Welcome to Nature's Curator's Eco Ideas!

 

Our Eco Ideas page is a collection of our favourite DIY gardening ideas. Great additions to your garden that you can make at home from recycled bits and bobs.

 

How to Make a Pallet Potting Table

 

 

This is a relatively easy and extreemly useful eco idea. We, the Nature's Curator crew have several of these in our gardens.

 

The table can be used as a potting bench, glasshouse shelving or shelves for your BBQ area. Pallets are fairly easy to come by and you should be able to pick one up for free.

 

Recyling wooden pallets is a great source of cheap or free wood for projects in your garden.

 

Materials

Wooden pallet (+1 more for parts)

Nails

Saw

Paint (optional)

 

 

Step 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut your pallet in half. If your pallet has an uneven number of top slats you can make one half wider than the other – the wide half will be your bottom shelf.

 

 

Step 2 (optional)

Fill in the gaps on your top shelf slat with slats from your spare pallet.

 

 

Step 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use four slat from your spare pallet to form the supports, or legs, on your table.

 

 

 

Step 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paint! This step is optional and you may prefer the rustic look but we painted ours to blend in with the rest of the garden.

Easy! You can alter this design to suit your needs – add an extra shelf, look for interesting pallets made of different woods, sand it down and use it in your house....

 

 

How to Grow Square Watermelon.

 

Strictly speaking, this isn't an eco idea. But growing your own can be great for the environment and this idea is so awesomely crazy we just had to include it on out eco ideas page! Of course, if you can scrounge some used materials and recycle them for this project, it will instanlty achieve eco ideas status!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Materials

10mm perspex/acrylic sheet cut into six 20cm squares. You may need to make the squares bigger depending on the variety of watermelon you are growing.

A hacksaw or table saw to cut your plastic.

A hole cutter, jigsaw or hacksaw to cut a keyhole in the plastic.

A drill.

A teeny, tiny watermelon (still attached to the vine!)

Office supply shops could be a source of materials. An alternative is to use a concrete block as your watermelon mould.

 

Step 1

Take your six squares and drill a handful of holes in each corner of each sheet. This will allow your watermelon to breathe.

 

Step 2

Use a hole cutter or hacksaw to cut a keyhole in the top square of plastic – this is the hole you will pop your baby watermelon through.

 

Step 3

Assemble your box. Make sure you have at least one removable side. You can use clasps or hinges and wood screws to hold the box together or simply glue the box together but make sure you use hinges to make one side a door so you can get your watermelon out!

 

Step 4

Choose your victim and pop the little watermelon through the keyhole and into the box. Be very gentle with the vine during this process

 

Step 5

Wait until your watermelon is ripe and open up your box to remove your square watermelon!

 

If you can pull this one off we guarantee your kids and friends will think you're a gardening genius!

 

 

 

 

 

How to Make Paper Plant Pots

 

 

Paper pots are great way to start off your seedlings and an excellent way to get the kids involved in the garden. This is also a really practical way to recycle newspapers.

 

Commercial seedling products are often plastic but these cute little origami pots can be planted straight into the garden. We recommend you open up the bottom of the pot (being carfeful not to damage those tender roots) to allow good drainage and root expansion.

 

We used a small newspaper to make our pots but you can cut down the larger 'broadsheet' papers for this project too – your local paper would be perfect for this project!

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1

Take a full sheet of newspaper. Fold it in half. You should now have a long rectangle of paper which is 4 sheets thick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2

Take your tube and roll the newspaper around the tube. Make sure you leave about 1/3 of the paper overhanging the top of the tube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3

Tuck the overhanging paper into the centre of the tube

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4

Stand the newspaper tube upright with the tucked in edge on the bottom. Push the tucks down into the centre of the tube so that they lie fairly flat. Pull the tube out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 5

Stamp! Push your glass or jar into the pot and push down really hard to form the bottom of your pot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 6

You're done! Now add potting mix and seeds or seedlings and watch them grow!

 

When you're ready to plant your seedlings out, just poke drainage holes in the bottom of your pot or tear the bottom off completely. Dig a hole and pop your little plant straight in the hole – newspaper and all! The newspaper will decay into the soil providing mulch for your little plants.

 

Remember to water your plants in well.