Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle

[Sal]

...And only on weekends when your name is Sue. Am I right Nick?

[Sal]

Just touching on Wolf's tip about the oil:

old car oil is usefull for treating stakes to be put in the ground, simply stand the stake in the oil for at least 24 hours in an old bucket, wipe off the excess and you have the stake protected for years.

Expert on scrounging from garages - I work for a chain of 'em - so if you ask nicely you can get the used car oil for free as garages have to pay a charge to have this collected and disposed of in an environmentally responsible way too. Sump oil is toxic though so make sure you wear rubber gloves and paint it on like wood preservative.

[Peter]

Am I right in saying that used engine oil is highly carcinogenic?

[plot 11 pam]

re compost bins made from pallets essex boyracer. I did it but found compost very dry, you will need to line the pallets from the inside with thick cardboard or thin polystyrene, i got all sorts and found an abandoned estate agent sign which wont rot.Water the compost to start it off and add some leaf mould. keep it warm with a single layer of carpet. good luck. ps the hardest thing was lugging 5 pallets up our allotment field which is on a 30 degree slope.

[pigletwillie]

It is Peter if you are in regular contact with it, just like creosote was. Both of these fluids can cause contact dermatitis or very minor burns in some people and the best prevention if you do use it is barrier cream and a pair of nitrile type gloves (like surgeons gloves) which most mechanics and the like now wear.

However used responsibly old engine oil is a good preservative for timber and if after soaking you allow it to dry before use you will get negligable amounts go into the soil.

With modern non toxic timber preservatives about now there are alternatives that are more user and probably environmentaly friendly

[plot 11 pam]

thankyou piglet willie for the scoop idea.
Yesterday i scrounged some great wood from a house build, it is 1x2 inch good for making net supports over dwarf beans and brassicas.
1 pt. milk bottles over canes stop eye poke and rattle a bit in the wind.
An older allotmenteer next to me uses that hard packaging tape wrapped around supports to keep his broad beans up, by stringing along the rows and around the edges of the planting.
cant think of any more for the mo.

[WiZeR]

I scrounged an old pastic water tank from a skip yesterday, will be great for water storage.

[andrewo]

Andrewo how do the yoghurt pot slug traps work? Do you sink them in the ground?

Do them two ways, I sink them into the ground and also put a hole through pots with lids (big yoghurt pots), straight through to drive a cane in to the soil. With these, I turn them upside down and cut holes in the pots side, I then fill with pellets.

[Lesley Jay]

Andrewo I will give them a try this year and see how they go.

[eskymo]

I was just coming back from a meeting and passed a house on our street that has a load of old radioators outside that they're obviously getting picked up by the council, but behind the radiators I saw they had three huge piles of bricks - I'm going back tomorrow to see if those are getting chucked out too and ask if I can take them instead.

I managed to get some paving slabs last year in the same way - saw them in a skip, asked the owner if we could take them, he sadi yes and then gave me a load more that he hadn't put in the skip yet - all for free!

I was going to give him a load of produce from my garden this year, but he sold his house and moved.

I like your yoghurt pot slug trap idea Andrewo - I think I'll give that a go. I've only just got into yoghurt [a very late starter at 35!] and so we're going to have a load of pots that I won't be able to throw away now so good to find another use for them. At the moment I'm just using them to freeze soup.

[wolf320f]

health and safety in the garden

gone are the good old days when my old man used to kill of everything nasty weeds wise with a liberal dousing of diesel which does work or creosoting with bare hands, no gloves or consideration for carcinogens. Instead todays health and safety brigade (of which i am one sorry, decree everything is bad for us).
indeed this might be so for a very small percentage namely tree hugging hermaphradites (cant spell either) called Quentin but for the rest of us its not the case.
common sense decrees that when your creosoting or using oil its not Brut so you cant splash it all over. using old oil is a messy job if it isnt done with care and most normal folk exercise the needed care because they dont want a mess.
from a proffessional standing rather than worry about the dangers arising from using the small amounts of oil,creosote or other chemicals investigate the previous use of the land your house is on and nearby industrial use something introduced when you buy and sell a home now.
my home is on reclaimed marsh ground with all sorts used as landfill and potential environment issues, with several nearby emissions of note, hence me having to bring in outside topsoil for my veg plot.
i service my own car so rather than buy preservative i use the oil for posts and stakes where i need it to last, dried off as previously mentioned in other posts.
i mix it with remnants of old preservatives and apply it to my fences giving me years of protection and also as a deterent to burglars not wanting messy clothes when they climb over. If mixed and applied with care it performs like any other dark stain and doesnt contaminate anything other than my fence.
Environmentally speaking its better to recycle the oil carefully rather than create the demand for a supply of preservative, the key to safe recycling of such things is common sense.
for the concerned out there you statistically have a higher chance at damage to ones health bought about from alcohol and driving amongst others. not to mention the dangers associated with Digitalis in the garden yet will progress rob us of those pleasures as well?

my advice to the concerned on recycling anything potentially harmfull is to take care use common sense and not to rush

[Kea]

er.......maybe someone already thought of this, but i use old pop bottles for my runner beans - i cut the bottles into 3 , and place sticky copper tape half way up each section, which i use as a collar around my newly transplanted beans to stop the snails. Actually i'm a bit of a softie and hate to kill anything - i go on late night snail hunts and give them a new home over by the Thames(but not in it!) BTW men, it's ok to wear tights - my o.h wears them in the winter when cycling and he's no less a man!! Needs must and all that ;-)

[andrewo]

Andrewo I will give them a try this year and see how they go.

They are good if you use the blue pellets, keeps the poison off the soil, away from other animals. However, if you use the organic ones you won't need any pots. It was another gardener who said the slugs are attracted to the blue pellets so it was pointless scattering them across the plot.

[Lesley Jay]

Yes Andrewo I have been told that about the slug pellets attracting the slugs.

[Peter]

Lets be realistic about risk.

Reason I asked about used engine oil is father-in-law is a mechanic and is now advised to wear gloves, regularly change/wash overalls and no longer allowed to use a waste-oil burning stove in workshop.

PigletWillies comment about "if you are in regular contact with it" is probably the most accurate answer.
So is there a minimum distance for growing produce to be kept apart from such treated timber?

More generally I find it funny that on one thread are worries about using old carpets as ground cover and on another advice to use dirty oil on wood sunk in the ground. Remember artificial fibres are (largely) made from oil.

The carpet issue is starting to bug me I read this week a comment along the lines of "because of contaminants accumulated in the pile". This presumably means stuff that got on peoples footwear and rubbed off on the carpet. So do these concerned people hover above their allotment and fly through their house, or wash their footware at the door, as well as never lying on a rug?
No one has yet directly quoted any research with numbers or details, it is all just hearsay and assumption.

Risk always needs a balanced view and sometimes a percentage chance attached to it.

It is dangerous to use a knife to cut vegetables, but how else are you to cut them,?
A chainsaw is much more dangerous and karate chopping swedes is more likely to hurt your hands.
So you use a knife, look at what you are doing and do it with care.