Part of being an aforementioned Garden Geek is experimenting, reusing, and repurposing, and I try and do this not only in the garden but in the house as well.
This summer I grew some fairly large courgettes, too large to really be any good for eating, and today was the time to get rid of them and get them in the composter. I’m sure I could’ve made something from them but I really didn’t fancy it so cutting it open I discovered that it had lots of lovely seeds inside, and so I took to harvesting them.
As you can see I ended up with quite a lot! I don’t think I need that many courgette plants but I’ll be more than happy to share them with friends and family. I’ve usually bought seeds in packets but a look around at various forums shows it’s pretty easy to get your own seeds and some people even get theirs from fruit and veg bought at the supermarket!
It’s a pretty obvious thing but I guess I’ve never really though of it that way as it’s generally much easier to just buy a pack of seeds, but this is a much better zero cost solution and something I will look to do more of in the future.
My other bit of scrimping came indoors when Emma was ready to throw out a heart shaped candle that had come to the end of its life. My initial thought was that maybe I could use the dish for something else and then I thought that it really shouldn’t be too hard to put a new candle in and have it as good as new.
I put the candle in the oven at about 180C for it to gently melt and after about 10 minutes I was able to simply drop a tea light in there. It didn’t matter that the candles were different colours as the heat from the melted wax caused the tea light wax to melt and blend in. The wick from the tea light stayed in place as the wax cooled and it was looking good!
Happy days! The candle works and all it took was a tea light that cost just pennies.
I guess the main thing to take from this post is that it’s pretty easy to think that something is pointless or worthless, but with minimal effort you can make use of it again, not only saving money, but getting out of the throwaway mindset many of us are in.