Gardening Money Saving Tips
There is currently pressure on many household wallets, with people being furloughed, made redundant, or running small businesses that can’t operate. With that in mind, I have written a series of articles about how to save money.
In the first of the series, I am going to talk about the garden. With it normally being Chelsea Flower Show in May (cancelled for 2020), and the garden being a sanctuary to many people who can’t get out and about, it seemed the most apt place to start. These are all real life examples, as they are either what we do in our own garden or have been gleaned from people who have given me these tips themselves.
Cuttings, seeds and plants
Swap cuttings, seeds and plants with friends and neighbours. The good thing about getting plants from neighbours is that you will have similar soil, so you know they will grow as well in your garden as it does in theirs. Take cuttings and do a local plant swap group for divisions and duplicates. During the CoronaVirus period of time, we have used our neighbour support group to do this. A pot of hormone rooting powder helps no end.
Spilt plants to fill any gaps. If you start with one plant and propagate into two every year you’ll have 32 plants in 6 years. If you start with 10 plants and propagate them every year you’ll have 320 in 6 years. Divide bulbs periodically and use throughout your garden.
Grow your own veggies. A pack of carrot seeds goes a long way. Sharing seeds purchases with pals can be good too, who needs 400 lettuces!?
Let one plant go to seed and self-sew. One friend said “I haven’t planted lettuce in 4 years and have tons of it. I just pull out the little seedlings that are to concentrated and use them as baby greens in meals.”
Save seeds from your food and plant. This works well for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and watermelon. We also have a huge pot of runner bean seeds from saving the last few runner beans from last year, drying them out, and saving them in a brown paper bag. Cut the bottoms off celery, lettuce, cabbage, green onions, root in water and plant. Cut pieces of potatoes and plant.
Choosing plants
Avoid expensive mistakes by knowing your garden conditions. A friend said “My go to book when choosing plants is ‘Perfect plants for problem places’ which is a very good guide to which plants are likely to do well in which types of soil. I think it was the renowned gardener Beth Chatto who coined the phrase ‘right plant, right place’; no better advice can ever be given!”
Purchasing plants
Under no circumstances, impulse buy, it’s often an expensive mistake!
Resist the online gardening catalogues. Morrison’s plants are just as good as garden centres and much cheaper. Also I buy shrubs in Poundland. Buy cheap perennials rather than annuals. Look for the half dead plants in the sale at places like B&Q. Just cut away the dead and give it a good feed and 99% of the time they will come back.
Compost and fertiliser
Make your own! I have a wormery - it gives you free fertilizer liquid and compost to dig in. Alternatively, you could start a compost bin. I reckon it saves me £100 per year. There are lots of websites that teach you how to do this, and its essentially brown and green mixes. You can also harvest and wash seaweed to use as fertiliser. Ask local stables for horse manure and as many of them also keep chickens, get some of that too. Chicken poo can be used straight away. Horse manure needs to be put it in the garden for a couple of months to mellow then use in compost or garden as additional nutrition.
Make Comfrey plant food! Grow a comfrey plant, remove greenery and pack it tightly to fill a bucket, add water to the top and place bucket as far away from humanity as possible for about 3 weeks. After 3 weeks, pour the now stinky liquid into another container which in turn decant into your watering can every time you water your plants (about a coke can per watering can).
Recycle and re-purpose
Use toilet and kitchen paper rolls as planters for sweet peas, sugar snap etc that need long roots. Use yoghurt pots to grow seedlings, and mesh or link fencing to create vertical gardens. Catering size tins of tomatoes etc can be painted as planters. I also use old metal items, paint them with Hammerite and use them as planters on my patio. Pallets make a great herb garden.
Mulch
As well as using Comfrey as discussed previously, you can contact your local tree surgeon / professional gardeners for mulch. They often give it away as by-product from work. Use cardboard or newspaper from the house to keep down the weeds. I also use old carpets. We get them from Freecycle and it keeps down weeds over winter, making it easier to dig next spring. We also use carpet under our rhubarb leaves to ensure the leaves are kept off the soil and don’t rot as quickly. Newspaper decomposes and becomes organics material in the soil.
Bits and bobs
Join a local garden club. Gardeners are very generous by nature and may offer you starts. Each club are likely to have plant sales or swaps.
Use white vinegar to spray on weeds. It is much cheaper and not harmful to the environment.
If at all possible, get a water butt for investment purposes, we are fortunate to have more than one and has cut our bills significantly. Buy or acquire second hand where possible. Freecycle is full of them!
That's all folks. Hope you enjoyed this. Happy gardening!
I help businesses and households save on their Utilities spending - making life easier with just one fully itemised monthly bill for all their services.
3ySuper article and tips, will share with my gardening friends 😊
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4yLove this post! A great read
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4yExcellent, especially at this time being able to spend some time in a garden is a joy
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4yThe amount of money we seem to spend in Garden Centers surprises me. I like the tip about swapping seeds and cuttings (whatever that is) with neighbours for sure !
Between chapters I'll save you money on your utilities!
4yFantastic content, thanks Karen Potton Utilities Professional