Discarded bike inner tubes for cutting up into strips for tying in plants. Flexible, easy to untie, strong, long-lasting, I find the black colour blends in well.
Bamboo barbecue skewers for seed pots, plant marking, and cat deterrent. Very cheap when on sale.
Loo tubes and mushroom trays for sowing.
Pallet planks split into wooden stakes with a small hand axe.
I use a bulb planter for planting small seedlings/plants. Much easier excavation than using a trowel, spoon, hori-hori knife or small spade. Heart's desire is to have bigger bulb planters so I can do the same with bigger plants.
We get a lot of moss growing through tiny plants (saxifrages and the like). An old pair of eyebrow tweezers is excellent for pulling the moss out without disturbing the rosettes.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
@athelas, does that L'Oreal stuff actually work as claimed for hair? If it does I might be tempted to try it. Then I'll have the bottle for gardening purposes afterwards!
It’s actually pretty good @JennyJ, which is why I always have a few empty bottles lying around. It does feel a bit weird as it turns warm on contact with wet hair… but as it says on the bottle you rinse it off anyway in 8 seconds.
But my most recent amazing hair product discovery is Kerastase Nutritive 8h Magic Night Serum (https://www.kerastase.co.uk/ranges/regimen/nutritive/8h-magic-night-serum/KER_00258.html and on sale at various websites, eg Boots, Look Fantastic) — bit expensive but the bottle lasts a long time. Unfortunately I can’t find a gardening re-use for it, but it’s glass so I imagine recyclable.
Kitchen scissors, for when I want to get that "perfect" line on the Ivy that grows like a waterfall over an old Victorian red-brick wall in my garden....they usually come out if I've been sat in the garden looking/admiring things too long
I love all this, just shows how imaginative we gardeners are. I use a wooden chopstock for making holes when pricking out, and the tubs that mushrooms come in for planting seeds, with holes in the bottom of course, just the right size for half a packet of bedding seeds, with the remainder kept in an old biscuit barrel for next year.
I pick up wooden kebab sticks, toothpicks and chopstick sets from various swap groups and always have a stack to hand. They have so many uses for house, crafting and garden. I also keep aluminium Indian take away trays. I have been keeping cardboard fruit punnets and used them doubled up for potting on. They are more robust than they look.
Posts
Loo tubes and mushroom trays for sowing.
Pallet planks split into wooden stakes with a small hand axe.
But my most recent amazing hair product discovery is Kerastase Nutritive 8h Magic Night Serum (https://www.kerastase.co.uk/ranges/regimen/nutritive/8h-magic-night-serum/KER_00258.html and on sale at various websites, eg Boots, Look Fantastic) — bit expensive but the bottle lasts a long time. Unfortunately I can’t find a gardening re-use for it, but it’s glass so I imagine recyclable.