Cheap DIY garden products

Here are a few cheap ways to keep your garden looking like a million bucks without actually spending much.

The birds just love to feast on our tasty strawberries. Paint lava rocks with red outdoor paint and scatter them among your plants. By the time the real berries ripen, the birds give up.

Used as thrifty plant coverings in the winter, burlap birdseed and horse-feed sacks offer great protection from the elements. After the snow melts and the frost passes, reuse them for hauling branches and yard waste.

To get rid of pests, keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol on hand in your garden shed. It's a cheap and easy way to reduce aphids, leafhoppers, mealybugs, spider mites and whiteflies. Mix 250 millilitres (one cup) of rubbing alcohol with a litre (one quart) of water, and lightly mist infected plants. Test first on a leaf to make sure there is no damage.

During the summer, collect rainwater in containers, transfer the water into ziplock freezer bags and freeze them. In winter, thaw out the bags and give your indoor plants a taste of summer in the wintertime.

It's easy to make inexpensive planters with cinder blocks. One or two make a simple, small planter, while a row makes an attractive border. They can be stacked and grouped in any number of configurations. Just fill them with potting soil and plant away.

Instead of buying a roll of red plastic to put under your tomato plants, try red tablecloths from the dollar store. The plants with the tablecloth underneath actually produce more tomatoes. Or, another trick, save the bags that your newspapers come in and reuse them as plant ties for tomatoes, blackberry canes and other plants that need tying. The bags last a long time in the garden, don't hurt the plants and are easy to untie as necessary.

Laminate the packets of the seeds you sow and use them as plant markers. The information is right on the seed packets, and they can easily be washed and used again. Store them with the seeds to stay organized into the next season.