The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Mrs Snoodles on January 10, 2013, 01:45:26 pm
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I've got empty plastic ones piling up high. I'm fed up with shoving them in the bin (won't be taken as recyclables).
What do you do with yours?
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most of our feed comes in paper sacks or loose, but the small number of plastic sacks get filled up with pig muck and sold to the allotments.
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Filled (quarter or so) with soil they can be used to weigh down fleece/enviromesh over your crops... Better than stones, as they don't tear the material.
I'd take a dozen or so off you if you were anywhere near... We always hang on to the few we get!
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I like your suggestion Ina :thumbsup:
We use ours for all sorts of things - covering the car windscreen when there's a frost due, filling with persistant weeds which need to die before they can be composted, as rubbish sacks in the polytunnel, workshops, garage etc, feedbags for sheep at shows, stuffed with hay or fresh grass (with a single small hole cut) and there are always people who want some - same with empty licky buckets.
Oh yes - I use them to put salted sheep skins in for sending them to the tanners, as long as they don't have any holes.
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Mine are mostly paper which I can recycle. Plastic ones I usually bin but I have used them, with holes punctured near the bottom, to grow potatoes. Roll the tops down then, as you earth us, roll the sides back up.
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We've used them to grow tatties in, start with the top half rolled down and just unroll and add soil as they grow :thumbsup:
What about bags of firewood/maunre ? Or offer to gardeners as heavy duty garden waste bags ?
If you're making any temporary arcs (for chickens or pigs) using pallets you can use them as a roof covering (with the addition of a bit of chicken wire either side to save them blowing away ;))
There must be more 'useful' uses though :thinking:
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Cut open, lay on ground overlapping, punch a few holes with a fork, lay gravel or bark on top. Helps keep weeds down between raised beds.
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see previous discussion in pigs
http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=22117.msg213252#msg213252 (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=22117.msg213252#msg213252)
hth
mandy :pig:
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I stopped buying pig and poultry feed from suppliers who use plastic bags as they're such a pain. The masses of paper ones we end up with either get used as rubbish bags, go into the compost heap, or our latest use for them is to spread them on the veg patch as weed suppresors which seems to be working well. When we're ready to use the ground we'll just dig what's left of them in.
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our nice people at the recycling and waste centre let us take ours there, we reuse some too. Maybe as most are our horsey ones they dont see it as commercial.
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bag them into 10's and sell them at the car boot for £1.00
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I fill mine with goodies for the charity shop or use them to fill as rag bags. Shopping bags are way to small ;) :&>
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Chop dry kindling and put that in them for storage or sale.
Store dry leaves for the chicken runs.
Bag chicken poo for composting.
Keep potash for summer soil baths for the chickens to reduce lice and red mite.
Open up to cover the compost and keep the flies down.
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We put them under our poultry nets (pegged down with tent pegs) to stop the grass growing and to stop the fences from shorting.
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We currently have one placed under a roof tile, preventing rainwater from getting in where a honeysuckle grew a wee bit too big and entered the loft, taking the tiles and felt with it!
Others are used to/as:
* cover the floor of the chicken house with them for quick and easy cleaning out (roll up the bags enclosing all the poop and 'sweep' off the bags onto the compost
* covers for the compost when needed
* plastic cover for raised beds when mulching material needed
* bags that get filled with recyclable plastics to take to the recycling centre
* hung up to be a bag of dog pooh bags
* filled with soil and acting as a weight on an Onduline roof that has had an argument with its beams!
I'm sure I have forgotten other uses we have made of them. I'd miss them now, if we stopped getting them!
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can't believe you've all left out the most important use of plastic feedbags.......
:cold: SLEDGING!!!!!!!
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They are the best things out for lighting the rayburn and woodburner, never fail. :innocent:
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Tizzala - not the plastic ones surely?
We have plastic ones from local supplier ( for when we have not ordered the paper ones by the ton). Paper ones used under chicken perches in barn, and to make poop easier to remove when they have been roosting where they shouldn't. Most are in a big pile in another barn waiting for next random use that isn't compost.
The plastic ones have been verrrrry useful for collecting old plaster and building rubbish from our house renovation to take to the dump. We cannot recycle here ( due to animal waste contamination...even if super clean).
I am looking at the plastic ones for potato growing, but also wondered if I could somehow used them horizontally for tomato planters ( we have an excess of highly nutrient rich well rotted compost in barns from previous occupents horse storage ).
But sledging would also be an option, if only we had snow, or hills :(
Jo
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DIY growbags are a good idea so long as you can seal the cut open end.
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Thanks...lots of good uses!. I love the idea of popping them down under the chicken netting...ingeneous! ...such a pain having to cut back the grass. Bottom of chicken house, easy cleaning....blimmin brilliant. love that idea. I've always been reliant on newspaper but it gets bit soggy and doesn't pick up too well. Like the idea of bagging them up into 10's too. We have a stall outside our house and I'll do this when we get the veg sales going again. Cool : :thumbsup:
As for sledging...... Yes yes YES!!!!
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Loving the sledging idea!! Reggie, our Togg wether, broke our plastic sledge last year - he's 14 stone and I think him sledging was a daft idea but he did it none the less and put a hoof through. This way, no outlay and my kids get sledges - :excited: their friends might look at them a bit oddly though...hey ho ;)
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Just tell th other kids they're designer sledges. They'll all want one.
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DIY growbags are a good idea so long as you can seal the cut open end.
You know the millions of rubber elastrator rings left over each year when you only have a couple of males to castrate?
Use the rest for sealing bags :thumbsup: spot on!
I uses to use them for sealing home made small m]bale/bag silage ;D
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Brilliant idea.
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I gave one to my saddleback weaners the other day, while they were shut in their small outdoor space as OH was building a new shelter for them and it kept them busy for ages - shaking it and big games of tug of war ;D They were like playful puppies :excited: :excited:
All supervised of course and the bag didn't get torn - just punctured a bit!
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:roflanim:
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bag them into 10's and sell them at the car boot for £1.00
Really?? What do the people who buy them use them for?
Loving some of these ideas! I just tend to bin them!
OH did try using one for sledging but he wasn't impressed, especially when our son whizzed past him on his plastic sledge :excited:
Helen
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Really?? What do the people who buy them use them for?
Loving some of these ideas! I just tend to bin them!
OH did try using one for sledging but he wasn't impressed, especially when our son whizzed past him on his plastic sledge :excited:
Helen
They buy 'em to put their rubbish in from their gardens, garage etc or for grass clippings, moving house all sorts of things.
Tell OH to fill his bag half full with straw or a cushion and he'll get a better sledging experience on his plaggy bag!
mandy :pig:
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Hey! Norfolk Newbies we sure have snow now! Tibenham looks very pictureskew in the snow, not so good in the dry !!
We use our plastic dog food bags, from 5 dogs, for taking hay out into the snow for the sheep and they are good for taking kindling and firewood indoors. Like the idea of potato grow bags.
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Zwartbles, we too use them for bringing firewood into the house - saves a lot of bits falling on the floor! Also taking straw down to the duck houses for bed changes.
I am going to fill some of mine with horse poo and try and sell at the road end and going to try the potato grow bags too.
Oh and a use for the paper ones - wrap things in them for posting - saves on brown paper!
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I take the outside off of the paper bags then use the brown inners as wrapping paper(don't use the inside liner inside as it may be greasy.. but its ok on the outside -if you know what I mean)
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Just a word of caution. I'm currently doing a food safety course and animal feed is a recognised source of salmonella. A small risk but worth being aware of.