Recycled Plants (Volunteers of America from my Backyard)
 For many years and many gardeners, We have faithfully pulled all of the "volunteers" and weeds from our yard, but as our children grew up and became vegans and green, We started to look at yard in a different perspective. Most of the volunteers might have value to someone else, and if we could pot them and raise them with little or no expense but sweat, We thought we should try. And, if we sold any we could use the money for green projects around the house.
Then came a bit of challenge from our youngest adult child whose challenge inspired this project: Could we......
1) Take the CRV refund money and buy larger containers (15 gallon) which we did not have and could not easily find. Basically, using already spent money. No new money could be added.
2) Use Reuse of the smaller containers to start the Volunteers then move them to the 15 gallon containers for sale without increasing the Water Usage.
3) Use the Sale of Recycled Plants to fund Renewable Energy to reduce the power, gas and water bills on the House. This is of major interest as the Home is a large 1907 Spanish Mediterranean in the semi-desert originally designed with solar heating and night cooling in mind. It is not suitable for traditional energy conservation techniques, And, it has about 2/3 of an acre of fully landscaped yard using a ridiculous amount of water and power. The Utility bill is about half of our social security. Embarrassingly high and needs to be reduced even if there weren't any financial considerations.
We added to this challenge a process that we have come to love which is the project has to be done incrementally, in very small almost micro increments. Basically, how do you reduce water a Gallon at time and power a Watt at a time, and produce heat a BTU at a time in $25 increments? We used to cruise in a Sailboat and were always amazed at how much could be done with Wind Power, a little Solar Power, a few batteries and an inverter. Rain capture for fresh water was rarely used but was available. The final things we added were that this project had to be a DIY project for old folks who have few mechanical skills (in other words if we can do it, almost anyone else should be able to ..). This also was important because our project leader was off at school and only us workers were on site so the jobs had to be ones we could accomplish.
We called the local utility company and got our usage stats from the last three years (embarrassing) but often the home was used as a "One Star" hotel with room service (if you could get to the kitchen) with larger numbers of people visiting or staying. we will not try to adjust the usage to a per headcount basis but rather just try to eliminate power usage through renewable energy, BTU's through renewable energy including wood burning stoves, and reduced water usage which probably cannot completely go away.
So, to summarize: The project could only start with CRV money as the figurative "seed money", which would be the only invested Captial. Then with Sweat and Volunteers, convert this CRV investment into Recycled Plants which could only be sold for half the price or less than the price of the local big box retailer e.g. $3.95 to $25,00. These small funds would then be used to create Renewalbe Energy for the home. reducing usage over the years to the lowest possible extent probably everything but a little water. The design point of Renewable energy is probably going to be increments of $25 in a continous improvement cycle.
Now back to the Starting Point of the Project:
All of the plants are volunteers or from seed. we use non-CRV containers for the pots, and place them in areas that are already being watered so there is no additional expenditure of resource. Because we live in Southern California, not far from the Santa River, we get tons of birds who love to start volunteers anywhere below them, we get quite a collection.
Additionally, we are just old enough to remember the end of the pioneer generation as a child. Often, they brought seeds or cuttings with them, and we passed them around from yard to yard and generation to generation. They used to love to go Luther Burbank's home and marvel with improvements he made, but they still had their  favorites which they kept propagating. So, we started replanting seeds from Avocados and peaches, etc. They take at least five years to fruit, and you definitely can get "unreliable and unpredictable" results. But, that is half the fun, if you are adventuress, have time and space (or kids who want to do a project), grow a unique tree or not so unique of a tree as the case maybe.
We are not experts on propagation, or plants. We just put them in and see if they grow. If we make any mistakes and you want to correct us, just send me an email or use the question/response from for questions, corrections, requests or ideas.
We can not ship the plants so they are available only for pick up in Riverside, CA.
Also you can use the form Have Questions? to send us your ideas, requests, etc.
Our VP hard at work keeping pests away.
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