Ultimate Upcycle - That old mattress saves a tree!

Here in the great state of Alaska we have many opportunities to view wildlife - which is a great thing - unless that wildlife is eating your apple and cherry trees down to the nubbins and killing them!  You know from some of my previous posts that we grow great apple trees here and that they will produce, but only if you can keep the moose from eating them!  Remember in one of my previous blogs I also promised you an upcycled mattress plan?  Well here comes a mattress saving some apple trees!

My folks have a large animal fence that they use to keep out the moose - I cant afford that right now so the best I can do is turn some old worn out mattresses into some protective fencing!

This is only part of the mattress - there will be other blogs with the rest of the mattress later.  Start by breaking down the box spring portion of the mattress.  Keep the fabric and other parts for other projects.

 Take the metal coil or spring portion of the mattress and four long pieces of the wood frame and begin to wrap it around the apple/cherry tree.  Drive a stake of the wood frame into the ground to anchor the metal portion to the ground as wide around the tree as you can.  Try not to touch the tree - Im afraid that the metal touching the tree all winter will freeze burn  the tree ( I havent had to worry much about that since we haven't had much cold this winter).  Continue staking the metal around the tree at intervals that keep it going and keep it seeming sturdy - it may have to hold off up to 1500 pounds of hungry moose!

This particular mattress was a double bed size so the metal portion is about 4' high.  I put bird netting over the top of the metal circle just in case the moose should feel the need to stick a neck inside the circle.  So far they have not liked bumping their noses into the metal parts of the mattress and have left this alone.

This is a relatively free upcycle.  You did buy the mattress at some point in time probably (unless you can get one from a friend for free-for-real), and there will be many uses for the rest of the mattress as well.  The top mattress will also have this metal coil or spring inside it so you can get two tree wraps out of a mattress set.  Be sure to keep that fabric from the top of the mattress and the bottom - they have great uses.  Stay tuned and we will talk about some things to do with those in another blog!

Happy New Year - I hope it is a great one and that you start to dream big for your next growing season today!