The Cottagecore Coder: No Plastic in the Garden

Hi! After growing up on a family farm where no plastics were used, when I started gardening later in life I’ve come to realize that plastics are ubiquitous and sold to people at just about every stage of the gardening process. They’re not necessary. This post is about how to go plastic free for container gardening.

My experience so far is gardening on a rental property in the U.S. where I can’t rip up the lawn - it’s worth asking your landlord if you can though. Lawns are usually only there these days because it’s the cheapest way for construction contractors to add greenery, and no one takes the time to rip them out and plant something better. One way to make the switch is to smother the grass over winter using cardboard and straw.

My goal is to set up a permaculture agroforestry garden when I can. Honestly I’m convinced that the most delicious foods are plants that are native to where you live that aren’t commonly sold in stores. If you want to see examples of permaculture agroforestry, most food production that Bloomers are posting on https://bloomnetwork.earth uses those methods.

Garden beds: If you build wooden garden beds, you can finish the outside with whey-based stains or linseed oil, and use Garden Seal on the inside, and optionally silicone caulk between the boards on the inside. They’re not cheap to make unless you have access to untreated waste wood - next time I need to build raised beds I’ll use metal borders, bricks or rocks.

Best for raised beds would be Hügelkultur, a permaculture method for raised bed gardening. It’s very labor intensive, so it’s best to have a squad of friends help you build it and learn together.

One thing I’m starting to realize about gardening and farming, is that imo it’s really best done in a community context. A post for another day.

Fabric pots: For the life of me I tried to find 100% hemp fabric pots and wasn’t able to my first year of gardening. If you know of them, please send me links!! I unfortunately am still using fabric pots made from plastic fibers, as terra cotta pots were both costly here and I didn’t feel like needing to water the plants more often.

Soil: You can get bulk soil not in plastic bags from local landscaping and nursery businesses.

Plastic weed barriers 🤮: For growing in the ground at larger scales, I often see people using plastic weed barriers. You can use thick paper instead, or hemp mats. Fedco, a seeds cooperative in the region I live, has recycled cardboard paper mulch. While more costly than plastic, one thing they mention is that you can leave it in place at the end of the season, which saves labor costs on pulling up the plastic and delivering it to the landfill, and it adds carbon nutrients to the soil, and reduces temperature increases from plastics that aren’t good for most crops. So the cost difference potentially shakes out in the end.

Netting for pest protection: From slugs to bunnies to chipmunks to bugs, everybody else in the neighborhood likes to eat my garden too :D. The first year I didn’t mind because it brought all the cute fluffy things to the yard. But by year 2 I did want to eat my harvests.

In permaculture, you plant plants that attract the pests who otherwise would eat your vegetables or fruits. I.e., intentionally feed them something else that isn’t a preferred edible crop for you. Incorporating ducks is great because they directly eat slugs, snails, and insects! Plus you get delicious eggs. And they’re cute.

I haven’t made the time to go fully into that world yet, and I have very limited growing space, so I’m using cheesecloth. It’s really only practical for a small garden, but my plants grew fine with that as a shield and it kept the mammals and slugs from eating them. I used unbleached #40 or #50 cheesecloth - bleached is too brittle. Iirc you can buy 70 yards of large-width cheesecloth for like $50. I used #40, and #50 would probably work just as well. (The # has to do with the tightness of the weave.) Yes, cheesecloth is tearable, but it’s better than plastic getting everywhere, and so far it looks like the cheesecloth I have will last at least 4 years.

Moving grow lights up and down: Use hemp twine and just re-tie it. There's not a need to buy plastic/nylon pulleys.

Trellising and holding branches up: Also use hemp twine. You really don't need the green plastic tape stuff, unless you're doing grafting or repair maybe?

Seed starting trays: This year once it started to get warmer, but it was months before the last frost, I got the gardening bug hard and wanted to grow vegetable starts to extend my growing season.

A soil blocker makes condensed blocks of soil that you can directly plant into without the need for plastic trays. Peat pots aren’t great because peat staying put in the ground is best for the current climate situation. Silicone trays are also available - they’re not disposable, don’t tear, and don’t have the same environmental and health hazards that plastic does. You can wash them in the dishwasher.

Underneath the seedlings, you can use stainless steel trays that are easier to move around and not made from disposable plastic. Buying lights for this setup did not feel great, though I’m excited to try growing greens year round.

A greenhouse made from glass and wood is as far as I know the only way to grow indoors plastic free. Sometimes for buildings like that, plastic really is the best option. Someday I’d like to build a walipini greenhouse. Apparently the ground is the same temperature once you’re a certain number of feet underground, across much of the Earth. With a walipini greenhouse, you can set it up to grow plants from rainforest, or cloud forest, or arid, etc.

Preserving food and hunting is how people without greenhouses typically made it through winters in areas where you can’t grow in the winter. My grandma until she wasn’t physically able to anymore always grew a garden and dried fruits and canned vegetables. A bunch of my friends are all about ferments. I heard someone talk about a pit fermentation method for preserving foods. They are living in Costa Rica in a region where their rain and temperature cycles have been getting unusual and plants have been struggling to make it through dry periods, so they were investigating ways to help their community prepare for food security.

Alrighty, Mage the Cottagecore Coder, over and out.