Where to Get Free Mulch

What is the lowest price you can get on landscaping mulch? Free! We have been sourcing free mulch for our garden beds, landscaping, and trees for a few years now and will never go back to bagged big box mulch! Although they do have some pretty colored wood chips in a bag (what are they using to dye that stuff anyway?) we have found the ultimate place to get the same product for free.

Last year I did a post on dressing up our trees and preparing them for winter and I also did a post on planting our fruit bushes and vines. In both occasions I used this same supply of mulch but thought I would go into more detail on where we are getting it from.



We have spent many years buying bags of mulch from the big box stores spending up to $100 per year to dress up our flower beds and around some of our trees. One day while at our local rustic city park we noticed the big pile of wood chips off to the side. I couldnt believe that they would just pile all that there for anyone to take. I called the city to be sure it was ok to load up my truck and have since made many trips to this park to get my annual fix of mulch.

Different times of year yield different grades of mulch so you have a choice of what you want based on your use. I have noticed that if you go first thing in the spring you have your choice of last years wood pile which has been semi broken down and would be great to sift through to amend garden beds. You also have the years first trimming which is usually shredded pine branches and needles from cleanup around the city and the recent Christmas season (city pickups up Christmas trees I believe). Later during the summer you have fresh mulch coming I each month with varying colors and shades that is perfect for landscaping.



Many people are trying things like the back to Eden gardening method or deep mulch gardening.  There is no need to pay for truck loads of wood chips and mulch when you have access to free resources like this. Some cities may even offer deliver for you for a small fee or even free depending on where you live. This is just another great free resources for starting gardens landscaping with sustainable materials, or just adding to your orchards.



Give your local city hall or township offices a call to see where they put all of there tree trimmers for the year. Ill bet youll be surprised at how eager they are to get rid of them!

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Create a Raised Bed Garden Using Pallet Wood 100 Free!

We are finally getting our square foot gardens setup.  I needed ways to save money and build some nice raised beds for the backyard. In this video, I go through the process that I used to tear down some pallets and create a couple of 3 x 6 raised-bed gardens. This is one of the first projects that I have done that was truly 100% free!


Please let me know if you have any questions.

Todd


For more on square foot gardening please visit  - http://www.melbartholomew.com/





This post has been shared on:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop
, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday

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Outdoor Wood Burning Garage Heater Heat Your Garage For Free Using a C

 

Recently I made a homemade outdoor wood burning boiler system to heat our garage. I have been excited to get this put together ever since I built our wood burning pool heater earlier this spring. I realized that with the same setup I was using for the pool, I could also heat water for an indoor heat system. All I needed was some sort of indoor radiator and fan and some underground tubing to cycle the water through. 

I am planning to expand my small garage wood shop this winter and did not want to have to run an electric heater all the time to heat the garage. My other options were to purchase a small propane heater, kerosene heater, or some other type of more powerful heat system but those can be expensive.  So, I decided on the wood burning heater instead. In most cases people will just put the barrel stove right in the garage, and that is a very efficient way of heating. However, my insurance company would not allow any wood burning stove (especially a homemade stove) inside the home. So this is where the wood burning boiler system design works the best. Although it is not quite as efficient as having the wood burner right in the garage it works very well to heat up our small insulated garage.

 

Weve been running it for approximately three weeks now, and with the temperatures dropping like they have, were really happy with the results.

 

For information on how I built this system, watch the video below.  Thanks for watching!

 

 

 

 

 

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Sequencing Indexing Valve

This is a sequencing / indexing valve that I designed a couple of years ago.  This uses a pinching mechanism to stop the flow of water.  It is able to pass solids and keep operating if there is a clog elsewhere in the plumbing.  I decided that it would be too expensive to develop and would show everyone how it works.

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Letterboxing A Fun Free Outing For the Whole Family

  

 

Several years ago, my wonderful sister-in-law introduced us to the hidden world of letterboxing.  Letterboxes are little secret boxes tucked away all over the world, found only with clues.  Over the years, we have found dozens of letterboxes.  It has been such a fun activity for our entire family and has become a tradition on every trip we take.  Letterboxing is great for all ages, it gets you outdoors, and its FREE. 

 

  

 

 

So exactly what is letterboxing?  Think of it like a treasure hunt with the treasure being the letterbox.  The boxes are hidden by people, who then log their boxes and clues by location on various letterboxing websites such as letterboxing.org and Atlas Quest.  Then people like us search the websites to find letterboxes in their area.  Print out the clues and the hunt begins!   Boxes are usually hidden in state and metro parks, so hiking is usually required.  But we have found them right in the middle of town before, too. 

 

 

 

 

When you finally do find the letterbox, heres what you can expect.  Almost always, they are slightly hidden in stumps or under leaves, so you really have to look.  Boxes also need to withstand the elements, so they are also almost always in a plastic food container of some sort.  Inside usually contains a log book and a stamp.  The log book is like a guest book so the people who planted them can see who has found them.  We always write the date, our names and where we are from.  The stamp is for you to use in your own log book, if you have one.  That part is optional, but it is fun to keep a log book of all the letterboxes youve found.  And dont forget to hide the box when youre done.

 

 

 

 

The pictures are from our hike last week where we found the letterbox we planted last fall.  Even though we have yet to log the clues online, our little book was filled up with people signing in to say they found it.  Someone was even generous enough to add a lighter to our little box!  Letterboxing has been such a rewarding experience for our family and something I hope our girls do with their own families someday.

 

 

 

 

P.S.  There is also something called geocaching that is very similar and requires a GPS.  I have family members that geocache and love it, but we have never tried it.  Im sure its just as fun though.

 

To learn more, here is a great article:  http://www.oregonlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2010/07/letterboxing_its_like_geocachi.html

 

 

 

 This post has been shared at:  Homestead Blog Hop, Country Fair Blog Hop, HomeAcre Hop

 

 

 

 

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Invest In The Future!

We have a new product that were preparing to launch! To help offset some of the expense of the molds and dies, we decided to seek outside funding and chose to use KickStarter.com. There are many pledging tiers that offer generous rewards once the project is complete!

Click here for project details

 

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Free Expanded Shale Giveaway

Another shameless plug for my company...but you have a chance to get some free Expanded Shale!!!

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Wood Burning Pool Heater Heat Your Pool For Free!

 

 

You do not have to own a large homestead in order to produce your own food, live sustainably, and save money in the process.  Our goal for our family is to find ways to save money, reduce our waste, and reuse the things that are normally thrown away or recycled. 

Of course we recycle in our home.  But reusing is even better.  And landfill waste is a last resort.  This Ted Talk completely changed how we think about recycling.

Our green scraps are composted or fed to the worms or chickens.  Our paper and cardboard waste is reused.  We shred all of our paper and cardboard.  The shredded paper is composted and the shredded cardboard is turned into briquettes that we then burn in our wood burning stove.   We will post soon on that process.

I converted the Vogelzang Barrel Stove Kit I built into a simple pool heater and so far it has been working great. In this video, I show the conversion process and how I am diverting the water using the existing pool pump. This is an excellent way to heat your pool for free! I have been using recycled paper logs as well as free pallet wood for fuel and a few seasoned logs to extend the burn time.  I will post actual temperatures as soon as I get the thermometer installed into the diverter.

Copper pipes coming out of stove:

Diverter:

Watch this video to learn how to heat your pool using an inexpensive wood burner!


Todd





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This post has been shared at:  The Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Saturdays Blog Hop, HomeAcre Hop, Simple Lives Thursday, From The Farm BlogHop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop

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