I buy replacement heads for janitors’ mops on the local market for a couple of £ - the sort of mop heads that look like Hungarian puli. Prised apart, the strings are excellent for tying things in the garden and greenhouse. However, being ridiculously prissy about aesthetics, I stain the strings in a bucket of used tea bags and coffee grounds to tone down their whiteness.
I buy the £1 buckets from B+Q, drill a few holes in the bottom and use them as plant pots for storing my Dahlias over winter in the shed. Much cheaper that proper plant pots.
It's a shame they're bright orange or you could use them outside. I use old woks and frying pans under large pots . The handle is useful for turning the pot around too.
The sawn off top half of a large fizzy drinks bottle makes a good funnel for refilling bird feeders or lawn feed distributers and adding liquid feed or chemicals to 5l spray bottles.
A small arrow-shaped beach pebble that I place to mark where my weed, moss or fertliser solution ran out and I have to go off and refill the watering can.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
The wooden cutlery provided in Greggs (among other places) is great for labelling rows of veg in the garden, especially the spoons (the bowl provides a good area for writing on). They rot in a season, which is fine in the veg garden. Coffee stirrers are ok for marking the other end of the row - a bit too narrow to write on, though.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
For the meticulous gardener, a pencil or chopstick is good for removing gravel from succulents or alpines after top dressing, if you forgot to cover the plants first!
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No idea where I got it, but I use it for pricking out, removing staples/nails and even for making holes for bigger seeds like peas, or for the pricked out seedlings. It lives in my carry box with all the other bits and bobs for the garden.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I use old woks and frying pans under large pots . The handle is useful for turning the pot around too.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border