Our Little Free Plant Library

As I mentioned two weeks ago on planting day, Brian generally starts twice as many seedlings of each variety as he expects to need for our garden. This ensures that he'll have at least one healthy seedling to plant (a strategy that proved crucial with our new Apple pepper) and leaves him with backup plants to put in the ground in case any of the starting lineup don't make it. He typically waits about two weeks to make sure all the plants are okay, then takes the extras to work and gives them away to his coworkers.

Well, obviously that wasn't an option this year. Brian's workplace is still entirely remote, with no indication of when they might be able to start going back into the office. He even has one coworker hired last year whom he'd never actually met in person until this week. (They were scheduled to have a meeting on Zoom, and Brian suggested that, since they live in the same town and are fully vaccinated, perhaps they could meet in person instead. Because that is the kind of reckless wild man he has turned into after 15 months of being cooped up at home with me.)

We were able to give away all our extra flower seedlings to my parents, who have plenty of room in their yard, but they didn't have enough garden space to accept any tomatoes or peppers. We gave one pepper plant away to one of our fellow RPG players earlier this month, when we had our first live, in-person game session in over a year. But that still left us with eight tomato plants and two peppers that needed a good home.

Now, as it happens, there are quite a few Little Free Libraries around our town. These are simply boxes full of books that you can install somewhere on your property where your neighbors can get to them. You put all your unwanted books in there, and passersby can help themselves — and, if there's room, drop off some of their extra reading material as well. We know of at least five of these within walking distance, and we've browsed all of them in turn, sometimes picking up books and sometimes dropping them off. And more recently, we've seen at least one neighbor adapt the same idea to plants, setting up a little table in the front yard and stocking it with extra seedlings. So Brian wondered, could he unload our extra seedlings in the same way?

Yesterday after knocking off work, he put the idea to the test. He ducked into the workshop and started rummaging through his piles of scrap wood, eventually digging up a rectangular wooden frame that had originally been the base for one of his squirrel excluder cages and a piece of particle board that was exactly the right size to attach to the bottom. No cutting required; he simply nailed the two pieces together to make a flat tray, then used screws to affix it to the wooden stake we initially used to secure our plum tree after it keeled over in a storm last summer. He pounded the stake into the ground in a corner next to the driveway, then affixed a little sign reading "Free!" that he'd drawn on a little scrap of wood with a Sharpie.

By the next morning, it was clear that his plan was yielding fruit — or, more accurately, getting rid of it. As we sat at breakfast, we spied through the window two passing pedestrians who stopped, examined the collection of plants, and selected one each to take with them. After the first 24 hours, we're down to just four tomato plants and one pepper.

This whole scheme is one of the most ecofrugal projects we've ever undertaken. It's preventing waste, putting our extra seedlings to good use. It's helping our neighbors to grow their own food and eat more sustainably. And it was all done with reused materials, so it didn't cost a penny.

In fact, it's working out so well, Brian is already wondering what else he can use the table to give away after all the seedlings are gone. Having gone to the trouble of setting it up, it seems like a shame to just take it down straightaway. We're wondering if maybe we could interest any of our neighbors in the two board games we culled from our collection and haven't had a chance to take to the thrift shop. If that works, we might just keep the Little Free Plant Library on permanently as our own personal free store.