Frugal Gardening Tips

[okra]

What tips have you got for gardening on the cheap.

My favourite tips would be saving your own seeds, using seeds from shop bought vegetables such as tomatoes and chillies and swapping seeds.

What are yours

[oldjerry]

It's a bit late,more will follow; here's a few thatg come to mind:

Make your own compost
Ditto leaf mould(with any leaves you can find in black plastic bin bags)
Make friends with a landscaper,get loads of 2 and 3 ltr plastic pots for free
Get spent mushroom compost from a mush farm,usually free.
Take hardwood cuttings from your/your friends fruit bushes
Use OId Armco for raised bed sides.
Bog roll tubes make great degradable pots to start runners/zucchini/melons etc..

maybe more will follow

[yvette]

My tomatoes liked the water we took from the goldfish tank each week - they had that instead of liquid feed and did really well - completely free!
Swapped produce with a neighbour - when we had more beans than we could handle we gave them some, and they gave us some squashes later as mine did not fare too well.
Used recycled bits and pieces where possible - made a cold frame with a plastic box topped with a piece of perspex thrown out by a neighbour. Saved yoghourt pots etc. and other bits of packaging for seedlings, cut and come again salad etc.

[Flo]

Invest in a basic book such as the Vegetable Expert by DG Hessayon so that you have have a good solid basic understanding of what you should be doing. There's also Expert books on roses, flowers, fruit and lawns. Get the basics right and then learn from experience as no book tells you exactly how things will grow in your place.

[boboff]

Best Way to Garden on the cheap?

Buy your spuds and Carrots and Onions in a shop!

Seed potatoes £2 kilo, Shop bought spuds 27p a kilo.......

Only Joking of cource.

Get Tyres from a garage and stack them up as patio planters. As black get really warm, so need watering, and best to try and get a good seal as soil tends to wash out.

Skip & Tip Scavenge, amazing what you can find. An old Bathroom cabinet and a bit of Galvenised can become a solar food dryer in no time!

[okra]

Keep some of your harvest for re-planting the following season, this works well with potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, and garlic. You can also plant out any potatoes or garlic that have sprouted before use.

[Harasimow]

1)Make your own beanpoles by coppicing some Hazzel. Maybe volunteer with a conservation organisation on a day when they are doing this?
2)Use the trays you get free for carrying pots from the garden center as actual pots, just fill up with compost and plant.
3)Don't buy potassium feed make comfrey tea from forraged plants (theres some growing by my local library)
4)Same goes for nitrogen tea with nettles
5)Definetley try and find a free source of manure. If you dont ask you dont get.
6)Always be on the lookout for free stuff to add to your compost, leaves from the car park at work? Windblown apples rotting on the ground? that annoying nettle patch on no mans land at the allotment? shreaded paper from the office? start a compost bin at work if allowed?

When im not frugal

1)buying tools, I always buy the most expensive and will hopefully never have to buy said tool again.
2)buying seed, im a sucker for that variety with an AGM! (award of garden merit)
3)With my car (petrol) I always drive to my allotment because I always want to carry lots of stuff up there.

[Peggy Sue]

Oh absolutely don't be frugal with buying seeds- the cheap cones have rubbish germination rates. Good seeds you can seedsave from next year so a real investment! I've started seedsaving the easy stuff (peas, beans) and have added a few things to the list each year so as not to frighten myself too much Parsnips are also easy, if you buy from realseed they give you good seedsaving isntructions. You will always get to save loads more than you needs so you can then swap- did a lovely swap with MMM last year and her potimarrons were excellent- I'm saving seeds from them for next year.

I also make a homemade spray that heps against blight from rotted marestail, seems to work quite well and if you have marestail you will be quite pleased to have a use for it

[Flo]

Be careful with home made garden chemicals as in the most part they are no longer legal. There's been a lot of tightening up on chemcial use for home gardeners.

[wulf]

You can grow your own garden stakes and pea sticks. It is a good way to get extra value out of a collection of ornamental plants - something like a Buddleja davidii will put on plenty of growth each year and cope with hard pruning.

If you aren't completely squeezed for space, leave some room for fertilizer plants like comfrey. They are also attractive in their own right (and to pollinators) and you can cut down the time required to travel and harvest from elsewhere.

Seedling pots can be made from newspaper. Fill a tray with them and they will support each other. You can let seedlings grow to a reasonable size in these temporary pots and then plant them straight out.

Wulf

[Keaniebean]

Best Way to Garden on the cheap?

Buy your spuds and Carrots and Onions in a shop!

Seed potatoes £2 kilo, Shop bought spuds 27p a kilo.......

Only Joking of cource.

Actually Boboff I agree with you, if like me you don't have lots of space then it simply isn't worth the space growing things that you can buy relativly cheaply in the shops. It's much better to grow things like peas, beans, corgettes, broccoli, tomatoes which are prolific and cost the earth in the shops.

Another tip would be to buy good seed in September/October when they are reducing them in the garden centres. you might not get the full choice but you never know when you will find a bargain.

[Green Aura]

I think the single most expensive, recurring item we buy for the garden is compost! Mind you we are battling with very under-nourished soil which has been under sod for donkeys years, so we use quite a lot of it. We've not yet managed to produce enough of our own to not have to buy any in as we're using such a lot. We'd be better really buying a load of topsoil - but getting it delivered is nigh on impossible. And buying it in bags is even more expensive than compost!

So my advice would be to find space somewhere, if possible, to make your own compost - especially if you're container gardening like a lot of urban gardeners have to. Kitchen waste via a bokashi starter and all garden waste apart from perennial weeds will produce enough to keep containers topped up.

It's not a quick saver, though - our compost bins are now in their third year and this is the first year we'll get a decent amount out.

[okra]

Be careful with home made garden chemicals as in the most part they are no longer legal. There's been a lot of tightening up on chemcial use for home gardeners.

Is it really illegal to make and use your own organic pesticides

[niknik]

Be careful with home made garden chemicals as in the most part they are no longer legal. There's been a lot of tightening up on chemcial use for home gardeners.

Is it really illegal to make and use your own organic pesticides

how wuld they know anyway?? and if thats the case.are they going to ban compost heaps too?. which is ffectively the same thing. breaking down the rubbish and creting other compounds to nourish the soil..




as for a frugal tip.............save old shoe laces for tying up plants...........( or anything else out thre for that matter)

[Flo]

You would be astonished at what people use to make their own pesticides.

Have a read through this and make your own decisions as to what pesticides you make. As the article points out, derris has been banned as a health hazard now and that is made from natural ingredients. Food for thought indeed. You have to decide if you feel safe using whatever concoction you use and whether it has any effects on you or your family over time.

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of banned pesticides and weedkillers. You'd be amazed how many people still think it's legal to used Jeyes Fluid to sterilize the soil where they are going to plant brassicas.