How to: get an extra life out of your Flexi-tub

We all have them... sometimes called Gorilla Tubs (I think that's a brand name), sometimes called Tub-trugs (slightly misleading as a trug is, traditionally, an open, nearly flat basket, only of use when raiding the cutting garden whilst wearing a Laura Ashley frock) or sometimes just called a bucket, which is extremely misleading as, although they can indeed be used to carry water, or many other things, they are not really synonymous with "bucket". 

Whatever you call it - I tend to go with Flexi-Tub, or merely "my yellow bucket-thing" - we all have one.

Or more.

Or several.....

And we all have a pile of them sitting in the garage, or in the shed, or round the back of the greenhouse: you know the ones, they have ingrained dirt, and broken handles. 

Like this:

There we go, a classic well-used Flexi-tub, with the handle splitting away from the body.

They all do it! 

And it's not just the fact that the handle is gradually coming off, which forces their retirement - that slit can give you a nasty pinch.

Ask me how I know... yes, I've been pinched a few times. So now, as soon as they start to split, I retire them.

The trouble is, when these Flexi-tubs were first invented, they were super-strong and lasted for years.

Now they are being churned out by every plastics factory in China, it would appear, and the quality has dropped to the point where they start to split in an annoying short time. OK, they don't cost very much, but it's so wasteful! 

A while back, I asked my fellow self-employed Gardeners (we have a facebook page) for ideas as to what to do with the inevitable stack of old Flexi-tubs. Suggestions ranged from

 1. Drill holes in the bottom, then use as a big pot. (trouble is, with broken handles, you can't easily get hold of them...)

2. Mend with duct tape. (does not work. Well, not for long.)

3. Once you have a minimum of two of them, each with one broken handle, put one inside the other, and glue them together. Obviously you have to get a broken handle against a non-broken handle...

4. Sink it into the ground to make a teeny-tiny wildlife pond in suitable place and with appropriate ladders out, plants etc. 

5. Chop the bottom off (keep that bit) and sink it into the ground around or when planting a particularly rampant root running plant heading off where you don't want it to go.

6. Repair it... using a few strips of the same material from another broken one, some small nuts and bolts, with big washers to spread the load. (I tried this: they ripped out in no time, and it did look like the Franken-Tub. Not very elegant!

7. Nail all the duff ones to a big sheet of wood and get people to try and lob tennis balls into them at next year's village fete.  ( I am seriously considering this, for my back garden...)

8. Turn it upside down, cut out a suitable sized entrance, find a quiet spot in the garden and cover it with twigs and branches and you may find a hedgehog taking up residence in this fully waterproof and desirable des-res. (Not a bad idea at all.... just remember to make two entrances, as apparently hedgehogs only like places where they have an emergency exit as well as a normal way in.)

9. Make some new handles, lower down. We have a winner! 

Five minutes with a Stanley knife, two minutes to find a sticky plaster (don't ask...) and there we are, two new handles, broken ones sliced off, and it's perfectly usable again.

It's not as good as it was with the original handles: you can't get as much in, for a start, and it's much less easy to pick it up one-handed, but it certainly works.

Next time, I'll put the cut-outs higher, to make it easier to get hold of, in one hand: I didn't want to cut them too high in case they just ripped straight out.

So far, though, it's doing well: I've been using it for a week with no problems, and it didn't cost me anything at all (apart from the sticky plaster: honestly, you'd think by now that I would have learned how to use a Stanley knife safely...), and the longer it lasts, the longer before I have to break in the new one.

And there you have it - lots of suggestions, with thanks to Avril for the winning suggestion (I didn't feel the need for duct tape round the cut edges, it was actually surprisingly easy to cut them cleanly. Although yes, I did also cut myself, cleanly....), and to Steven for ideas 4-8 inclusive!

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