The last two years and this year included, I have bought very little
in the line of plants for in and around the garden, and the planats
range from el cheapo annuals to higher dollar trees and shrubs. Wal
MArts dumpster as well as Home Depot and Lowes has been a great source
of my plants. Its amazing what a little tender loving care or just a
bit of water will do for the plants that they throw away. I have
never had problems getting run away at their dumpsters, as most
employees of the catagpory or clerk or general help could care less
about someone getting things out of their dumpsters. Last year I
pulled close to 100 ea 40 pound bags of miscellaneous potting soils,
and well over 60 of thre Miracle Grow potting soils packaged in
buckets, 300 plus pounds of rye gras seed as well as countless pounds
of other grass seeds.
Just this past weekend, I salvaged 11 trays of Begonias, some IVY of a
couple of different species, and 7 Concord Grape vine plants and a
heap of pansy and petunia and marrigolds............I hate to see the
stuff get trasdhed, and have really ranout of room to plant more, so
they have been basically stuck here and there, and what lives lives,
and what I don't get polanted will just be added to a growoing compost
pile.
I have even gotten the tables and racks thats used to hold and
display the plants on from the dumpsters. I got a Key Largo garden
pond and pump, with water fall cascade and filter system from Lowes
when they tore up their old display setup and redid it, so the old
pond went in the trash. Right now its got water plants and a few small
6 inch KOI in it and other than spending a couple of bucks for some
plumbing fittings it was used as it was found and looks just fine,
can't tell it apart from one thatb would be still in the box.
I would not let a little spray paint hold me back from salvaging
somethng. Its just the stores way of making them supposedly unusefull.
Most of the time it comes right off, and I have not seen any planats
that were really killed by spray paint. I have right now a perfectly
good, $1,300 treadmill, that was salvaged from a dumpster that was a
store display model, and it was spray painted all up. 30 minutes with
some lac thinner removed all of ther paint and left the original
powder coat finish unharmed. All that was missing for ther treadmill
was a cable to interconnect it to the TV or computer monitor so you
could run on the treadmill and watch pictures that you could program
into the treadmill at the same time. I picked up a cable for the fun
ofit for under $10.00 at the same store I salvaged the treadmill from.
BTW those wire grate type racks a lot of stores throw away make great
shelving for plants and with the powder coat or chro9med finishes last
for a long long time outdoors, and look relatively good.
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 00:59:53 -0500, "madgardener"
wrote:
===I have taken the incentive to post these..........
===
===Strange sight at Home DepotPosted by CRMiller z9 CA (My Page) on Sun, Mar
===21, 04 at 0:39
===
===
=== Today when I was at Home Depot, there was a cart full of half dead
===plants (needed water) and some irises that were out of bloom. They were
===headed for the dumpster. The lady working there was taking the plants out
===one by one and spray-painting them! Not the pot, the leaves and stem. I didn
==='t stop to ask her about them because I was in a hurry. I don't like that
===they throw away plants that were under watered, but spray-paint them bright
===orange?!!
===
===
===
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