Hang containers wherever you can - I'm using a Freecycled hanging rack with trellis and a bread tray underneath. Bird tables are ideal if it's for something they won't eat, like tumbling tomatoes.

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