Some of the best things in life are discards. That’s the reason behind the popular phrase:
“One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure”
As the child of a hippy I was ingrained with the principles of reduce, reuse, & recycle and I saw it in play at my great grandmother’s house everyday. She was a teenager during the Great Depression and that immensely shaped her way of life. It was the reason that even when she moved to a city she always grew a small vegetable garden. It was the reason she repurposed old card board boxes, and saved scraps of old fabric.
You never know when hard times will hit and your capacity to see the possibilities in different objects can be the difference between having what you need and having nothing.
When I started my garden this year I bought tomato cages for my tomatoes and also for my cucumbers because I experimented with vertically growing them last year and loved it! I was looking for large tomato cages and was only able to find regular sized ones.
I was super bummed. But as luck would have it a neighbor was wanting to get rid 2 super large tomato cages. These tomato cages are amazing! They are as tall as me, and are easily 20 years old, with these large stakes that you have to pound into the ground to keep them in place.
The holes are big enough to fit my hands through and easily pick the tasty cucumbers, even the biggest ones! The only problem they had were that they were rusted from years of use. But I knew exactly how to solve that problem!
So off I went to favorite home improvement store for some metal sandpaper (Yes, the sandpaper you use on metal is different from the sandpaper you use on wood. If you didn’t know this before, file it away for future use because it’s important!). While there I also bought a couple of cans of Rust-oleum spray paint, and I found a beautiful sage green color!
After about 2.5 hours of good old fashioned elbow grease and all the sandpaper I bought, I had some rust-free tomato cages, sorely in need of a pretty coat of paint. Add another roughly 30 minutes for spray painting and then overnight drying, just to make sure all the paint was set properly, and I had a wonderful climbing trellis for cucumbers!
I did the math on my project vs. the tomato cages I originally bought for the cucumbers. I spend about $15 on 2 tomato cages, that were not what I really wanted, while the other cage project cost me about $15 in sandpaper and paint, and 3 hours of labor, but were more perfect for my purpose than anything I could find to buy. I find that a very worthwhile investment because now I have have them and they are rustproof for years to come!
I know my grandparents would be very proud of me for not giving up on my vision and not shying away from the little bit of hard work that stood in my way. I also know that they would very happy with the pickles I plan to make from my crop of cucumbers this year!
Now I just need to wait for the cucumbers…
… I’ll try to be patient.
Kween's Krafts 