This one comes courtesy of my Aunt Charlotte, who is a much, much better gardener than I can ever hope to be.
Instead of filling the bottom of large planters with rocks to help with drainage, you can fill them with crushed soda or beer cans. It’s a great way to reuse the cans and it makes the container much lighter and easier to move around. Make sure to place all the cans face down so that the holes in the top of the cans won’t fill with water.
Then just fill it with soil and plant as you normally would.
We also started a compost bin over the weekend. I’ve wanted one for a while because for the past two years we’ve just had a big, stinky pile of compost on the side of our house, but have you priced compost bins? Those suckers are expensive.
Luckily (I guess) one of our plastic trash cans was damaged pretty severely in a wind storm recently. So Eddie cut off the bottom of the trash can with a razor knife and-ta-da-free compost bin. It’s going to be a pain in the butt to turn the pile every few months, but that’s ok. It’s better than paying $500 bucks for a fancier one. (Plus I’m probably not the one who will be turning it.)
Great idea! You can also use NON soluble packing peanuts for drainage too. Just be sure they are non soluble.