10 Ways to Save Money in Your Garden
The price of food and other necessities has everyone watching their budget lately. You can save some cash by ditching takeout and growing your own food at home. But, you can spend a lot of money setting up your home garden if you’re not careful. Use these ten tips to save money in your garden.
Save Money on Garden Seeds
1. Start Your Plants from Seed
This is the most obvious money saving hack for your garden. You would spend $3 – $5 per vegetable seedling at the garden store. Or more if you want an uncommon variety that you need to have shipped. But you can buy a whole packet of dozens or hundreds of seeds for roughly the same amount. You can even get free seeds from a seed swap or check out seeds from a local seed library. Learning the basics of starting your plants from seed can save you hundreds of dollars in your garden year after year. Get a copy of my free Super Seedlings guide for all the details.
2. Save Your Seeds
One way to get free seeds is to save seeds from year to year in your garden. This doesn’t work for all varieties of fruits and vegetables, but for the ones that do, it can be a considerable savings. If a plant cross-pollinates easily (like the squash family), you may need to be careful how closely you grow different varieties, or resign yourself to some unusual hybrids. Growing open-pollinated plants it can increase the chances that your saved seeds will produce plants that are consistent with their parents. If you use hybrid seeds, you may get something unexpected. For seed saving superstars like tomatoes, peppers, and melons, you can even save seeds from produce you buy at the farmers market or grocery store.
Save Money on Garden Supplies
3. Find and Repurpose Containers
You can spend a lot of money on garden containers if you’re not careful. If you are planting in your front yard and want to make a good impression, then buying nice, matching containers may be worth the cost. You may be able to find deals at a garage sale or dollar store to stretch your budget. But if you are the only one that will be looking at your garden up close, then repurposing food-grade containers can save you money and divert some trash from the landfill. I repurpose a lot of food containers for seed starting, transplanting, and produce storage. Why buy when you can reuse?
4. Make Your Own Plant Labels
Labeling your plants can actually save you money in your garden. I can’t count the number of times I planted something and was sure I would remember what and where I planted it, only to be scratching my head later. There are lots of cute, matching labels available in the garden store or online. But they can get expensive if you have a lot of plants in your garden. Luckily, many labels don’t need to last for years, so creating your own from saved popsicle sticks, cut up plastic, or scrap lumber can significantly cut your costs. Just make sure you use indelible marker or paint to keep your labels readable all the way to harvest, if needed.
5. Make Your Own Compost and/or Fertilizer
Your garden will thrive if you feed your soil properly. But buying bags of soil amendments can get expensive and cumbersome if you have a lot of plants. You can save a lot of money and mileage if you make your own compost or fertilizer. Kitchen scraps and yard waste can make rich compost in a few weeks or months. You don’t need to buy an expensive compost system, a simple compost pile can be effective if you keep it moist and turn it regularly. Similarly, you can create your own fertilizer by soaking some compost in a bucket of water to make compost tea. Or if you have access to manure from pets or livestock, it can bring a welcome boost to the fertility of your garden. Just make sure to compost the manure to kill any weed seeds before spreading it on your garden.
6. Mulch Everything
This idea may be a little counter-intuitive. If you have to buy all your mulch, then you could spend a lot of money on a large garden. However, the time and effort you save by increasing the organic matter in your garden and reducing the weeds can more than pay for itself. Especially if you can find low-cost sources of mulch. One of my favorite mulches is grass clippings. They break down relatively quickly, but are easy to collect from our yard and do a great job keeping the weeds down. We also use a lot of spent hay or straw from cleaning out our animal stalls, because it’s another easy source of mulch, usually with added fertilizer. Make sure you know the source of your mulch well and avoid anything that might have been contaminated with pesticides or herbicides.
Save Money on Garden Tools
7. Get Used Tools
This particular hack won’t work for all garden tools. Some things you may need to buy new. But a lot of older tools are actually higher quality than some of the flimsy plastic tools sold these days. Buying a high quality, well, maintained, used, tool can save your budget without compromising utility. Look for tools that are sturdy but not too heavy without obvious signs of rust or wear. Garage sales, auctions, or community buy and sell ads are great places to find gently used garden tools. Do your research on the brands and styles that work best for your size and garden needs.
You also don’t need to get every possible tool from day one. Start with a few basic tools and then add more specialized options as your garden experience grows. Some communities even have a tool rental or loan program where you can get specialty tools that you may not need on a daily basis. Make use of your local resources and keep your garden budget to a minimum.
8. Properly Maintain and Store Your Tools and Supplies
Once you’ve spent money on your tools and supplies, don’t waste it by leaving them out in the elements to get lost or ruined. If you own the perfect tool, but can’t find it when you need it, it’s like not owning it. If your favorite tool is left outside all winter, it won’t be your favorite when it is warped or rusty.
Setting up proper maintenance and storage routines can pay off big time in your garden. Nothing is ever perfect, especially in the midst of hectic seasons in the garden like spring planting or fall harvest. But having a specific place to put each kind of tool or supplies and scheduling some time to clean and prep at the end of the growing season can make a huge difference in your garden budget and how much fun you have in your garden.
Save Money by Planning Ahead
9. Only Plant What You Will Eat
One of the easiest ways to waste money in your garden is to buy seeds, supplies, and tools to grow something that you don’t actually want to eat. I’m all for experimenting with new plants, but especially when you are first starting out, stick to what you like. Don’t get sucked in to what you think a garden is “supposed” to have. Don’t grow something just because someone gave you the seeds or seedlings.
Use your space, time, and resources to focus on the foods that you otherwise would be buying at the store. When you want to experiement with something new, start with just a few plants and see how it goes. If you grow something you don’t care for, don’t keep growing it just to “use up the seed packet” or because you feel guilty. Don’t waste your supplies or resources on something that isn’t providing you with a good return on your investment.
10. Stick to Your Garden Plan
This is the final tip, but also probably the most important. If you don’t make a garden plan, or if you don’t stick to your plan, you can end up wasting a lot of the money and time you have to spend on your garden. Of course, you can’t plan for every possible outcome and your plan will likely change throughout the growing season. But starting out without a plan, or throwing your plan out the window at the first obstacle is a recipe for going over your garden budget before you even taste your first home-grown veggie or fruit.
When life happens, change your plan, but make the hard decisions about how the changes will affect your budget, or your time, or what your expectations are for your garden. It’s OK to decide that you need to scale back or go in a different direction, as long as you are realistic about what that means for reaching or shifting your garden goals.
You can also save money on your grocery budget by picking the right plants to grow. Check out the 10 Best Plants to Grow for Your Budget for more!
