 Hello and welcome to getting clean on the prairies. So I've had a lot of people commenting on my red tubs that you often see in the background of a lot of my videos and these originally contained minerals that we give to our cattle and once they have licked them clean these tubs have so many uses. One being a great container for growing vegetables, flowers, fruit trees and shrubs. These are about 30 gallons and to fill them up all the way from top to bottom with potting soil can get very expensive and it's really unnecessary as most plants only need about 8 to 12 inches of space to grow properly. So in this video, I am going to share nine ideas of materials you can use to help fill up your container and use less potting soil. So number one on the list are logs, branches and twigs. These are something that most of us have an abundance in our yards or a neighborhood and they make a great filler for the bottom portion of large containers. They are slow to break down. They act as a sponge to help retain moisture and also add some organic nutrients to your container. So number two is hay or straw. So if you are able to get a hold of some of this in your area, this is a great spiller for your containers. I'm using some old rotten hay that we took out of an old rabbit cage of ours, which makes a good organic addition to the tubs. I'm also going to be using some of our pea straw that I have a large supply of as well. Number three would be some leaves or grass clippings. Right now I have a good supply of leaves that were collected last fall, so I'm going to use them as one of my fillers here in the tubs. If you can, rake up your grass clippings or collect them on your bag, on your lawnmower and toss them in as well. Number four would be native soil or other natural materials you might have in your yard, such as rocks or sand or clay. Native soil isn't recommended to use as part of your potting soil because of lack of nutrients and compaction. So if you can collect rocks, bricks, gravel, sand, anything around your yard, just toss it in your tubs and use it as a filler. So there's a lot of things indoors that you can collect also to fill up your containers. Number five being kitchen scraps and other compostable food items that you collect indoors for your compost bin. Why not toss some of those into your container and let them break down slowly and add some nutrients to your to your container. Coffee grinds and eggshells are a great thing to collect and fill up tubs with. So number six would be non-compostable recyclable items such as juice jugs, tetrapacks, pop cans, food containers, milk jugs. These pile up in my recycling bin so fast and it's always great that you can take these items to your local recycling depots to be recycled. But why not use some of them to fill up some of the space in your large containers? They are slow to break down or won't break down in our lifetime, but they do are a very lightweight filler. They help create air pockets and they won't steal any moisture from from your plants. So number seven would be packing materials such as styrofoam or packing peanuts, something that's lightweight. If you're like me and do a lot of online shopping or have a small appliance fetish, you end up with a lot of styrofoam pieces and packing plastic that you might as well keep out of the landfill and used to take up some space in the bottom of your containers. So if using styrofoam and plastic is something that you prefer not to use your containers, there is another better option and that is number eight being compostable recyclable items such as paper towels, egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, newspaper, junk mail, paper from your shredder, used Kleenex, used paper plates, cups, napkins. These can make a great organic addition to your containers that will break down slowly and make a great snack for the worms. So the last item idea is number nine towels, rags and clothing. So this is something that a lot of people don't think about using as a filler in their containers, but they are very slow to compost down and so not ideal for our regular compost bins. But things like old tea towels, smelly dishcloths, holy socks, worn out bed sheets, ripped bath towels, t-shirts, and how about blue jeans? A lot of blue jeans are made from 100% cotton. My husband wears his work clothes until they are literally falling apart, so donating them is not an option. These can fill up a lot of space and retain moisture, are very slow to break down, and again will make a nice snack for the worms. So I hope that you will try using some of these free items in your large containers and help save on using a lot of potting soil. I will be getting all these containers ready for planting, so please don't forget to like leave a comment and hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on the next video. Thanks for watching.