Daniel G. Cabrero, 🇳🇦

The most unusual gardening advice I ever received was to practice the noble art of scavenging. Most people see valuable raw material for gardening as waste, but only because they don't have a composting and mulching practice. Once you do, every bit of organic material left over from anything becomes a resource: tree pruning (private and public), grass clippings, pet fur clippings, hair clippings, dead wood washed ashore, kitchen scraps, tree leaves, coffee and tea grounds, and mate tee leaves. If you are committed to composting and deep into permaculture practices, even manure and roadkill can be scavenged. Scavenging is especially useful for urban farmers, who don’t have enough space to produce the bulk material for composting and mulching that homesteaders and farmers have. That may seem out of the box, but our ancestors knew how important it was to profit from every bit of organic matter they could find. It is an effective sustainable gardening practice that reduces waste, circulates nutrients, and reduces the work.