Resources - How to find what you’ll need

Most gardeners are born scroungers or eventually learn how to do this. There are a lot of free or nearly free materials out there that, with a little effort, can be turned into something of use for the garden. Keep your eyes and mind open!

• Manure: It doesn’t have to be bought in bags. Check local stables, including the police, if you are in an urban area.

• Leaves for mulch and compost: Most municipalities now collect leaves in clear plastic backs for their own composting programs. Either beat them to it on collection days or order their finished product.

• Grass clippings for mulch and compost: Rake it up yourself, raid neighbours’ curbside collection bags, but beware of herbicide-treated lawns.

• Wood chips for mulch and pathways: Power companies, tree service companies and municipalities chip their trimmings, usually on right on site.

• Miscellaneous mulch and soil amendments: Food processors, coffee grounds, rice, peanut and buckwheat hulls, apple and grape pomace, monument companies for granite dust (a potassium source), feed mills for corncobs, farmers’ spoiled hay and straw, construction companies for straw and topsoil.

• Scrap wood: Old pallets (great for making compost bins), dumpsters at lumberyards and construction sites, wooden packing crates (often perfect planters, just as they are). Just make sure that the wood isn’t pressure treated (the green colour on the wood).

• Scrap metal: Pipes for posts, trellises can often be found in dumpsters at construction sites.

• Fencing: Scrap wood from various sources (see above), used snow fence (sometimes free from fence companies who rent it to construction companies).

• Gallon plastic buckets: These come in handy for watering, container gardening, hauling anything and everything, protecting newly transplanted seedlings, mixing ingredients. Can be found at restaurants, construction sites, dumpsters.

• Trellis materials: Plumbing companies will often throw out damaged or small pieces of PVC (plastic) pipe. Also, old snow fence makes good plan supports.

• Free or inexpensive seeds and plants: Many nurseries, garden centres, seed companies, and Parks Departments will give away seeds and annual plants at the end of the planting season (usually around mid-June).·

• Tools: Garage sales, auctions, second hand stores, tool lending libraries. SEE GARDEN TOOLS