More Money-Saving Gardening Tips - Part 3

As I said in Money Saving Gardening Tips - Part 1, gardening can be an expensive hobby, which can put you off if you haven't got much available cash, and there are conflicting priorities in the recession.

This web page will show you how to make a lovely garden very cheaply. It's about frugal living.

This gardening advice should save you about £70 ($85), maybe more

With a little ingenuity, you will probably think of other ways in which you can improvise and save money.

You'll find the links to the first two articles lower down the page, and you will then have a full details of seventeen ways in which you can save money when gardening.

The bare list is directly below this paragraph, followed by more fulsome information of the final 5 items, numbers 12--17.

1. Use Plastic Bottles as Cloches to Protect against Weather and Predators
2. Use Small Plastic Pots with Lids as Slug Traps for your Garden
3. Collect Slugs and Snails by Hand
4. Use Plastic boxes and containers as seed trays
5. Make Your Own Stakes for the Garden
6. Don't always Buy Your Plants from Nurseries
7. Gather Seeds or Seed Heads from Your Own Plants
8. Use large pie tins, such as Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie as Plant Saucers
9. Improvise with unwanted furnishings as Plant Racks
10. Get free Plastic Pots and Gardening Implements from Freecycle - lots of people give these things away
11. Join Seedswop or start a plant and cutting exchange yourself
12. Learn How to Take Cuttings of Plants and other Propagation Methods
13. Re-Use Plant Pots and Plant Ties
14. Make a Vegetable Plot
15. Make use of Unusual Containers for Container Gardening
16. If your Garden Backs on to Vacant Land, Use Both Sides of the Boundary Fence
17. Use Logs for Garden Seating and Dividers

    
    

Re-Use Plant Pots and Plant Ties

Recycle your odd pieces of plastic plant tie and used plant pots - why throw them away?

Store small bits of plant ties in a plastic container so that you know where to find them.

If they are not broken, flower pots can be saved and brought out again for re-use. Wash them before recycling, to prevent fungal infection..

You can re-use garden stakes too.

Build a Vegetable Plot in Your Garden

Dig up some of your flower border or lawn, and grow some vegetables or fruit - it makes sense in a recession, and the fresh produce tastes so good.

Yes, it is more work than buying your vegetables. Yes, you do have to water your little darlings if you want them to grow. But the taste of newly-picked produce is fantastic, and of course, it is ready at hand when you want it. And you feel so proud when you harvest your raspberries, or pull your runner beans off the stalks.

To make your vegetable plot:

Dig it over one foot deep, break up the soil, clear all the weeds, put in manure and topsoil (and sand if the soil is clayey and doesn't drain well). It should be crumbly and friable.

Rotate crops to prevent disease and depletion of nutrients (i.e. don't grow the same plants in the same spot year after year).

Draw out a plan of where you will plant things, making sure that plants which need sun are planted where they will get sun, and will not be shaded by bigger plants growing in front of them. Allow sufficient space between plants so that they do not overcrowd each other, which would lead to stunted growth. You will need to research how far apart various different things shoujld be planted. This information is readily available in books, on-line or on seed packets.

Make use of Unusual Containers for Container Gardening

You Don't Need to Buy Garden Urns to use as plant containers.

You can recycle enamel buckets (possibly painted), old china sinks, earthenware pots, chimney pots, ornaments, vases and wooden boxes as plant container.

Recycled containers can be very ornamental in the right place and circumstances

I am using an old ceramic butler's sink to grow mint, which needs to be contained because it spreads too much when left in the ground.

I also have a few things growing in bowls and wooden boxes, and have converted an old boarding-school tuck box (Kings School, Canterbury, in case you are wondering) into a beautiful flower box containing forget-me-nots, and later when the flowers have died back, it makes a good container for growing tomatoes

If your Garden Backs on to Vacant Land, Use Both Sides of the Boundary Fence

Is this a bit naughty? I don't think so, not if the land is currently not being used for anything, and you are not doing any harm.

You could grow roses and hollyhocks and climbers up the side of the fence which faces on to your garden

And then, where they don't show, behind the fence, you can put up bamboo canes, tie them to the fence, and grow your runner beans, raspberries, tomatoes and what-have-you. And maybe dig up some of the rough grass and weeds and sow a few cabbages, or sprinkle some wild flower seeds, or any surplus seeds you have from last year.

This will give you an extra area of planting, saving you valuable garden space.

Use Logs for Garden Seating and Dividers

Logs are quite easy to find and make very handy seats to dot around the garden, particularly for gardeners who tire easily and need to take a rest from digging now and then.

They make another attractive feature in your garden.

The photo below shows the garden side of our back fence, with my cat walking out to the part beyond the fence (which was shown in the photo above). In the middle foreground you can see a large log or tree stump, which I use as a seat if I need to sit down to survey my estate, or just take a rest from digging.

Tips 1 - 6 are in

Money Saving Gardening Tips (Part 1)

and Tips 7 - 12 are in

Money Saving Gardening Tips (Part 2)