Bucket #3

I scored another bucket outside the Middle Eastern place by our apartment - this time an empty feta cheese bucket.

The score is part of the fun of a project for me, winning a prize through luck but more importantly creativity or careful observation. Like when I figured out that there is a feed store on Parkside Avenue in West Philly, and that they'd sell me slightly moldy straw for super cheap, or like when I'd check the recycling room at the old apartment building and see some major cardboard boxes, like for large appliances, sheets of cardboard that would cover some serious surface area in the garden. I'd pull them out of the recycling dumpster and gleefully drag them up to stash in a stack in the garden.

The winter was always the time to stockpile supplies, and I used the cardboard as a mulch layer. You can spread it or newspaper a few sheets thick to stop weeds coming up from underneath and to keep wind-borne seeds from germinating. I can't stand weeding, but I didn't mind mulching with cardboard and straw, especially because I got to feel lucky for scoring the supplies.

How many buckets do we need this year?