Get recycling in the garden

It's Recycle Week this week (June 21-27) and what better way to do our bit for the planet than to get the children recycling in the garden.

Although children are natural eco-warriors they can also be, conversely, ardent consumers. Apart from equipping them with decent, mini gardening tools and buying seeds there shouldn't be much of an outlay.

Show them clever recycling tricks and you teach them, in the words of television gardener Alys Fowler, that gardening is something you do and not something you buy. Recycling our waste and water are important but what else can we do? Here are some tips:

• Eggshells: great for cress growing, with decorated faces, the MadHouse family sowed sunflowers in theirs'. Sprinkling crushed shells around your plants can help deter slugs and we do the same for tomato plants (they like the calcium apparently)

• Egg boxes: these make wonderful seed startng pots. My five-year-old filled the dips with compost and placed a seed in each, making sure they were covered.  Once her summer squash were seedlings (and the frosts had passed) we were able to cut each section and place straight in the ground. Great for children as it eliminates fiddly transplanting

• Milk carton plant labels: we get through loads of labels but, as long as you have a permanent marker pen, cut a clean, empty milk carton into strips and use them instead. Lollipop sticks also work too

• Chipped mugs and bowls: anything gets reused as a container in this house. Chipped mugs and bowls are saved for hyacinths which cheer the house up in winter, old cake tins (with holes drilled) double up as a home for calendula. Anything can be used as long as you have drainage holes in the bottom (not needed for the hyacinth in mugs though). Alternatively smash unwanted crockery and place in the bottom of large pots to help drainage

• Tights or stockings: these make great, soft ties for plants that need staking

• Juice cartons: these can be used to start off seeds that have long roots (like sweet peas) or any that you're happy to repot on or into the ground. They also make great bird feeders

• Loo roll inners: these make wonderful pots for things like sweet peas because, again, the whole thing can be planted in the ground. Make cuts in one end, fold over and fill with compost. I find the flaps stay closed but you can put a piece of tape over them

• Large plastic drinks bottles: cut the bottoms off and use as cloches to protect plants or turn up the other way and stick in the ground next to courgette or tomato plants and fill with water to help get it down to the roots

We've also featured on Ready for Ten making comic plant pots, bird scarers from takeaway meal trays and using avocado stones to garden indoors. Recycle Now also has some great tips about recycling in the garden and home.

Photo credit: Debbie Webber