Recycling, composting and gardening

I promise that this blog isn't always going to be about gardens, but those are the only big projects I am working on/finishing currently, so that is what you get! *sticks tounge out*;)

Last year, in anticipation of starting a garden, I started a compost bin from an old covered trash can (the kind that is $7.00 at W). This week I added little workers to it in the form of Red Worms. Let me tell you, they were not easy to track down, none of the bait shops had any sort of worms at all, so I turned to the world wide web. There are quite a few places that sell them, but I wanted something close geographically and cheap (I only wanted 100 to start out). I finally purchased mine off of ebay from a seller in New Orleans, can't get much closer than that! They were here 2 days later. I tossed them in and they got to work, I havn't seen them unless I've gone looking, so they must be digging deep. In my search for worms, I learned that you can't use night crawlers or other forms of worms because they dont hold up to the heat in my style of compost bin. I am still holding out hope for a nice vermicomposter that will house several hundred of the squirmy critters and produce tons of fresh rich soil and worm tea for my garden.

Next up is my little project for the garden: a recycled watering can. I dont use a watering can often, so I couldn't see the point in spending $5-$15 on one. I started wondering if I could make one out of things I have sitting around. In our family, we go through gallons of apple juice, so I always have some of the bottles sitting around and waiting for recycling day. I grabbed one and got to work. It was easy and took me less than 5 minutes, and most of that was gathering tools and taking pictures!

First I pulled out my drill and a really small bit.

Then I drew a circle on the bottle with a marker where I wanted my spout to be.

Next I drilled holes in a random fashion inside the circle.

Finally I drilled one air hole on the back side of the bottle (If you dont do this then you have to squeeze the water out and wait for it to "glug, glug" before moving on ;) )

Fill it with water, put the cap on and get to watering! easy right?

Here are a few pictures of the plants in my garden, they look great right? :)

Have a great day everyone!