Gardening Tips
Money Does Grow on Trees
Money saving ideas for your garden are all around. They’re in your existing garden plants, trees in your yard, and local fields to name a few places. Growing and maintaining a beautiful garden is satisfaction enough, but to know you saved money doing it is even better! The following are just a few of the ways you can save a buck, or two, or a thousand.
The Seeds of Life
Tip One: Many gardeners bypass annuals for perennials at the nursery because with a perennial, according to one gardener, “you only have to buy once and it comes back every year.” Annuals, on the other hand need to be repurchased each spring. Or do they? When you buy an annual you’re buying the seeds as well and many people forget that. You don’t have to buy an annual each year, you simply have to harvest the seeds and replant it. Growing plants from seeds costs pennies and is certainly less expensive than buying flats of annuals which can be $10 US and up. You can even use old kid’s milk cartons, or cut down paper towel, or toilet paper rolls filled wet newspaper as your seed starter. Just add a little bit of soil onto of the newspaper add the seed and mist with a water bottle.
Waste Not Want Not
Tip Two: Whether the plant is an annual, perennial, or bush such as the azalea, you should harvest the seeds even if you don’t plan on planting them. Why? Because you can trade them for other seeds, grow the plants and sell them at the end of your driveway or at the farmer’s market for extra money. You can even donate the seeds to local charities or animal shelters who can resell them at a fundraiser.
Instant Borders Without the Chronic Backache
Tip Three: If you want to add ground cover such as creeping thyme or alyssum to your garden, here is a great way to get started early and a fabulous way to create instant borders without the backache of having to plant each flower. Measure the area you want covered with ground cover. Let’s say you want to create a border along an existing garden that is 10 feet long. Cut newspaper (about 2 pages thick) into two feet long by one foot wide strips. To cover 10 feet you will need five of these two foot strips. Place the strips in a slightly sunny area, but where the seeds won’t be disturbed or pelted with rays of light, such as basement shelving near a window. Place garbage bags on the shelves then add the newspaper strips. Do not overlap strips. Sprinkle the seeds on the newspaper like you would if you were planting them in the ground. Place a layer of paper towel over each strip and then spray the towel, seeds and newspaper with a water bottle. You want to saturate the towel and the newspaper, but you don’t want it to drip. The paper must never dry out (if it does spray immediately.) Remove the paper towel when the seeds germinate (in about a week.) Two months later, weather permitting, you can plant your newspaper strips, now bursting with seedlings, outdoors. First carefully arrange each seedling strip where it will be planted. Once you are happy with the arrangement cover bare newspaper areas with soil to anchor the strip. If there are bare areas around the seedlings, poke a hole and break up the paper. In time the newspaper will decompose. Add a light layer of soil around the seedlings. If you have a rabbit problem sprinkle cat liter (used-by a cat) around the seedlings. What an easy, inexpensive and back-saving way to mass plant annuals! There is no digging involved! No going to the nursery to buy expensive flats of flowers—just sprinkle, spray and add soil!
Become a Pack Rat
Tip Four: Save all flats and flower pots that come with your plants. You’ll thank me later. First, you can always use these to start your seeds next season (be sure to wash the flats to rid them of any disease.) Second, it may look funny at first, but if you cut out the bottom of plastic pots and place them over younger transplants it will protect them from rabbits. Additionally, placing pots around ornamental grasses is a great way to contain the younger, lower grass strands from rotting as they lay on the ground. The band created by the pot will keep the strands off the ground.
Peppy Plants
Tip Five: Humans are not the only ones to get a boost from espresso. Plants do too! Caffeine and theophylline, two ingredients of coffee are popular ingredients in expensive skin care products, and key ingredients in asthma medications, but also make excellent fertilizer for plants. You can get it by the big bagful and for free just by contacting your local coffee shop. Just mix the espresso in with your existing soil every few months and watch your plants go
One Last Hoo-Ha
Tip Six: Come fall, gardeners are usually a little teary-eyed over parting ways with garden tasks. For a little late season hoo-ha run to the nearest garden section and buy California poppy, candytuft, cornflower, dianthus, phlox, cosmos, soapwort, spinach, larkspur, pansies, some marigolds, snapdragons, garlic, and/or sweet pea seeds for what should be half off at that time of year. These hardy annuals can actually be planted in the fall and will bloom in the spring or summer!
The Patient Gardener
Tip Seven: Who doesn’t want instant blooming results in the garden? If you buy a plant you want it to be all it can be like, yesterday, right. Nurseries know this and so you will pay a premium for larger plants. Not only is there a demand, but the overhead on a mature plant is more than a new one (larger container, more water, etc.) But if you are patient, buy the smaller plant. It will save you a good deal of money and in a couple of months, with the right conditions and (cough cough) some Miracle grow, your plant formerly known as small, will be a force to be reckoned with.
You Bought What! Where?
Tip Eight: The Internet is a gardener’s best bud. You might be surprised to know that your local nursery has been charging you way too much money. Or you might be pleasantly surprised to discover your local nursery is the best kept secret with great prices and stock. The point is, shop around online as well as offline. Here is one reason why: While searching for farmers or companies that sold plants in her area, one gardener we interviewed came across a nursery she had never heard of. She called and discovered they sold directly to nurseries until June when they opened to the public, but since she was local she could look through their 12 greenhouses and buy what she wanted. She had her pick of flowers, colors, textures, and rarities and didn’t have to worry about the item she wanted being sold out. Not only can you find great deals by researching, but you can also find new sources!
Pick up the Pieces
Tip Nine: Stones between the sizes of oranges and cantaloupes make great decorations, or borders for gardens, but if you want a lot they can be costly. If you live near new construction, be it a large building or a new neighborhood, you are sure to find many suitable rocks for your garden. Be careful, as construction sites can be dangerous. Don’t forget to bring a wagon with so you can easily roam the area and move your stones at the same time
