While Spring ushers in the warmer weather, many gardeners start planning and planting. Oh how all those exciting and new gadgets for the gardener become delicious bits of eye candy. “Buy me” they beg, “I’ll help you with your gardening”. HEY STOP! Don’t be sucked into the, I must spend lots of money to have a rich and rewarding garden this year.
A full and productive garden doesn’t hinge upon new and improved merchandise costing lots of money, one might not have. You can have a delicious blooming garden by recycling items around the house. This means no extra money being spent on a garden and instead it could be put to needed uses around the home.
Save those egg cartons:
Egg cartons are great seed starters for gardeners. Especially when you wants to start an early garden, but the weather might still be a bit to cold. These egg cartons are already compartmentalized, so each seed or seeds will have their own little nook to start growing in.
Coffee grounds:
If you’re is a coffee drinker, don’t throw those coffee grounds away. Coffee grounds are great for composting or for putting around plants, adding extra moisture and nutrients into the soil, like nitrogen.
Coffee grounds also act like a barrier preventing slugs from entering your garden and chomping their way through all those “slug likable goodies”. The acidic content and abrasiveness of the coffee grounds are a great deterrent when it comes to slugs.
Compost:
Composting perishables and household waste can be a great source of rich nutrients for gardens. Composting can be very expensive if you go out and buy all the things needed to have a great compost heap. That is why a frugal person who enjoys green living would want to start their own.
Save all veggie waste, newspapers, paper bags, egg shells, fruit waste. Invest in one or two bags of good soil, adding all the composting materials from the home into it. Shred the newspapers and paper bags and mix those in. Add those coffee grounds to this and other things like what’s left over from cleaning fish. These are rich ingredients which will release all those needed nutrients into a great compost.
Start a compost in a waste basket, or be creative. Don’t spend lots of money on compost bins when one can be made inexpensively. Every so many days turn the compost, mix from the bottom up, because new things will be added to the compost all the time. Let nature break down all those ingredients evenly.
Watering:
To save money on watering, water in the early morning or late evening. A garden needs those drinks before the hot suns rises and evaporates the moisture from the ground. Too watering during the heat of the day, will eventually cost a gardener money to replace what the sun burns.
Recycle pantyhose:
Before throwing away those pantyhose which have runners in them, give them a quick wash in the sink. Use them as tie material for holding up those tomato plants or other stalk vegetable and fruits which need tied up.
Pantyhoses can be used as nesting nooks for melons. Fill them with green material which will help to keep the melons off the ground. Any extra moisture on the ground, which could rot the melons before they reach maturity can be prevented.
These are only a few frugal tips for growing a garden on a budget. With a little bit of imagination and know how, a home garden can be grown for next to nothing.