How many times have I been out in the garden, needed my widger, and had to spend precious minutes hunting for it … and then even more minutes trying to remember why I needed it in the first place?!
The same thing used to happen to me when I needed to make a note of something—and then realized that the notebook I use to jot down my gardening records was half an acre away in my house! Between the urge to “just finish one more thing first” and the fact that one of my kids inevitably needed me for something the second I stepped foot in the door, I didn’t always remember to update my records after all.
But this simple gardening trick changed all that. I first learned it from one of my organic gardening heroes, John Dromgoole. (In fact, if you saw my TGN On The Road interview with John in the Honors Lab this month, you already heard this tip!)
It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of this?” hacks that will keep your garden tools and records high, dry, and—most importantly—right at your fingertips when you need them most!
Check it out here:
Marjory Wildcraft is the founder of The Grow Network, which is a community of people focused on modern self-sufficient living. She has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. Marjory was the focus of an article that won Reuter’s Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
COMMENTS(12)
Yes! When we replaced our mailbox last year, I took the old mailbox and put it in our garden. It does a good job of holding all of the (small) garden tools in one nice, clean, dry, convenient location.
This is so great to hear! Thank you for sharing, Mike.
A young married couple 30 years old with two kids boy 5 and girl 3 just fell in love with the farmstead. They are in Utah packing now, Makai will be here Saturday to start work, the rest of the family are packing and will be down later in mid-May. Thanks for your help.
Amazing!! Love to hear about these stories. Thank you for sharing, Lee!
Hi Lee, Oh I am so glad this is working out for you!!
Hope you’ll be on the call tonight to give us another update 🙂
That’s perfect! Why do the most ingenious ideas seem obvious when you look back with hindsight? Now I want to find an old mailbox and mount it on a 4×4 post, like it’s really ready for mail delivery. Then my kids and I could paint it, and I could install a hanger on the post for my extra length of garden hose. Thanks so much for this idea!
An awesome idea, indeed!! Sounds like your spin on it is going to be quite useful too. 🙂
Hi Scott, yes and old mail box is best. A new big one costs a surprising amount 🙂 Although I think it is worth it as mailboxes basically can last forever if you don’t have teenage boys driving nearby. My son is a complete danger to every mailbox in the area….
In my ‘hood, it’s best to either bolt the box down and lock it, or put a carry-handle on it and stow it in a lockable location.
Extra organized?
Try a Velcro strip on the side to get tools and books off the box floor.
Or glue a strip of wood on the inside and use what we called “teacup hooks” to avoid a pile of stuff!
Love this idea, srodgers1774! Ingenious!
Love the idea, but would be concerned about ants getting into it – we already have that issue with our regular mailbox.