It does not get much better than recycling, container gardening and growing our own food! Here in Panama, recycling has not really taken off, so there is a lot of trash that goes into the landfills that can be reused or repurposed. When we moved here, we realized that containers used for gardening are really expensive here - around $1 each for a small one! We knew we had to do something other than buy a hundred of these to get our plants going. We tried to think of something we already had that we could use and that is when we thought of milk jugs!
Here are some pineapple tops we are about to plant. These were previously cut off of some pineapple we bought! We cannot wait to have our own little crop (and this is only a few of the pineapples we have)!
As a family of seven, we buy about 4-5 gallons of milk a week, so we have a lot of these milk jugs sitting around. This was a great way for us to keep all of these plastic bottles out of the landfill as well as have some containers to start our garden. Below you can see strawberries, flowers, and who knows what else growing.
It is pretty easy to transform a milk jug into a container for gardening. Either cut the handle and top smooth off, or cut around the handle to make for easy transporting of the plant. We have done the jugs both ways. The favorite way is probably with the handle still on (since we've already moved this garden about four times). After you cut the top off, poke some holes in the bottom for drainage and then fill with soil and the plant or seed. I have even used a marker to write what type of seeds I have planted in each container in the past!
We have started clearing some of the land we have to plant these in the ground now that we are settled in our permanent house. It is nice that the containers are also reusable. We can use them over and over again if we need to as they are pretty hard to destroy!
And sometimes we get a surprise from the sticks and seeds we have planted. Check out this beauty that blossomed the other day and I was totally shocked!
Just another way we are doing our part to keep our kids free from pesticides, keep these jugs out of the landfill and provide fresh foods for our family.
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