When I was a child, I saw my parents upcycled many items of theirs to prevent wastage and also to avoid spending more on buying things that they needed. Though the money wasn't readily available as we lived on a little income as a family.
I have watched my mother use a large piece of broken clay pot to keep water for our birds in front of the house. Other upcycling experiences I had while growing up was using an old cloth as rags in cleaning, reusing plastic bottles as storage medium for many kitchen items ranging from salt, oil, seasonings to powdered pepper, curry and the rest.
It was at this stage of my life that I learned the idea of making the best use of my items instead of just disposing of them quickly. I once made use of a spoilt wooden bench to produce a smaller seat and it served me for many years.
The most recent of my upcycling activities was done when I packed into my newly rented apartment. I am a son of a farmer and I learned the art from my parents with all seriousness. However, I ended up not being a farmer but a teacher. Each time I have to spend money to buy all the foodstuffs that I need in my home, it pains my heart owing to the fact that I knew how to grow the majority of them. Lack of space prevented me from doing so. I had made many attempts to get a small piece of land to try out some crops but insecurity prevented me from going to an open space to own a farm.
I checked this apartment sometime in February this year and the space behind the building made me settle for it quickly.
I saw it as a good opportunity to try out my desire to grow some crops. Immediately I packed in, I thought of how best I could make use of the small space and I thought of planting in sacks. I have many of the sacks. Some were used to package rice, beans while others were used to send granulated cassava flakes (garri) to me by my lovely mum from the village.
I have them in abundance. At some point, my wife thought of discarding them especially when we were in our former apartment but I told her that she should keep them with the conviction that they would serve us some purposes in future. This is a good advantage of upcycling, it keeps the environment free from indiscriminate pollution from some materials.
I decided to test the sack farming idea with a tuber of yam. I packed some sand from a dumpsite close to my area into a sack. I planted the yam inside and started to water it daily. After some weeks, it germinated.
It has been an awesome experience since then. Though the leaves are being disturbed by lizards, I am still researching what I can use to send the lizards away. If I am able to discover that, I plan to plant about 20 bags when it is time for another planting season.
My wife also plants aloe vera in a plastic bottle cut into half as shown below.
We thought of scaling it up too to grow vegetables. The plastic container is that of vegetable oil that we purchase monthly. We are storing up the containers for the scale up later this year.
I have the sacks and I am adding more as I get them through the purchase of items as mentioned previously.
I wish to also grow vegetables going forward.
