Gardening on a budget - Share your money saving tips

[sumi]

I know we're in the middle of winter and dreaming about spring, but I'm curious to hear what you're all doing to save money in the garden/veggie patch.

Some things I've done over the years is:

Letting certain plants (onions, carrots, etc) go to seed, so I don't have to buy more seeds for next year's sowing.

Making my own compost, instead of buying in.

Using grey water in the garden to cut back on the water bill.

What else can be done?

 

[Mini Horses]

All the above! If you use heirlooms most veggies can be used for next yr seed. Buy "end of yr sales" for others....exchange with another.

Use your animals in the old garden site to clean, till, & fertilize all at one time. Start your own plants for transplanting. You can direct sow many by putting out plastic on "the" spot, when close to time remove the plastic, put seeds into the warmed soil, make a small hoop & cover with clear plastic -- now you have a little greenhouse/cold frame. When the plants are ready, take them from the small patch carefully & transplant.

Those "garden porn" catalogues are arriving to tempt us!! So far our winter has been so very, very warm that it is more like March weather and I keep thinking I should be starting plants!! NO! Too early but, getting close.

 

[sumi]

I love that little greenhouse idea!

 

[rhoda_bruce]

One thing I did that actually didn't save me a penny, but I've already bought it.....was bought a chipper/shredder. I love to mulch as much as the law allows because it makes it easier to weed, keeps the ground cooler and decreases the amount of watering I need to do. So I already have branches I need to chip, Better than burning it or (God forbid) throwing it away. But I've been known to rake up leaves to mulch with, provided I can weigh them down with water, so they don't fly away.
I'm also all about most of the above methods. I save old t-shirts to cut into strips to tie up tomatoes onto wire. I put weeds under the roost so the chicken droppings can fall onto them and most likely kill whatever life they have and become organic, then when I'm getting ready for spring, I remove all the rungs and rake up a pile, transfer to wheelbarrow and bring to compost and repeat process. If I'm really desperate for organic matter, I might even rake up a layer of soil in the actual coop. Chickens don't follow any rules about where to poop.
I love to companian plant too.....save on space, fight bugs, support the plants and bring more food in the house.
I have no choice but to have raised beds because high water is always a possibility, so I use whatever is available to me free or low cost. This year, it will most likely be plastic drums, which I will cut in half and bottom/top out.

 

[Britesea]

Friends will give me their containers from buying roasted chickens and bakery goods from the grocery store. They make great little "mini-greenhouses" for starting seeds indoors; I leave the top just cracked open so the humidity is there, but not so high that it will encourage damping off.

 

[Mini Horses]

Good idea, Britsea.

I have my daughter save gal milk jugs for that and/or cut out bottom & place over plants. Because I milk my goats, I no longer buy milk....just bought a LOT of glass jugs...and use 1/2 gal mason jars that they are milked into as well.

 

[baymule]

I have traded seeds with other members on TEG. Swapping seeds is fun, plus you get something you didn't have before.

I participate in the Little Easy Bean Network, which is a grow out of bean seeds. The originator of the Bean Network is a bean collector and has so many varieties that he can't grow them all out to keep viable seed. So he sends seeds to participants, we grow the beans and send him bean seeds back. He gets his seed replenished and we get new bean varieties to grow. It is fun and the varieties of beans are astounding.

http://www.theeasygarden.com/threads/2015-little-easy-bean-network-old-beans-should-never-die.16903/

 

[sumi]

@Britesea that is a great idea! We buy foodstuff in that type of container every so often and I've been throwing them away until now.

 

[Tirtzah]

One thing I did that actually didn't save me a penny, but I've already bought it.....was bought a chipper/shredder. I love to mulch as much as the law allows because it makes it easier to weed, keeps the ground cooler and decreases the amount of watering I need to do. So I already have branches I need to chip, Better than burning it or (God forbid) throwing it away. But I've been known to rake up leaves to mulch with, provided I can weigh them down with water, so they don't fly away.
I'm also all about most of the above methods. I save old t-shirts to cut into strips to tie up tomatoes onto wire. I put weeds under the roost so the chicken droppings can fall onto them and most likely kill whatever life they have and become organic, then when I'm getting ready for spring, I remove all the rungs and rake up a pile, transfer to wheelbarrow and bring to compost and repeat process. If I'm really desperate for organic matter, I might even rake up a layer of soil in the actual coop. Chickens don't follow any rules about where to poop.
I love to companian plant too.....save on space, fight bugs, support the plants and bring more food in the house.
I have no choice but to have raised beds because high water is always a possibility, so I use whatever is available to me free or low cost. This year, it will most likely be plastic drums, which I will cut in half and bottom/top out.

Hi Rhoda_bruce:

Is this the ONLY way to "Reply"? You have to "Quote the Verse"?

Well......I just wanted to ask if you've heard about using little kids plastic swimming pools? You just drill a few holes in the bottoms and put in your dirt. You can make up some "flyers" on your WORD or OFFICE or "PHOTO" apps. The flyer would just tell that you would like to take their little plastic pool off their hands for them after summer is over and will haul it off free for them. Tell them you want to use it for planting veggies...Then, when you are driving in town, thru a neighborhood street(s) and notice a little tyke's pool in that yard, just grab a flyer out of the folder you have in the car there with you. (Most cars have that little "pocket" on the back of the front seats to keep your flyer folder in). So take out a "flyer" and either put it under the wiper blade if there is a car there, or fold it and slip it in the screen door, or have a bag of rubber bands too and use the rubber band to attach it to their screen door. Or tape....

Of course, you then need a truck or large enough vehicle to put the little plastic pool in to get it home.

We are going to build a green house out of some cheap slightly flexible PVC pipes. This way we can extend our growing season by 3 or 4 months!

Another thing we are going to do is to put an ad in Craigslist to accept " CLEAN Fill Dirt Dumped here Free". The "CLEAN" means that it can't have old broken scraps of bricks, cinder blocks, metal, scrap lumber, tree roots, etc. mixed into it. Then, when we get a dump truck load delivered FREE, we will add all of our own grass clippings and weeds and small twigs, branches, etc. and mix that into it. Then we will get a friends Bobcat to come dig out a bit on some of our land that is a little bit higher where it doesn't puddle into a pond every time we get a hard or a few days of rain. There we will build with free wood we pick up from Craigslist in the FREE listings. We will use our chain saw to cut the wood into the lengths we want and build a rough, old fashioned "Root Cellar". After it's finished we will take the "Fill Dirt" and begin piling it up on three sides and in the front, up to the bottom of the door. Let it rain a few times to make sure it is going to stay packed where you put it. Then repeat with more of the "Fill Dirt", until you have a good amount of dirt mound up around the 3 sides. Make sure the door faces North, so it is NOT getting much sun/heat on that side with no dirt covering. Also, if it snows where you live, especially if you get snow drifts from winds...make sure your door opens up INSIDE so that you don't have to "DIG" in front of the door in winter to get inside your root cellar!

Thanks for your ideas too!
Tirtzah

Friends will give me their containers from buying roasted chickens and bakery goods from the grocery store. They make great little "mini-greenhouses" for starting seeds indoors; I leave the top just cracked open so the humidity is there, but not so high that it will encourage damping off.

Hi Britesea:

WOW! What a GREAT idea tip!!! Would have never crossed my mind!

Talking about re-using containers......For those who have chickens, guineas, or hunt for ducks, pheasants, etc......The extra large bleach containers work great as "Funnels" to turn your fowls upside down to slit their throats and keeps them from flopping all over the place, flinging that blood! Just cut off the top part where you remove cap to pour bleach out. It is really narrow there at the spout and then gets larger further down. Just cut it at the place that would give a large enough opening for it's head & neck to fit through the hole. After that, then cut off the very bottom of the bottle, as close to the bottom of the bottle as you can get, to leave it long enough to hold the bird in there, feet and all.

Then screw it, upside down, to a tree with one of those electric screwdrivers that has the 90* (degree) bendable head. These last forever! After you get the bird out and dressed, simply use the hose to spray down the bottle to get rid of any unsightly, splattered blood.

Thanks again for your great tip!
Tirtzah

 

[Britesea]

Great idea on the bleach containers. We had actual metal cones when we lived in California, but we forgot to bring them up with us when we moved. We haven't used anything like a cone on our ducks here- DH just whacks em with his axe.
Oh, kinda funny thing happened. He had killed one of the drakes within sight of the other ducks (I've told him not to do that anymore- it seems unnecessarily traumatic for them). Anyway, a couple of weeks later, he came out of the shed holding a maul (which, I suppose, MIGHT look like an axe?) and when the ducks saw him (they were free ranging at the time) they ran away screaming! Poor things.