Cool Free Stuff.

[Vertmorpheus]

Mornin all...have to brag founds a dozen great books for nothing at the local tip (good trash n treasure sections), from australian gardening, organic gardening to olive growing, bonsai growing (written by an actual japanese person ) the Earth Garden self suffiency book from about 1978 in near perfect condition,a compendium of just about every cultivated vegetable on earth, a small pile of organic growing magazines and my usual find of a dozen or so free plastic pots.Brightened up the afternoon quite a bit :d AND got talking with the bloke that takes care of the tip, turns out he has a massive stack of hopefully not too old plastic pots up at his place 5 minutes away but has never bothered bringing them down as he didn't think anyone would want them. Guess he hadn't noticed the half a dozen commodore bootloads of mostly schmick n shiny multicoloured and basic black pots I'd picked up from there in the last 6 months, from tiny tubestock sized things right up to 430mm.... so many in fact I ended up having to take a stack of them in to the cityfarm folks in Brisbane (google northey street city farm).

What goes around comes around, I can go back in a couple months and buy bargain native and exotic fruit trees in the same pots with all the germ work and babying done by someone else. Talking to people and mentioning the things you are on the lookout for can often blow you away with offers of all that and more , for free... but sometime you might have to excavate a shed to get to it, or listen to someone talk about the 40s for quite a while. But some of that is gold too, and something of some value is still being shared.being free with the things you don't need seems to make others more likely to do the same, I've seen volunteering epidemics of late haha... and you can get just about anything done for a carton of beer or the right bottle of spirits.

I love scrounging, pack ratting, reappropriation... Aussies are born recyclers, look outside on Big Rubbish day once it gets dark...see the swarming hoards with torches and station wagons ? I'm always amazed at how just the right thing seems to turn up at just the right time , moreso once growing plants, living easy and well get involved. Organic gardening has a kind of chicken and egg relationship with scrounging, the methods are cheaper but then you get obsessed, end up simply having to find a use for the 20 hessian bags you ended up with , somehow, in the middle of lego land. I scored nearly a dozen white 10.5 litre food grade buckets from a fruit shop, lids to go with them... handy things in the land of water restrictions, and when someone in the house wears nappies anything that can be made airtight and hold 10 litres is a blessing (no, it's not me ) I have things growing in some of them, stored in others,mysteriously decaying and breeding in others. Came in handy to drain my transmission and oil a while ago too. So what if I had to spend an hour cleaning middle aged greek yoghurt out of them?

Just wanting a hands up from all the other closet milkcrate thieves, and a word on the coolest free thing you've found lately . Maybe advice on where to find good free stuff, anything you have that MUST be useful to someone (within reason I guess), links to sites for free stuff etc. Between us we can be a mighty force, and make sure not a broccoli box , old brown chair or ancient stack of books ends up as landfill! :d Maybe somewhere for trade of "boring" fruit veg n herb seed as people on here have swags of that kind of thing but it doesn't get aired as often as the Psychotria haha.

I like the idea of www.freecycle.org Lots of great stuff especially for young families and other domesticated forms of human life. Check it out! Most populated bits of aus seem to have a local listing if you hunt around.

happy hunting, and I saw it first!

GD

[Auntyjack]

heya GD...I found a TV, a video, a toaster and one of those grooooovey plastic molded 70's chairs (you know looks like a wine glass) all from the dump, the only thing was I searched for hours for the remotes for the Tv and video and thats how I found the toaster and the chair...but hey they all worked!

..I agree there's nuthin like Aussie fossikin'....it cuts both ways tho...also find it damm hard to part with anything!

AJ

[Vertmorpheus]

Hunting thru hard rubbish gives you agood insight into what alien cultures will think of us in a thousand years time when they dig up our smouldering remains! toilet bowls and shannon noll cd's, must be religious icons everywhere has the bloody things! I got a fully functional LG dvd from the tip awhile ago, one of the schmick skinny ones at that... no idea what goes thru some people's heads.

Hunting and gathering can lead to hoarding but I am pretty strict with myself, if it's not handy enough that it'd get pinched out of the front yard if I left it in clear sight I usually leave it where I found it. Helps if something has more than one use too. Being in a rental helps too, though anything I just can't part with gets to live at my old mans place (acreage, mostly empty shed, woohoo).

As a plant freak I'm a big fan of the ppl selling feed bags of horse and cow poo for a couple bucks from their front gate, free food (and interesting weeds) and the odd new found mushroom patch, yay! Also having a quick check thru green waste dumping areas for free cuttings. The things people trim most or cut right out tend to be the quickest growing things for the area you find the waste in.

And never understimate what salvos stores etc have in stock in terms of disposable pyrex , pots pans etc. A couple of mates have stills built entirely from vinnies , now THAT'S savings :d Or losings, if we talking consciousness!

Garage sales of course rock, especially for tools etc as you can still find oldish tools made of metals known to science rather than SuperBrandTool mystery metal crap from bunnings... get all medieval and set up a forge and you can beat out any lumps, reharden etc (my forge is made from an old disc plow disc, a few oddments of pipe... the blower is the only "real" thing on it... anvils are made from railtrack and I beam respectively, mounted on bigarse logs.. good fun and handy to have!)

And styrene boxes...my god, is there any situation in life not aided by those things? germing seeds, growing veggies in em (treat em as little garden beds, deep enough for carrots too), trapping water, making plant teas, picking herbs n veg into them. Cutting the bottom out makes a kickarse weather shield to put around things you are starting in ground too (can cut slope into sides for more light etc if needd but they reflect fairly well). You can also use em as a free alternative to the generic 50 litre plastic tub .... storing out of season clothes, books, whatever. Unpack the freezer into them if it goes on the blink. Use the styro panels from em to insulate things (remember, flammable as hell). Use as cheap eskies. Wormfarms made easy and well insulated too!

But then I'm the kind of person to take scissors to empty kelp mix containers etc, the white plastic ones... with a few snips you have a couple dozen free plant tags rather than some empty bulk tying up the waste system. Most permanent pens work to write on em but I use one of those sharpie ones, lasts for ages.

crap, gotta love it :d

GD

[ThunderIdeal]

man you seem like a really (really) resourceful person. your response in 'wetpot watering system' was impressive.

used book stores are good for gardening books but i don't take anything that isn't really cool, usually i just get the books less than 10-15 years old, and ones that are relevant to me. i haven't picked up very many at all but at least two of them were really good finds.

my brother found an old bottle at a building site today. hard to estimate the age, at least 70 years i think. Davis - Vegetable Painkiller. haha. i'm gonna steal it off him.

on this topic, LETS schemes sound pretty useful. that's where services are traded for, well basically for LETS dollars, which are recorded at your local LETS. so somebody does your ironing to earn some LETS, and you eventually earn the cost back by doing some stuff for some other scheme member.

not a big fan of trash myself, don't know where it's been or what nasty 50 year old pesticide was spilled all over it, but if it can be cleaned i'm all for it. it's awesome that you have a forge and do your own metalwork. the cheaper tools at bunnings are laughable whereas old fashion tools can be repaired for a long time, if you've got the skill.

i hear old carpet is easy to obtain from any business that puts in new carpets. some of it is a shame to put into the ground, but it's useful stuff if (unlike me) you've got nothing against using junk in your garden.

[watertrade]

I work at a university and have picked up all kinds of things from bins and various places around the uni. I think as the uni upgrades and changes programs heaps of stuff gets throw away. My best find was an absolute shit load of scientific glassware. The scientific glassblowing area closed down because most stuff is now just bought from overseas. Anyway to give you an idea how much stuff I got I filled my sedan three times with boxes of glassware and raw material (glass tubes etc) It has been very handy having heaps of flasks of various sorts. Containers, still heads desiccators... the list goes on... it was like Christmas. About 50% of it is used. If I ever get raided (don’t know why I would ;) ) It would look like I had a massive lab setup.

The uni seems to throw away heaps of furniture too.

just a thought!

[watertrade]

edit : double post

Edited April 28, 2007 by watertrade

[Vertmorpheus]

Lol, not so much really really resourceful as really fairly broke, single income family living in Johnnys Australia... if I want anything special sorted I feel much better for a wide range of reasons doing it for free or cheap rathr than just dipping into the paypacket for some disposable shiny crap from bunning$. That and I'm after MacGyver's job :D

Hunting up freebies can sometimes involve a bit of risk, as you said pesticides etc, the odd resident redback... I take a fair bit of solace in anything that has obviously been outside for a while, hard for most nasties to hang around in anything like significant levels when the stuff is being rained on and sun baked. But be wary of old drums, buckets and jars, you never do know. Old fuel drums have blown a few people up... a little bit of dregs in the bottom isn't so bad but once its a warm day and you're using the top of the drum as a bench to use an anglegrinder... boom! At least do it around new years so the neighbours get some fireworks :D Salvaged containers should be used with a fair bit of caution when used for homebrewing or growing anything in... but then a well rinsed pesticide tub could be less toxic than the dirt in your great aussie backyard depending on where you are.

LETS is a great system but I've heard in some areas it comes down to basically a few people with really handy skills helping out all over town and only having cheap jam or ironing in return...but ya get that I suppose. Can't argue with free.

Carpet makes ok weed matting around newly planted trees etc, and gets used a bit to stop small scale erosion. the nylon ones have a hard time decomposing but some prewar ones were made of some weird vinyl like stuff that actually does drop deadeventually, a bit like lino. But it takes a while. I don't use either of the above myself , despite not minding a messy garden haha ...when I walk past the yuppie places with the shitty rendered fence and facade, moat of river pebbles around the house that looks like a live-in version of windows XP, the only plantlife is yuccas and agaves I feel like throwing handfulls of seed and worm shit over the fence.Still, some of those places would be fine if the corro they built em from was recycled and not brand new bluescope low profile somethinorother in the executive dusk blue.

Bit of a wasteof new resources. I like to renew old resources by feeding kitchen scraps to the guinea pig and then using the odourless pig poo as a mini manure for pots etc... some just ends up in the lawn. And the pig gets to eat a wider range of veg and fruit than most people I know :D About a teaspoon (cuppa, anyone?) for every hundred mm of pot diameter seems about right.

Weirdo tips of the day .... if you're a hairy bastard like me, stick the wads of fur that end up in the brush (sorry baldies, I felt you wince then) into the compost, rich source of N. Olive oil works like wd40 on squeaky doors without using petrochems.

You can put junk mail thru an old blender, then press the pulp on mesh screens made from old fly screens, and turn rubbish reading material into personalised writing material (then use it to write to the company asking them to stop sending you shit you don't need about things you don't want).

Pineapple and carrot tops can be regrown if you plant them kindly enough.

You can make cheap , effective plant tubes and small pots by rolling newspaper into a tube and then folding/rolling the ends back into the tube... then add mix and seeds, plant the whole thing when its ready. Secure with brown string, or cheap cellulose based tape, people have gotten quite elaborate with these and put a store of plant food in a paper bundle in the bottom etc so they have something to help them out when they hit the ground.

Kill weeds with black plastic and the sun.

You can cook and eat green pawpaw, bananas and mango. Refill squirty air freshener thingos with water, a drop of liquid soap or detergent and a dozen drops of whatever oils you like as air freshener on the cheap (and much better smelling). Add a heap of citronella , ti tree or lemongrass to keep the bugs away.

Don't buy 250-300mm pots from bunnings at inflated prices, get the darkest colour of plastic 10 l bucket you can find for about 90 cents and bung a few holes in with nails or a drill , you can customise drainage then, even put the holes about 20 mm up the side of the base so that there is something of a reservoir effect.

Do the decent thing and drop clothes you don't use off at a vinnies bin, especially kids stuff.Toys and books too.Karma, baby.Makesthe clothes you do wear easier to find too, which makes you more likely to be ontime, so less speeding - less tickets. Savin a packet !

Keep those twisty things off bread bags and use em as plant ties for stakes etc. The bags, being long for their width, are good for carrying around the yard for just about to seed weedy plants etc to go into (extra length helps keep seeds in).

The crappy springwater (not oil or brine) you pour out of a can of fish would be better off in your soil than stinking up the sink.

If you're mobile is on telstra prepaid, go to telstraprepaidplus.com and change to the 1 cent text option or whatver suits you more than the basic plan... costs nothing to change and has saved me a fair bit.

The mesh bags that oranges and kiwifruit come in are great for drying herbs in... just stick some in there but not too tightly and hang the bag somewhere with a bit of airflow, not too hot or sunny, shake the bag around now n then to ensure even drying. Can be good to put seedheads in them and bang them on the bench to get seeds out of pods etc too. Or wrap three or four of them around a block of soap and keep it by the laundry sink, back tap or whatever, nice and abrasive for oily or grubby hands, and getting stains out of fabric if you're quick enough.

Go to Aldi more, if only just for cupboard filler crap, packet snacks and all that cheese powder based food. Most ofit is made in australia or new zealand. Though we have some fairly psychotic looking "funny faces" potato things from norway. Black metal will do that though.Shop in chinatown more , local fresh markets etc. Filling your belly from woolies is a rort especially when alternatives are easy enough to sort out.

Cheap, love it. Having done all that, spend what you saved on a good feed of Thai and a bottle of Absolut or a bunch of new cd's, some beneficial plants or that bloody phone bill :D

Crap is often nowhere near rubbish once you look at it thru the eyes of the working poor

GD

[hebrew]

yeah awesome GD

i am a huge fan of recyling stuff, its the way to go i reckon. i love hard rubbish i found that if you go around the richer parts of town you can find some great things there. here where i live in a poorer harder place it is usually just crap they throw out like soiled mattresses or something but yeah still can find some gems.

great ideas in here good job

[Vertmorpheus]

When a local CSIRO facility was decom'd a while ago they basically walked out leaving all kinds of shit behind ... a kind soul picked me up a box (a styro one, haha) full of flasks and bits of quikfit, some of which I can't even begin to guess at the purpose of. Not used for much ,the 300ml vacuum flasks make good candle holders in blackouts, measuring sprays etc,washed the hell out of them when I got them. A lab facility I used to work at was the same as the uni, hey fuckit lets throw out a whole skip of unused dark glass 5 litre demijohn looking things....yoink! Scissors, my gods, they must throw out a few dozen a week of used once then autoclaved german made stainless surgical type. Exam lamps, safety manuals, MSDS compendiums, all kinds of crap. The problem is that now some bastard owns even the rubbish before you get a chance to get at it.

Hard rubbish rocks, mixed class area here so always a good mix of stuff, but then yeah the usual old brown tellies, pissed on mattresses and wonky chairs. I reckon we should scrape back the dirt around flatter towns etc , pile up the lumpy crap and put the soil back over the top , plant em up with trees... hills and trees bring rain, cut down on dust and strong winds and just make the place more interesting.Rather than digging big holes and then filling them in. Best thing in hard rubbish is often those old chipboard two door cupboards and the like, great garden tool storage but with a bit of fiddling and a fan heater you can make a passable bulk dehydrating setup too (just don't burn the house down doing it or I'd feel bad).

If you live in a toad prone area, dig a two or three foot deep hole in the backyard where you want a tree togrow. Make sure the hole is about a foot or two wide. Rig a wire stand over the hole supporting one of those cheapy LED keyring torches attached to a white plastic bottle, shining into it so as to make it glow. Now leave it turned on all night in toad season. In the morning, you should find at least a couple toads in the hole. Hit them with a shovel and then bury them with a little dolomite under some of the soil from the hole. Keep it up, building layers. When you have a foot or less left of space , they can jump out again so just fill with compost and the tree seedling. Now it has a column of aerated, organic matter rich soil directly beneath it, and the smooth compacted sides of the hole will reserve some water from moving out into the soil profile. Eventually all the mass of toads will rot out and the hole will "slump"... top up with a bit more compost or whatever mulch you want but leave a bit of a depression , makes watering a lot easier. Free fertiliser from ferals, woohoo.

Queenslanders are sick people it's true :d

take care out there in duct tape land

GD

[ThunderIdeal]

BRAKK MRETARRR \m/,

time to man the bobsled \m/,

love the orange bag around the bar of soap

and the toadslaughter planting hole.

some people aren't right in the head, and actually hire skips to throw out things that could easily be sold for hundreds of dollars.