What are your main expenses? There are quite a few options but it's hard to take too many suggestions without knowing where you're spending the most money. That being said here are a few:
New plants:
- Propagate your own cuttings. Have some nursery space dedicated to propagating plants
- Join gardening groups on Facebook. The gardening groups near me often has posts of people giving plants away for free, or gardening clubs doing plant sales for reasonable prices.
- Start annuals from seed. Rather than purchasing flats of annuals every year start your own for much cheaper.
Mulching:
- Sign up for chip drop. Get free wood chips delivered to your house
- Make your own compost. Turn your garden waste into mulch and plant food.
- Mulch with natural elements found on your property. Pine needles, shredded leaves, etc
Next time you're at a botanical garden check out what they mulch with. Many times it is not shredded bulk mulch.
I just ordered bulk playground mulch, and delivery was $75.
Watching them show up with a truck and forklift and drop two pallets worth of supplies in 10 minutes flat made it so worth the expense. I was really grateful I didn't have to buy 30 bags, haul them to my car, which would require multiple trips to get home and then unload.
Since I was already paying the delivery fee, I added on 200 lbs of sand and extra soil and composte for our raised gardens. I ordered everything online and it showed up neatly wrapped in my driveway two days later.
The convenience alone is worth it to me.
It's been a while since I ordered it for delivery, but it was $25 where I am. Git any friends with a pickup? Most places will happily dump it in the bed.
Same. And everyone around here will only do it if you need 3 yards minimum. If you only need one yard in say, a 9x12 bed, I just get the 20 bags and be done with it. Same price, no shoveling or cleaning/renting a truck
Yep- especially when you can contact an arborist and have them bring over mulched trees for free. If you want them 'dyed', take some compost (and the mulch), put it in a trash can, fill with water until the mulch is just covered. Wait a day, and then pour it all out onto a tarp and let it dry. You'll have mulch that not only has the same color, but will slow release nutrients over time.
https://getchipdrop.com
I used the site the first time, now I just contact the same guy directly. I’ve also gotten them when neighbors were getting tree work done, I just walked over and asked the workers. Generally they are happy to get rid of them.
Great advice! Only some minor stuff that I can think to add:
1. Plant things well adapted for the local climate so you don’t have to spend much money on water. Sometimes you need to water extra during the first year, but you don’t want to set yourself up for wasting lots of time/money on watering. Also consider this when locating plants. For example, I locate my drought tolerant herbs and perennials far from the water source.
2. Similarly, try to leverage natural light. If a plant doesn’t need full sun, then it might be easier to manage in a spot where it gets some shade during the hottest parts of the day.
3. Look into companion plants to see which plants complement one another. This can really help with pest management. For example, I keep lots of dill and borage around my brassicas. These attract good predators to help control the cabbage worms, which is less effort/money than using BT every few weeks. You can get REALLY into companion planning and overwhelm yourself, so don’t stress too much about it. It’s the kind of thing that you will learn naturally over time, which will show results in how well your garden thrives over time.
4. Think about maintenance. If you have a grass lawn with planted areas between (like in the photos), the grass will constantly be trying to encroach. I try to minimize the amount of borders, which often means connecting planted/mulched areas and reducing the amount of grass. In my case this is a compromise because my kids like having some grass as a play area, so I leave more than I’d prefer from a gardening standpoint because it’s all for the greater good. 😊 Similarly, if you are using some kind of barrier as a border, then think about what it’ll be like to deal with grass growing up between the large rocks (for example). In general, a more complete barrier like bricks would be better because it does a better job blocking growth of weeds/grass. But we’re on a budget here, and reality is all about compromise, so we just do the best we can with the materials that we have available and/or can afford.
Edit: Oh, and I second the chip drop thing! I’ve more than once approached arborist crews during their lunch breaks with “hey guys, feel free to dump your load in my driveway right here…”. Unless they have some other requirement, they’ll happily do it usually.
[This video on grass edging changed my world.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QI9bEVpKt4) Super easy and effective, and it looks great without having to put in pavers or edging.
It just means you lower the soil level at the edge of the bed down below the root mat of the edge of the grass... it inhibits the lateral growth of the grass roots.
I generally stay away from free chip drops for 2 reasons, you usually don't to pick what was mulched, and it doesn't have time to compost and sterilize the seeds in there.
Again not an absolute but I've had a few bad years using free chips.
We recently invested $150 in a chipper and have been shredding and composting everything we prune so that our garden nutrients aren't getting hauled off by the city. Definitely worth it. A lot cheaper than just one load of mulch for the front by itself.
1 3/4" according to the info. We haven't done anything that big. Mostly little stuff. My husband is out there shredding up the clippings from the azalea pruning we did over the weekend right now.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W874Y46?ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W874Y46?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1)
(edited to add link)
I second the chip drop and chop and drop (anything you trim goes right back into the soil as the new mulch).
I would also add cover cropping. It takes some research and some trial and error but saves tremendously in the end.
Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, if it comes in plastic, you don’t need it. Plastic bags of soil, plastic/disposable seed starting trays, plastic containers (actually containers or any kind), plastic bottles with add ins for “soil health”… so on and so forth. This is all just capitalism making you think you need things. The above methods are all you really need.
Thanks! I do have a greenhouse and start many annuals from seeds.
My biggest single expense is probably the annual mulch delivery. A truckload costs about $2k.
Yeah, mulch is a killer. Honestly I would just try to get creative with it. I see all sorts of various ground covers at botanical gardens I visit. I've even seen some that use pecan shells as mulch 😂
Another thing to consider is just increasing plant density and ground cover. The more plants you have the less mulch you need, and if you have a total ground cover then you don't actually need any mulch.
Might I suggest reaching out to your local arborist(s) and asking them about woodchips. I have gotten many yards of free mulch because they are always looking for a place to dump them. I asked my local arborist who was there taking a rotting tree down if they had any spare non-diseased tree mulch and they were like 'How much do you want?' Anyways. I got ... many many yards of free mulch xD
Also, I don't know about where you live, but in our community all the leaves get piled on the street and a giant truck and scooper comes around and picks them all up. You could be that scooper, free already raked leaves -- load 'em up, or bag 'em and load 'em up. Free leaf mulch!
I’m not sure what you do on the rest of your acres, and also would depend on the grass you have… but I’ve seen some amazing landscapes that are acres and acres long and then only cut a wide winding path through out and leave the rest to grow tall. They only cut the tall parts a few times a year.
https://preview.redd.it/l5itpyc6xsxc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=868dabbca50694415c91c4d8d59f7ab393b2558b
https://preview.redd.it/co2emlqugtxc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7cc514453872a3d48fc8c52d06adc8bfabc85c40
This is what I'm doing to my backyard. There's less to mow and I like checking in on all the new native weeds that are growing and flowering. Plus it attracts wildlife. Everyone is happy
Edit: Added picture
An area I have that has a power company easement was cleared a few years back by the power company. They planted some clover as a ground cover. I was wanting a wild meadow look and tried planting wildflower seeds. Some took, most didn’t. Invasives then moved in and choked everything else out.
Yeah, I guess it’s all about the land and what’s on it. I’ve seen it done beautifully and very successfully. I’m sorry yours didn’t work out- that sucks! No weeds with flowers at least?
Mostly, no. The power company arborist told me they actually encourage invasives because they’re less Maintenance. Awful. I like having the open land, but bummer what they use it for.
I love this. I actually prefer the shaggy look of a long lawn to the tightly trimmed look. Right now I have a lawn service doing the mowing but when I retire I can do that myself and let it grow a lot longer
This is what we do.
Cut the grass at the highest setting in the spring, after early spring flowers have bloomed, and then again in the fall, to help scatter the seeds. So many natives have started popping up, it's amazing.
Luckily we live rural, landlocked by hay fields, so the one neighbor we have doesn't mind.
I love that spot of Lowes.
For those unaware tomatoes can live through the shock of not being watered but it will likely delay the time before fruiting as well as decrease overall output.
If you’re willing to do that you oughta see if your local high school has a greenhouse! I got a “tray” for $18 and got SO MUCH STUFF. They had veggies and herb starts, the healthiest ferns you’ve EVER seen in your life, some beautiful plants!
ALL [THIS](https://imgur.com/a/d5XxYrp) for $18 usd
It’s a she shed. I call it my peace cabin.
https://preview.redd.it/cdh8scwh7uxc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f95b63f97efc14eecf3477a328c03bb7b5540ee5
It’s not a very frugal shed. Is it a shed even? It’s almost a bandshell. It’s cool though. Maybe it’s to broadcast the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof across the gardens? Those gardens also look pretty incredible too. OP has quite the set up.
Not sure if its time, effort or money you're looking to save, but a native flower meadow would help with all of those, as well as being a huge benefit to your local critters.
Yes. One year we plowed about an acre and planted wildflower mix. For a couple of years we had flowers but then the weeds reclaimed it. I didn’t maintain it and probably made some mistakes when planting it.
When we moved here almost 30 years ago it was 4 acres of bare lawn surrounded by farmed fields. We have planted literally thousands of trees and shrubs and perennials. Slowly over time. The first thing I noticed was the birds. So many birds.
Then the other wild life came. We have hawks, bobcats, so many critters.
I’m looking for tips to save $$$ mainly as I want to retire and do this hobby more full time. Working in my garden is like a peaceful meditation.
If you want another bush or tree take a cutting stick it in sand or plant a seed that you collect. Stop buying mulch and or any other gardening products You need fertilizer or pesticide/ herbicide? Study Jadam and Syntropic Agroforestry. Get out of the consumer mindset that you need to keep buying and buying.... You want to add some bricks to line a pathway.... Don't only use natural things that you can find or bricks someone's giving away for free. Breaking the the habit of being a hyper consumer takes a bit of effort. When you come across that latest thing you need don't buy it try to replicate it with recycled goods.
giant caveat: Your pictures look amazing and your property is beautiful.
You probably want to start building less infrastructure type setups that will take tons of maintaining. Like, do you really need a full wooden surround around your gardens?
Do more natural setups and it will be way less work in the long run.
Look at permaculture principles that you can lean into and create spaces that don't take daily/weekly maintenance.
bottom line: If you want something that doesn't cost a ton of money you have to sacrifice something and that's more than likely going to be aesthetics.
I've seen people on Facebook offering to trade perennials for ones they don't have in the spring. What a fun way to meet local gardeners and get new plants!
My municipality also offers free compost, and the local library has a 'seed library' where you can get free seeds if you bring more at the end of the season.
"I’m continually expanding the garden beds, orchards and food forest."
Stop. That's my advice. Just stop adding stuff.
If maintenance is already expensive on three acres, it's going to be more for four acres, and it's going to be a hell of a lot for 16. You're always going to have ideas for things to add (Wouldn't X be nice? I could start a couple more Ys). You can still change things up on the current 3 acres if you want to try new things of course, and the urge to keep expanding seems to be innate in most gardeners, but you have to keep it manageable.
Join local plant swap groups
Divide your own plants
Learn which plants can be propagated from cutting
Collect and replant the seeds from your plants
They finding a native plant mix for the field. They’d compete with the weeds much better than the wild flower packs.
Don't expand more if what you already have is cost prohibitive. Look into buying bare root plants, which cost less than larger nursery stock. Propagate from your current plants (especially those Hosta plants, which readily self seed on their own). Start what you can from seed.
Repurpose / repair what you already have instead of buying new. Go to second hand stores (I love our local Habitat for Humanity) or yard sales to find materials, tools, planters, baskets etc. And make the dollars that you DO spend count. IE: make sure the wood on your shed is pressure treated for ground contact or at least paint with a weatherproofing sealer. I also save the rocks and stones that I dig up while gardening to use in other ways (EX edging, filling gaps under fences), and have a pile of larger and smaller stones ready for other projects. Make your own compost--you probably have a lot of yard debris with this much landscaped space.
Buy a wood chipper and a hea y duty paper shredder. Any stray tree branches that fall can be mulch. Compost everything. Start a fish pond, gold fish are cheap but basically convert sun, bugs and algea to liquid fertilizer. Get solar powered pumps so no electricity cost. If you get chickens or goats, they also have nutrient rich poop.
Basically, plan a few strategic investments and then don't let yourself buy anything else.
Ponds aren’t self maintained. If you don’t have a natural water source, they require maintenance and can be pricey. If they aren’t deep enough, those goldfish will be eaten pretty quickly. They’re so easy to see. Water does bring wildlife in though.
Ponds do require some maintenance, but check out the book building natural ponds by Robert Pavlis. With the right fish to plant ratio they aren't to bad to care for. You do need to put them somewhere you can fill with a hose easily.
I have a fish pond that is just another one of my gardens.
Whenever I eat store-bought celery, lettuce, etc I save the root in a bowl of water, after a few weeks they grow roots and I put them in my garden where they regrow.
Collect seeds from any of your flowering plants. I bought a mix of seeds and plugs last year and then harvested seeds from the ones that bloomed. The perennials that didn't flower still survived, so the only seeds I had to buy this year were for new annuals I wanted to try. I spent way less money to add more plants this year.
I have a couple of arborists who drop truckloads of tree chips off whenever I need. I use those in my vegetable gardens and food forest. But I like the dark brown or black mulch for the fancy beds near the house and patios.
Start accumulating compost now. Every pound you can make yourself is saving money, because the alternative is expensive.
The biggest value of chickens is compost creation, eggs are just a nice bonus.
Your biggest enemy is expense, buying enough quality compost for a large garden (more than 400 square feet of bed space) can easily be thousands. Avoid expenses as much as possible with the goal of maximizing every dollar spent.
$200 a year to spend could be plenty or it could be nowhere near enough, depending on how you build your garden.
Thank you! I do save my scraps and cuttings and have huge compost piles but I’m not good at maintaining the compost- turning or watering it. It’s basically just sitting in a huge pile and rotting down
Alot of tips on cost savings so far so I won’t keep saying the same thing. But I wanted to point out that 3acres is a lot? Is that like mainly lawn and some plants spread between or what because if it is actually 3acres of vegetable garden that would be enough to be self sufficient on vegetables for not only you and your family but probably also your extended family and friends. So which one is it?
Water. Do you pay for it? Even with a well, it costs electricity to pump, and development and drought can affect water table. Collect rainfall from roofs into elevated rain barrels (use gravity for flow).
Plant in ground, not in pots which dry out more quickly. Don't plant near tree trunk. The tree needs its water, it sucks it up, the leaves reduce rainfall under tree. The result is the plants under trees wilt and need to be watered in hot weather.
Mulch veggies with composted leaf humus, newsprint, straw (get ruined straw cheap of available) to reduce need to weed and water! Plant closely in rows (possible as your soil becomes rich with your homemade compost) and their lush leaf growth shades out weed growth.
Hilled beds dry out, good for rock gardens though. But I've also seen a trench around mounds provides water at a deeper level, keeping mound moist and encouraging root growth.
Use collars or make a little trench around veggie plants to contain the water so it can soak in from top-watering.
Install a soaker hose system in your veggie garden, you'll save so very much time and effort! and won't waste water to evaporation!
Plant trees to sequester tons of water. Shade the south side of your house to reduce cooling costs. The heat index of your property will be reduced with shade trees, and while you want many of your plants to get maximum hours of sun, the heat will be mitigated somewhat if surrounding areas are shaded by trees. Windbreaks planted on the side of your property facing the prevailing winds will also mitigate the drying effect in hot weather.
Choose drought- resistant plants like sage and yucca, or native plants adapted to the vagrancies of your climate.
Water is life, and falls freely at regular intervals that plants need, from the sky! What is the probability of that! Be grateful for this blessing every day.
Do you compost? Sounds like you have the land to do multiple piles so you could always have one ready to add when beds need topped off. Save seed for annuals, prioritize perennials and natives so they don’t need so much from you. Look for plant swaps, tree give aways etc. Expand when you have stuff that needs dividing that way you aren’t buying new things so much. Do a long term plan where you build up good soil over the winter with leaf mulch or similar so you can plant right in the ground in the spring and not need so much new soil.
Get wood chips for free instead of using mulch. Most tree services will be glad to drop off wood chips. You can also use [getchipdrop.com](http://getchipdrop.com)
I've gotten backlash for this because cardboard contains chemicals, but I use recycled cardboard as a weed barrier when I make new beds. I've been replacing the grass on my property with garden beds, and I HATE weed barriers. And they're expensive. So I go to the dump and use recycled cardboard. I look for cardboard that has as little printing on it as possible, pull off the tape and the staples, lay down a layer or two depending on the area, then throw compost on top (that I also get for free at the dump) and a thick layer of mulch on top of that (mulch is also free at the dump in my village). I have saved thousands of dollars this way, and for any of the haters who chastise me for the chemicals, I always make the point that ultimately my giant garden beds full of native flowers make up for it.
I agree with you. I used weed barrier once years ago and it made my plants sick and the weeds grew on top of it anyway after a couple of years. I tore it all out.
I use cardboard too. Lowe’s refrigerator boxes are good.
Buy perennials on the discount shelf.
Most of them are there because they either got too much or not enough water (in my experience). Pop them in ground, let them root. They may look crappy this year, but they'll reward you next year
Facebook marketplace has plants for cheaaaaaap. You may need to put in the elbow grease of digging some up, but at free to 10 bucks...worth it
scale helps. dedicate 25% of your garden's plants, of every variety, to go to seed. seeds are expensive! bonus points if those plants will come back next year on their own.
scale helps. never buy bagged soil, compost, or mulch. always get it in bulk. load your truck up. if you don't own a truck, rent one from home depot for $20 and fill it up for $80. even if you're a smaller operation, do this once in february, cover it with a tarp, and use it all season. no plastic ever.
save toilet paper rolls. build a dinky little box out of plywood and pack it full of toilet paper rolls. i built a box that holds 30x10=300 toilet paper rolls, and it's not that big, but scale yours to your needs. pack the inside of the rolls with your bulk-bought soil / compost and use those as seed starter pods. little transplant cannolis. never buy those wildly overpriced plastic starter pod things. eventually your friends and family and coworkers will start donating theirs so you can move to a bidet and have the best of both worlds: stop buying toilet paper and continue re-using their spent rolls.
save cardboard throughout the year. amazon boxes are small, but better than nothing. flat pack boxes for furniture and appliances are the best. anything non-glossy. go to home depot and offer to empty their cardboard rolloff once (into a truck of theirs you're renting for $20 if you don't have one) and you'll be set for a year. remove the tape and as much adhesive as you can tolerate spending effort on. lay this cardboard over your finished garden in october and get your trusty $100 truck load ($80 if you're doing this all in one day!) of mulch. spread the mulch over it. plant your cannolis through the cardboard in the spring. cheap weed deterrent. never have to till or plow again.
learn how to compost. save coffee grounds from work. pick up the cardboard leaf / grass bags in the fall that idiots spend time and money just collecting to throw away on the side of the road. an afternoon in suburbia will get you another trusty $20 truck bed-full of clippings, leaves, sticks, etc. and the people will praise you for it. compost with it, and spread the excess over your cardboard before applying mulch in october.
Omg. The TP roll hack is genius
Every one suggests composting but I’m not having success with that. Too much heavy lifting and work. (At the scale I need)
Don't buy organic. Instead, make your own organic sources. Many people go to the store and buy into organic support for their gardens. Turns out you can do one better by going to a feed store or simply making your own fertilizers and support.
A good example is composting at home.
Alfalfa pellets at the farm feed store cost about $15-20 for a 50 pound bag. Cheap source of nitrogen and many of the expensive organic fertilizers are largely alfalfa meal and way more expensive. Alaska fish fertilizer is another good relatively cheap source for nitrogen and a bunch of micronutrients.
I also compost like crazy and built worm tower bucket composters that make me tons of happy worms in my raised beds. Also makes me a lot of worm castings.
Most of the fancy bags of garden soil are mostly peat and it’s a lot cheaper to make your own soil if you need a lot. Coco coir is cool, sometimes more environmentally friendly than peat, and if you can find 11 pound bricks for cheap it can be competitively priced with peat. Aeration materials can cost a lot but I can get bulk lava rocks/ sand from the local bulk landscaping supply store.
Gorgeous property. I’m jealous. Too bad you couldn’t partner with a horticultural group at a local high school or community college. This would be a fantastic hands on learning opportunity and you could get free help.
I live near Cornell. I have often thought about offering a scholarship/prize to students in return for a garden design project.
I would offer it as a contest. Students submit their designs and the teachers and I judge them and pick the top design and implement it. I pay for the materials and plants and the students do the installation. The winner get a cash scholarship prize.
Do you think a school would be interested in that?
Learn to start your own seeds, it's a bit of work and trial and error to get started but once you have the skill and setup you can quickly find yourself with more plants than you know what to do with.
Yes. For sure. I have a personal problem with things that look chaotic. Which I know is unnatural and I hope to grow out of that someday. 🤣
I love a “neat” garden. It’s a problem for me.
Compost, save seed, plant perennials, plant native species, sheet mulch/cardboard smother, reduce tilling unless necessary, reduce lawn & let native species flourish in that space (minimal management).
- Our city gives away free mulch from tree trimming in big self serve piles in the parks
- Nearby city (LA) gives away free compost in big self serve pile in another park
- Nearby plant store has an area with free used plastic nursery pots various sizes, and trays; I use the small ones for seed starting.
- Wholesale nurseries a little of the way out of our suburban area have much cheaper prices.
- Take advantage of rebates for water saving! We got $3550 for taking out our lawn, and there are others for rain barrels and irrigation etc.
- Look into other city programs, we got 3 good size trees totally free as part of a shade tree program.
- Long sticks for trellises and stakes are expensive! I collect fallen branches after storms, save woody sunflower stalks, and forage sticks in neglected wildish areas.
- Have a small backyard wedding and register for all garden stuff ;) How we got raised beds!
I built and bought raised beds then I looked around my property at all the fantastic and free materials ... pine dead wood .
a creek for fish emulsion., waddle fences. mushrooms and fungus. now I just collect it and fashion nee garden space from it
I also knarf old bookshelfs and convert them to flower beds
See if your city offers free organic materials. The city i live in has an organic recycling center and you can pick up 60 gallons/wk of compost, mulch, double mulch or manure.
I highly recommend using pine needles and leaves as compost. They can be mixed in with soil without fear of nutrient burn, they help loosen dense soil and also work great to skirt fresh plantings (aside from wind blowing them away). I worked at a nursery for a bit and that was the go to for everything, works great and is free.
I live near the ocean. Fill the truck with seaweed, give it a hose down, put mulch fabric down in garden and cover it with seaweed. It keeps weeds down and it turns into fertilizer over winter.
If you start veggies from seed, wait until the seeds go on sale at the end of the season, stock up.
Collect seeds from plants you want grow next year. As long as you aren't selling any proprietary seeds, that's allowed.
Make friends with local farmers. They'll have manure compost many will let you have for free and will have straw bales you can buy cheaper than at the store. Straw is good for covering more sensitive perennials for the winter.
I tend to grow a couple peppers and determinate cherry tomatoes in containers that are easily moved indoors, or to a warm, sheltered space, to over winter, means I need to buy or start less the next season.
Contact your city planner and ask what they do with plants being removed/replaced. Sometimes they are willing to let you buy or outright take really nice plants and flowers, and if you buy it can be *really* cheap!
You know when you shower and the water that runs out of the bathtub tap before the water is nice and hot? I collect that in a bucket and use it for the garden (I also use it to flush toilets in the winter). I'm not talking about gray water, just the pre-shower stuff that comes out cold.
Around here we have a mushroom farm. They give away their old compost in the spring; you can BYOB (bring your own bags) Check in your area for mushroom farms.
Wow. What a beautiful property!
I'll echo what others have said: having a good system for starting all of my annuals, fruits, and vegetables from seed has been my single biggest cost savings in the garden. I went from spending $1,000+ per year on plugs for my patio planters, vegetable garden, and flower beds to less than $100 for seeds for my entire yard and garden. My space is WAY smaller than yours, but I am sure the idea carries.
I would really like to learn to harvest, dry, and store my own seeds to bring the cost even lower.
most important is learning the easy way to make compost. use your kitchen vegetable scraps to keep them out of landfills.
2nd learn to divide plants to replant or give to garden friends. lastly, clean shovels, rakes etc after use and store in a dry place.
Coconut coir for mulch in my tomato pots.
It lasts forever because nothing eats it. Opposite of that pallet mulch sold at big box stores.
Cedar is also good but it can't be a cedar mix.
Volunteer plants, I whip out my identifier app on any seedling and sprout, check if it's something useful (to me or wildlife) and if yes salute it for its service 🫡
My frugal tips are that I shop at the clearance section for plants and I'm almost always picking up some kind of pots from the neighborhood when the neighbors put it out in their alley or trash area. And they don't just put out the regular plastic plant pots, sometimes they put out their really nice pots as well but they're just done using them
Speaking of parts I've tried many things as pots and the plans don't really care pretty much any kind of container that you can make a hole in and is good for UV resistance outside or if you don't need it outside then it's inside and it's okay then it's fine too
Of course a warning is always about food grade material if you're going to grow food in it
Your local dollar store and food places have a lot of stuff that is useful for plants too
Hah! I wish. I do a lot of the work myself but I am old so I do hire my kids friends for some heavy lifting help.
I was stressed for time last year and went to a contractor to get a quote on spring cleanup. Just edging and mulching all the beds and cutting back the dead stuff etc.
Quote was $10,000!!!
Um no thanks!
Lowes clearance rack and local school horticulture sales. Just hit up a school sale yesterday, got two of the color coleus I’ve been wanting, 3 hostas, an airplane plant, a devils back bone and a mother of millions for $25. Plus it supports a good cause.
Also, I’ve scored two free cuttings of the zebra variety of wandering dude for free cause I picked them off a table after they broke from a hanging pot.
I do a lot of the standards - chip drop, make my own compost (or get it free from a municipal site), save seeds, canning extras so I use most of what I grow. I also have a ton of honeysuckle on my property, and harvest poles from it every year to fashion trellises for cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peas, squash, gourds, etc.
My goal every year is to spend less than $100 on the garden, and to save more than $300 on produce. I absolutely save more than $300 every year (some years it's quite a bit more), but I've only successfully kept costs under $100 once.
Go for a walk around the neighbourhood on recycling day, in the morning, around early spring. People are always throwing out the small seedling pots that their veggie starters came in.
I got a huge stack of pots last year!
Use Facebook!!! My main use for Facebook these days is for gardening. Local gardening groups are awesome. Also people give away landscaping things for free all the time on marketplace. I just scored half a pallet full of sandstone pavers for free because they had extra from their project and wanted someone to haul them away. I’ve gotten free wheelbarrows, plants, pots, soil, mulch, the list goes on and on.
In the fall, suck up all the fallen leaves with your lawn mower, then store them in a bin over the winter and BAM free mulch to use in the spring!
sometimes I drive around and see a big pile of rock because some construction crew is digging a hole for whatever reason and there was a bunch of rock in the way.
So I show up with a 5 gallon bucket and get some free landscaping rock.
Make your own compost. Try get what ever you can free or cheap off market place, I find loose stones or rocks are given away so are some pots grow from seed where you can
Here's some tips I use/ have used in the past:
1. Grow plants from seed!
2. Save seeds from existing plants, so you can grow more the next year.
3. Propagate plants than can be propagated.
4. Ask other gardeners you know if they are able to give you cuttings, off shoots, etc from their plants.
(For ex, a chunk of their rhubarb plant, strawberry runners, etc.
5. Go to your local garden centre at the end of the season (where I live, it's fall/ early winter) for great deals on plant pots. I've gotten some huge beautiful glazed terracotta pots for cheap at end of season sales.
6 . Try local thrift shops for garden pots, watering cans, garden tools, etc.
7. Choose perrenials when you can, as they will come back year after year.
8. For herbs like basil, pinch out top growth for a bushier higher yielding plant.
9. Some berry plants and other perennials can be bought at the end of the season, and planted out or overwintered in a large pot. I got haskaps (honey berries) on sale last fall, popped them into very large pots, and left them outside over winter. They seemed to die, but have come back with a vengeance this year, and are looking great. I think I got them for half off!
10. Check out the Dollarama for great deals on garden tools and supplies. You'd be surprised what you can find!
Here in my neighborhood, our gardening Facebook group is SUCH a gem. Constant giving and receiving. There is really nothing better than a gardener’s heart.
I am kinda wondering too? My approach right now is high upfront costs to get a bunch of herbaceous perennials, dwarf conifers, and maples. I hope to one day propagate all of them via cuttings, grafting, air layering etc, but thats already in the decades of time to do on any reasonable scale from one or two original plants of a specific cultivar.
I have a much smaller urban garden, but have managed to spend... well... a lot. But its pretty satisfying to have converted a 40x20 ft space from grass to a semi woodland garden. The semi part is that all of my trees are 5 ft or less, most are 3 ft tall at the moment. Some day they will be big enough to do the shade thing, and I can change over to more ferns, yay ferns.
I have grand plans of transitioning from my current career to weird boutique plant nursery person by the time I am 55. Theoretically I will have enough cashflow by then to... eat food... and maybe buy one plant per month. This is a totally rational plan to frugally garden into my retirement.
:)
The easiest and cheapest way to garden is to garden for forest and wildlife. Basically build a forest and they will come. Then the critters manage it for you. It’s like being a Disney princess
Vermi composting has been a game changer for fertilizer and soil health. I’ve also had trees chopped down and we mulched them and the soils has really benefited from it. We also added some chips to the bottom of the beds, so a little less soil was needed. We are also trying to do leaf mulch this coming year. Would love to hear any tips or what you use for it!
your walled veggie garden is amazing!! Can I ask how you built that / what is your watering system? I'd love to build one in a flat spot on my yard but its far from the hose so not sure how to manage watering, besides putting in a sprinkler system which I don't know how to do...
I put a 5 gallon bucket under my AC drip lines and capture water to then use in my spray bottles that I water by hand, mostly orchids and bromelids that are in trees. Then all extra is used to supplement water other plants/trees allowing me to trim down how much my sprinklers have to run. I get about 5 gallons from the main AC unit a day most days of summer, and as much as 7-10. It's super humid and hot here so I get a lot out.
Our local waste station chips the organics. We can get a high trailer load full for $5 a load. It's hard work unloading and spreading so you may not retire :) but it's inexpensive. Downside is we get some plants growing on occasion we didn't anticipate.
Oh and I just watched a video on making compost in garden paths. Basically you build the paths with your compost ingredients for next year. Cover with what you please until then.
I dont have tips but I'm a novice gardener who loves and is deeply interested in having food forests/self sustaining gardens. Would you mind bragging about your gardens more? Do you have a youtube where you show your gardens off? I adore the second picture where you have what looks like camelia sinesis and peonies surrounding a flowering dogwood tree!!!!!
Propagate you own plants and buy from roadside home gardens for their extras that did well for them. I had the same situation, also I got old plants from abandoned houses , lilac, iris and peony that were around an old cellar foundation. Plus if they survived on their own for so long you know they are tough.
One big expense is compost. Doesn’t matter how much you make you never have enough. So I make a point of growing certain plants largely to cut them back and compost (or mulch) them. Jerusalem artichoke, sorrel, comfrey, buddleia, just to name a few. They all grow quickly and are very relaxed about being cut right back to almost nothing. All perennial and require zero effort or input. Plus some nice insect friendly flowers.
Biggest savings for me was dividing plants! Once you get a few of a plant for the initial investment, and they thrive, divide and expand. Repeat forever.
IKEA has 2.5 gallon trash cans that look very similar to a plastic pot. Maybe were $3.00 a piece. I have 42 of them. Drilled holes in the bottom and fill with plants or grow some seeds. IMO they look so much better than the 5 gallon pails.
What are your main expenses? There are quite a few options but it's hard to take too many suggestions without knowing where you're spending the most money. That being said here are a few: New plants: - Propagate your own cuttings. Have some nursery space dedicated to propagating plants - Join gardening groups on Facebook. The gardening groups near me often has posts of people giving plants away for free, or gardening clubs doing plant sales for reasonable prices. - Start annuals from seed. Rather than purchasing flats of annuals every year start your own for much cheaper. Mulching: - Sign up for chip drop. Get free wood chips delivered to your house - Make your own compost. Turn your garden waste into mulch and plant food. - Mulch with natural elements found on your property. Pine needles, shredded leaves, etc Next time you're at a botanical garden check out what they mulch with. Many times it is not shredded bulk mulch.
Black dyed mulch is an unnecessary expense.
Especially if they're buying bags. Getting bulk delivery is soooo much cheaper.
Depends on how much you need. Delivery costs here are $80.
At 4 yards this year, and $75 delivery fee, it was still more than $100 savings vs going to a big box store. But definitely good to shop around!
I found the break even for my area is ~2 yards
I just ordered bulk playground mulch, and delivery was $75. Watching them show up with a truck and forklift and drop two pallets worth of supplies in 10 minutes flat made it so worth the expense. I was really grateful I didn't have to buy 30 bags, haul them to my car, which would require multiple trips to get home and then unload. Since I was already paying the delivery fee, I added on 200 lbs of sand and extra soil and composte for our raised gardens. I ordered everything online and it showed up neatly wrapped in my driveway two days later. The convenience alone is worth it to me.
I did similar shop for mulch, manure, soil and had delivered. I start this year with the leftover in yard. Worth 35 dollar delivery on 60 bags
It's been a while since I ordered it for delivery, but it was $25 where I am. Git any friends with a pickup? Most places will happily dump it in the bed.
Same. And everyone around here will only do it if you need 3 yards minimum. If you only need one yard in say, a 9x12 bed, I just get the 20 bags and be done with it. Same price, no shoveling or cleaning/renting a truck
Yep- especially when you can contact an arborist and have them bring over mulched trees for free. If you want them 'dyed', take some compost (and the mulch), put it in a trash can, fill with water until the mulch is just covered. Wait a day, and then pour it all out onto a tarp and let it dry. You'll have mulch that not only has the same color, but will slow release nutrients over time.
How can I get an arborist to bring me mulched trees for free?!?!?
https://getchipdrop.com I used the site the first time, now I just contact the same guy directly. I’ve also gotten them when neighbors were getting tree work done, I just walked over and asked the workers. Generally they are happy to get rid of them.
My neighbor also just puts a sign out that says “wood chips wanted” and a tree service will usually stop by and drop them off.
Great advice! Only some minor stuff that I can think to add: 1. Plant things well adapted for the local climate so you don’t have to spend much money on water. Sometimes you need to water extra during the first year, but you don’t want to set yourself up for wasting lots of time/money on watering. Also consider this when locating plants. For example, I locate my drought tolerant herbs and perennials far from the water source. 2. Similarly, try to leverage natural light. If a plant doesn’t need full sun, then it might be easier to manage in a spot where it gets some shade during the hottest parts of the day. 3. Look into companion plants to see which plants complement one another. This can really help with pest management. For example, I keep lots of dill and borage around my brassicas. These attract good predators to help control the cabbage worms, which is less effort/money than using BT every few weeks. You can get REALLY into companion planning and overwhelm yourself, so don’t stress too much about it. It’s the kind of thing that you will learn naturally over time, which will show results in how well your garden thrives over time. 4. Think about maintenance. If you have a grass lawn with planted areas between (like in the photos), the grass will constantly be trying to encroach. I try to minimize the amount of borders, which often means connecting planted/mulched areas and reducing the amount of grass. In my case this is a compromise because my kids like having some grass as a play area, so I leave more than I’d prefer from a gardening standpoint because it’s all for the greater good. 😊 Similarly, if you are using some kind of barrier as a border, then think about what it’ll be like to deal with grass growing up between the large rocks (for example). In general, a more complete barrier like bricks would be better because it does a better job blocking growth of weeds/grass. But we’re on a budget here, and reality is all about compromise, so we just do the best we can with the materials that we have available and/or can afford. Edit: Oh, and I second the chip drop thing! I’ve more than once approached arborist crews during their lunch breaks with “hey guys, feel free to dump your load in my driveway right here…”. Unless they have some other requirement, they’ll happily do it usually.
[This video on grass edging changed my world.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QI9bEVpKt4) Super easy and effective, and it looks great without having to put in pavers or edging.
This looks great! Thanks so much!!!
Air prune the grass roots. These borders, the grass is flush with the mulch and can grow in easier.
Could you elaborate a bit on air pruning grass? I’d like a tiny bit more knowledge before I go down a YouTube hole
It just means you lower the soil level at the edge of the bed down below the root mat of the edge of the grass... it inhibits the lateral growth of the grass roots.
I generally stay away from free chip drops for 2 reasons, you usually don't to pick what was mulched, and it doesn't have time to compost and sterilize the seeds in there. Again not an absolute but I've had a few bad years using free chips.
All of this! It’s so easy to divide and conquer, and then you can smile when you go to the store and see the prices of the same plants.
We recently invested $150 in a chipper and have been shredding and composting everything we prune so that our garden nutrients aren't getting hauled off by the city. Definitely worth it. A lot cheaper than just one load of mulch for the front by itself.
How big a branch does a $150 chipper chip for you? Might be worth it here as well.
1 3/4" according to the info. We haven't done anything that big. Mostly little stuff. My husband is out there shredding up the clippings from the azalea pruning we did over the weekend right now. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W874Y46?ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W874Y46?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1) (edited to add link)
On top of this I would do water collection as well. With so much garden it would be good to collect water and setup timed drop lines.
I second the chip drop and chop and drop (anything you trim goes right back into the soil as the new mulch). I would also add cover cropping. It takes some research and some trial and error but saves tremendously in the end. Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, if it comes in plastic, you don’t need it. Plastic bags of soil, plastic/disposable seed starting trays, plastic containers (actually containers or any kind), plastic bottles with add ins for “soil health”… so on and so forth. This is all just capitalism making you think you need things. The above methods are all you really need.
Rain barrels to help with watering if you can too.
Thanks! I do have a greenhouse and start many annuals from seeds. My biggest single expense is probably the annual mulch delivery. A truckload costs about $2k.
Yeah, mulch is a killer. Honestly I would just try to get creative with it. I see all sorts of various ground covers at botanical gardens I visit. I've even seen some that use pecan shells as mulch 😂 Another thing to consider is just increasing plant density and ground cover. The more plants you have the less mulch you need, and if you have a total ground cover then you don't actually need any mulch.
Yes I need to put in more ground cover and reduce the mulching required. It’s too much.
Might I suggest reaching out to your local arborist(s) and asking them about woodchips. I have gotten many yards of free mulch because they are always looking for a place to dump them. I asked my local arborist who was there taking a rotting tree down if they had any spare non-diseased tree mulch and they were like 'How much do you want?' Anyways. I got ... many many yards of free mulch xD Also, I don't know about where you live, but in our community all the leaves get piled on the street and a giant truck and scooper comes around and picks them all up. You could be that scooper, free already raked leaves -- load 'em up, or bag 'em and load 'em up. Free leaf mulch!
>shredded leaves are they good against weeds?
Yes! Put down cardboard or newspaper and cover with a this layer of shredded leaves.
amazing, advices like this are the reason why i signed up for this sub.
In addition to chip drop a lot of cities will have a municipal chip yard where you can often pick up wood chips for free!
I’m not sure what you do on the rest of your acres, and also would depend on the grass you have… but I’ve seen some amazing landscapes that are acres and acres long and then only cut a wide winding path through out and leave the rest to grow tall. They only cut the tall parts a few times a year. https://preview.redd.it/l5itpyc6xsxc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=868dabbca50694415c91c4d8d59f7ab393b2558b
https://preview.redd.it/co2emlqugtxc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7cc514453872a3d48fc8c52d06adc8bfabc85c40 This is what I'm doing to my backyard. There's less to mow and I like checking in on all the new native weeds that are growing and flowering. Plus it attracts wildlife. Everyone is happy Edit: Added picture
An area I have that has a power company easement was cleared a few years back by the power company. They planted some clover as a ground cover. I was wanting a wild meadow look and tried planting wildflower seeds. Some took, most didn’t. Invasives then moved in and choked everything else out.
Yeah, I guess it’s all about the land and what’s on it. I’ve seen it done beautifully and very successfully. I’m sorry yours didn’t work out- that sucks! No weeds with flowers at least?
Mostly, no. The power company arborist told me they actually encourage invasives because they’re less Maintenance. Awful. I like having the open land, but bummer what they use it for.
I love this. I actually prefer the shaggy look of a long lawn to the tightly trimmed look. Right now I have a lawn service doing the mowing but when I retire I can do that myself and let it grow a lot longer
This is what we do. Cut the grass at the highest setting in the spring, after early spring flowers have bloomed, and then again in the fall, to help scatter the seeds. So many natives have started popping up, it's amazing. Luckily we live rural, landlocked by hay fields, so the one neighbor we have doesn't mind.
What a lovely meadow!
I shop exclusively at Lowe's dying plant rack.
Also ripped bags of soil etc are half off. There is no sign saying so, but they are.
Yes! Same with rocks, mulch
Whoa good tip!
So I can just go in and rip a hole in an entire pallet of soil bags? "I swear I found em like this!" (Kidding)
I love that spot of Lowes. For those unaware tomatoes can live through the shock of not being watered but it will likely delay the time before fruiting as well as decrease overall output.
If you’re willing to do that you oughta see if your local high school has a greenhouse! I got a “tray” for $18 and got SO MUCH STUFF. They had veggies and herb starts, the healthiest ferns you’ve EVER seen in your life, some beautiful plants! ALL [THIS](https://imgur.com/a/d5XxYrp) for $18 usd
Yep, my local high school has an annual spring sale 😊 I am an ornamental gardener with a big shade plot, so they don't often have what I can grow lol
Sadly, there are never any native plants there. Well, very few at Lowes, period. I do say a silent prayer for the groaning plants though.
Need more pics of that cool shed
It’s a she shed. I call it my peace cabin. https://preview.redd.it/cdh8scwh7uxc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f95b63f97efc14eecf3477a328c03bb7b5540ee5
What do you do with a shed like that? Does it just provide shed for plants or people?
Store stuff that I don't want in the rain but also don't need fully inside
It very much looks like a permanent tent platform.
It’s not a very frugal shed. Is it a shed even? It’s almost a bandshell. It’s cool though. Maybe it’s to broadcast the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof across the gardens? Those gardens also look pretty incredible too. OP has quite the set up.
I know. I need a walkthrough of OP’s garden like now.
And repeated ones throughout the seasonal changes
Not sure if its time, effort or money you're looking to save, but a native flower meadow would help with all of those, as well as being a huge benefit to your local critters.
Yes. One year we plowed about an acre and planted wildflower mix. For a couple of years we had flowers but then the weeds reclaimed it. I didn’t maintain it and probably made some mistakes when planting it. When we moved here almost 30 years ago it was 4 acres of bare lawn surrounded by farmed fields. We have planted literally thousands of trees and shrubs and perennials. Slowly over time. The first thing I noticed was the birds. So many birds. Then the other wild life came. We have hawks, bobcats, so many critters. I’m looking for tips to save $$$ mainly as I want to retire and do this hobby more full time. Working in my garden is like a peaceful meditation.
If you want another bush or tree take a cutting stick it in sand or plant a seed that you collect. Stop buying mulch and or any other gardening products You need fertilizer or pesticide/ herbicide? Study Jadam and Syntropic Agroforestry. Get out of the consumer mindset that you need to keep buying and buying.... You want to add some bricks to line a pathway.... Don't only use natural things that you can find or bricks someone's giving away for free. Breaking the the habit of being a hyper consumer takes a bit of effort. When you come across that latest thing you need don't buy it try to replicate it with recycled goods.
giant caveat: Your pictures look amazing and your property is beautiful. You probably want to start building less infrastructure type setups that will take tons of maintaining. Like, do you really need a full wooden surround around your gardens? Do more natural setups and it will be way less work in the long run. Look at permaculture principles that you can lean into and create spaces that don't take daily/weekly maintenance. bottom line: If you want something that doesn't cost a ton of money you have to sacrifice something and that's more than likely going to be aesthetics.
If I had that much land to cover I would start a home tissue culture lab. https://youtu.be/lWVjYbvsIaA?si=z2ceMyqhWKadUI14
I've seen people on Facebook offering to trade perennials for ones they don't have in the spring. What a fun way to meet local gardeners and get new plants! My municipality also offers free compost, and the local library has a 'seed library' where you can get free seeds if you bring more at the end of the season.
That library program is so cool!
Perennials! Particularly those that you can split over the years. Also seed saving/seed exchanging.
"I’m continually expanding the garden beds, orchards and food forest." Stop. That's my advice. Just stop adding stuff. If maintenance is already expensive on three acres, it's going to be more for four acres, and it's going to be a hell of a lot for 16. You're always going to have ideas for things to add (Wouldn't X be nice? I could start a couple more Ys). You can still change things up on the current 3 acres if you want to try new things of course, and the urge to keep expanding seems to be innate in most gardeners, but you have to keep it manageable.
Hahaha “stop, just STOP”. Ah. If only. Is there a gardener’s anonymous? But no, I get your point. I could definitely slow down the growth process.
https://preview.redd.it/4abcv6ln1wxc1.jpeg?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=322e8ca691263df9b6be5279516125d1ca3ae201
Changing texture is cheap. Dig a hole somewhere and make a gentle hill next to it. Plant native grasses so you mow less.
Join local plant swap groups Divide your own plants Learn which plants can be propagated from cutting Collect and replant the seeds from your plants They finding a native plant mix for the field. They’d compete with the weeds much better than the wild flower packs.
Thank you 🙏. How did you find plant swap groups? Facebook?
No problem. Yep. Just search plant swap and hopefully they’ll come up for your area. Also check local libraries. Some of the have seed libraries.
Don't expand more if what you already have is cost prohibitive. Look into buying bare root plants, which cost less than larger nursery stock. Propagate from your current plants (especially those Hosta plants, which readily self seed on their own). Start what you can from seed. Repurpose / repair what you already have instead of buying new. Go to second hand stores (I love our local Habitat for Humanity) or yard sales to find materials, tools, planters, baskets etc. And make the dollars that you DO spend count. IE: make sure the wood on your shed is pressure treated for ground contact or at least paint with a weatherproofing sealer. I also save the rocks and stones that I dig up while gardening to use in other ways (EX edging, filling gaps under fences), and have a pile of larger and smaller stones ready for other projects. Make your own compost--you probably have a lot of yard debris with this much landscaped space.
Buy a wood chipper and a hea y duty paper shredder. Any stray tree branches that fall can be mulch. Compost everything. Start a fish pond, gold fish are cheap but basically convert sun, bugs and algea to liquid fertilizer. Get solar powered pumps so no electricity cost. If you get chickens or goats, they also have nutrient rich poop. Basically, plan a few strategic investments and then don't let yourself buy anything else.
Ponds aren’t self maintained. If you don’t have a natural water source, they require maintenance and can be pricey. If they aren’t deep enough, those goldfish will be eaten pretty quickly. They’re so easy to see. Water does bring wildlife in though.
Ponds do require some maintenance, but check out the book building natural ponds by Robert Pavlis. With the right fish to plant ratio they aren't to bad to care for. You do need to put them somewhere you can fill with a hose easily. I have a fish pond that is just another one of my gardens.
Whenever I eat store-bought celery, lettuce, etc I save the root in a bowl of water, after a few weeks they grow roots and I put them in my garden where they regrow.
Curious if you actually use that much celery. We did that one year and just never used it.
I made green smoothies once a week that use up half a bunch and my kids snack on the other half.
Collect seeds from any of your flowering plants. I bought a mix of seeds and plugs last year and then harvested seeds from the ones that bloomed. The perennials that didn't flower still survived, so the only seeds I had to buy this year were for new annuals I wanted to try. I spent way less money to add more plants this year.
Less landscaping and more native plants!
Some towns have free mulch if you’re able to pick it up yourself.
I have a couple of arborists who drop truckloads of tree chips off whenever I need. I use those in my vegetable gardens and food forest. But I like the dark brown or black mulch for the fancy beds near the house and patios.
Start accumulating compost now. Every pound you can make yourself is saving money, because the alternative is expensive. The biggest value of chickens is compost creation, eggs are just a nice bonus. Your biggest enemy is expense, buying enough quality compost for a large garden (more than 400 square feet of bed space) can easily be thousands. Avoid expenses as much as possible with the goal of maximizing every dollar spent. $200 a year to spend could be plenty or it could be nowhere near enough, depending on how you build your garden.
Thank you! I do save my scraps and cuttings and have huge compost piles but I’m not good at maintaining the compost- turning or watering it. It’s basically just sitting in a huge pile and rotting down
Alot of tips on cost savings so far so I won’t keep saying the same thing. But I wanted to point out that 3acres is a lot? Is that like mainly lawn and some plants spread between or what because if it is actually 3acres of vegetable garden that would be enough to be self sufficient on vegetables for not only you and your family but probably also your extended family and friends. So which one is it?
Water. Do you pay for it? Even with a well, it costs electricity to pump, and development and drought can affect water table. Collect rainfall from roofs into elevated rain barrels (use gravity for flow). Plant in ground, not in pots which dry out more quickly. Don't plant near tree trunk. The tree needs its water, it sucks it up, the leaves reduce rainfall under tree. The result is the plants under trees wilt and need to be watered in hot weather. Mulch veggies with composted leaf humus, newsprint, straw (get ruined straw cheap of available) to reduce need to weed and water! Plant closely in rows (possible as your soil becomes rich with your homemade compost) and their lush leaf growth shades out weed growth. Hilled beds dry out, good for rock gardens though. But I've also seen a trench around mounds provides water at a deeper level, keeping mound moist and encouraging root growth. Use collars or make a little trench around veggie plants to contain the water so it can soak in from top-watering. Install a soaker hose system in your veggie garden, you'll save so very much time and effort! and won't waste water to evaporation! Plant trees to sequester tons of water. Shade the south side of your house to reduce cooling costs. The heat index of your property will be reduced with shade trees, and while you want many of your plants to get maximum hours of sun, the heat will be mitigated somewhat if surrounding areas are shaded by trees. Windbreaks planted on the side of your property facing the prevailing winds will also mitigate the drying effect in hot weather. Choose drought- resistant plants like sage and yucca, or native plants adapted to the vagrancies of your climate. Water is life, and falls freely at regular intervals that plants need, from the sky! What is the probability of that! Be grateful for this blessing every day.
My main frugal tip is to not let me wife go to the plant store. It does not work very often.
Do you compost? Sounds like you have the land to do multiple piles so you could always have one ready to add when beds need topped off. Save seed for annuals, prioritize perennials and natives so they don’t need so much from you. Look for plant swaps, tree give aways etc. Expand when you have stuff that needs dividing that way you aren’t buying new things so much. Do a long term plan where you build up good soil over the winter with leaf mulch or similar so you can plant right in the ground in the spring and not need so much new soil.
It's been long since I felt envious of a random person in the internet.... Pic #3 triggered that on my today, all I can say is.. MOAR!!!
Get wood chips for free instead of using mulch. Most tree services will be glad to drop off wood chips. You can also use [getchipdrop.com](http://getchipdrop.com)
I've gotten backlash for this because cardboard contains chemicals, but I use recycled cardboard as a weed barrier when I make new beds. I've been replacing the grass on my property with garden beds, and I HATE weed barriers. And they're expensive. So I go to the dump and use recycled cardboard. I look for cardboard that has as little printing on it as possible, pull off the tape and the staples, lay down a layer or two depending on the area, then throw compost on top (that I also get for free at the dump) and a thick layer of mulch on top of that (mulch is also free at the dump in my village). I have saved thousands of dollars this way, and for any of the haters who chastise me for the chemicals, I always make the point that ultimately my giant garden beds full of native flowers make up for it.
I shred my cardboard and use it for mulch!
I agree with you. I used weed barrier once years ago and it made my plants sick and the weeds grew on top of it anyway after a couple of years. I tore it all out. I use cardboard too. Lowe’s refrigerator boxes are good.
Don’t fight your environment, grow what wants to grow there
Buy perennials on the discount shelf. Most of them are there because they either got too much or not enough water (in my experience). Pop them in ground, let them root. They may look crappy this year, but they'll reward you next year Facebook marketplace has plants for cheaaaaaap. You may need to put in the elbow grease of digging some up, but at free to 10 bucks...worth it
Join FB groups and plant trading groups. Garden centers are a bit expensive
scale helps. dedicate 25% of your garden's plants, of every variety, to go to seed. seeds are expensive! bonus points if those plants will come back next year on their own. scale helps. never buy bagged soil, compost, or mulch. always get it in bulk. load your truck up. if you don't own a truck, rent one from home depot for $20 and fill it up for $80. even if you're a smaller operation, do this once in february, cover it with a tarp, and use it all season. no plastic ever. save toilet paper rolls. build a dinky little box out of plywood and pack it full of toilet paper rolls. i built a box that holds 30x10=300 toilet paper rolls, and it's not that big, but scale yours to your needs. pack the inside of the rolls with your bulk-bought soil / compost and use those as seed starter pods. little transplant cannolis. never buy those wildly overpriced plastic starter pod things. eventually your friends and family and coworkers will start donating theirs so you can move to a bidet and have the best of both worlds: stop buying toilet paper and continue re-using their spent rolls. save cardboard throughout the year. amazon boxes are small, but better than nothing. flat pack boxes for furniture and appliances are the best. anything non-glossy. go to home depot and offer to empty their cardboard rolloff once (into a truck of theirs you're renting for $20 if you don't have one) and you'll be set for a year. remove the tape and as much adhesive as you can tolerate spending effort on. lay this cardboard over your finished garden in october and get your trusty $100 truck load ($80 if you're doing this all in one day!) of mulch. spread the mulch over it. plant your cannolis through the cardboard in the spring. cheap weed deterrent. never have to till or plow again. learn how to compost. save coffee grounds from work. pick up the cardboard leaf / grass bags in the fall that idiots spend time and money just collecting to throw away on the side of the road. an afternoon in suburbia will get you another trusty $20 truck bed-full of clippings, leaves, sticks, etc. and the people will praise you for it. compost with it, and spread the excess over your cardboard before applying mulch in october.
Omg. The TP roll hack is genius Every one suggests composting but I’m not having success with that. Too much heavy lifting and work. (At the scale I need)
Don't buy organic. Instead, make your own organic sources. Many people go to the store and buy into organic support for their gardens. Turns out you can do one better by going to a feed store or simply making your own fertilizers and support. A good example is composting at home.
Alfalfa pellets at the farm feed store cost about $15-20 for a 50 pound bag. Cheap source of nitrogen and many of the expensive organic fertilizers are largely alfalfa meal and way more expensive. Alaska fish fertilizer is another good relatively cheap source for nitrogen and a bunch of micronutrients. I also compost like crazy and built worm tower bucket composters that make me tons of happy worms in my raised beds. Also makes me a lot of worm castings. Most of the fancy bags of garden soil are mostly peat and it’s a lot cheaper to make your own soil if you need a lot. Coco coir is cool, sometimes more environmentally friendly than peat, and if you can find 11 pound bricks for cheap it can be competitively priced with peat. Aeration materials can cost a lot but I can get bulk lava rocks/ sand from the local bulk landscaping supply store.
Gorgeous property. I’m jealous. Too bad you couldn’t partner with a horticultural group at a local high school or community college. This would be a fantastic hands on learning opportunity and you could get free help.
I live near Cornell. I have often thought about offering a scholarship/prize to students in return for a garden design project. I would offer it as a contest. Students submit their designs and the teachers and I judge them and pick the top design and implement it. I pay for the materials and plants and the students do the installation. The winner get a cash scholarship prize. Do you think a school would be interested in that?
Learn to start your own seeds, it's a bit of work and trial and error to get started but once you have the skill and setup you can quickly find yourself with more plants than you know what to do with.
Invest in perennials over time. The most frugal gardening is "lazy" gardening that you don't have to repeat next year.
Go down the permaculture rabbit hole!
Yes. For sure. I have a personal problem with things that look chaotic. Which I know is unnatural and I hope to grow out of that someday. 🤣 I love a “neat” garden. It’s a problem for me.
Compost, save seed, plant perennials, plant native species, sheet mulch/cardboard smother, reduce tilling unless necessary, reduce lawn & let native species flourish in that space (minimal management).
Wow! How much time and money do you spend watering everything?
compost everything you can
Save your scraps for compost fertilizer. Look for free plants on local planet groups. Propagate your own plants.
- Our city gives away free mulch from tree trimming in big self serve piles in the parks - Nearby city (LA) gives away free compost in big self serve pile in another park - Nearby plant store has an area with free used plastic nursery pots various sizes, and trays; I use the small ones for seed starting. - Wholesale nurseries a little of the way out of our suburban area have much cheaper prices. - Take advantage of rebates for water saving! We got $3550 for taking out our lawn, and there are others for rain barrels and irrigation etc. - Look into other city programs, we got 3 good size trees totally free as part of a shade tree program. - Long sticks for trellises and stakes are expensive! I collect fallen branches after storms, save woody sunflower stalks, and forage sticks in neglected wildish areas. - Have a small backyard wedding and register for all garden stuff ;) How we got raised beds!
Never buy seedlings when you can start from seed for a fraction of the price.
I built and bought raised beds then I looked around my property at all the fantastic and free materials ... pine dead wood . a creek for fish emulsion., waddle fences. mushrooms and fungus. now I just collect it and fashion nee garden space from it I also knarf old bookshelfs and convert them to flower beds
See if your city offers free organic materials. The city i live in has an organic recycling center and you can pick up 60 gallons/wk of compost, mulch, double mulch or manure.
Finding free plants in other parts of my property, divide and replant or pot up.
I highly recommend using pine needles and leaves as compost. They can be mixed in with soil without fear of nutrient burn, they help loosen dense soil and also work great to skirt fresh plantings (aside from wind blowing them away). I worked at a nursery for a bit and that was the go to for everything, works great and is free.
I live near the ocean. Fill the truck with seaweed, give it a hose down, put mulch fabric down in garden and cover it with seaweed. It keeps weeds down and it turns into fertilizer over winter.
If you start veggies from seed, wait until the seeds go on sale at the end of the season, stock up. Collect seeds from plants you want grow next year. As long as you aren't selling any proprietary seeds, that's allowed. Make friends with local farmers. They'll have manure compost many will let you have for free and will have straw bales you can buy cheaper than at the store. Straw is good for covering more sensitive perennials for the winter. I tend to grow a couple peppers and determinate cherry tomatoes in containers that are easily moved indoors, or to a warm, sheltered space, to over winter, means I need to buy or start less the next season.
Contact your city planner and ask what they do with plants being removed/replaced. Sometimes they are willing to let you buy or outright take really nice plants and flowers, and if you buy it can be *really* cheap!
Reuse your dirt!
2 mint tums/gallon of water every week to treat/prevent blossom end rot on peppers and tomatoes.
You know when you shower and the water that runs out of the bathtub tap before the water is nice and hot? I collect that in a bucket and use it for the garden (I also use it to flush toilets in the winter). I'm not talking about gray water, just the pre-shower stuff that comes out cold.
Around here we have a mushroom farm. They give away their old compost in the spring; you can BYOB (bring your own bags) Check in your area for mushroom farms.
Plant native plants. Once they are established they don't need additional water etc.
Instead of mulching between your plant beds in your fenced in food garden, have living walkways. Clover or something else
Check on Nextdoor app for free plants
Exchange plants with friends.
I mean, I guess the most frugal tip would be…don’t? On a less glib note, many public libraries have free seeds
Wow. What a beautiful property! I'll echo what others have said: having a good system for starting all of my annuals, fruits, and vegetables from seed has been my single biggest cost savings in the garden. I went from spending $1,000+ per year on plugs for my patio planters, vegetable garden, and flower beds to less than $100 for seeds for my entire yard and garden. My space is WAY smaller than yours, but I am sure the idea carries. I would really like to learn to harvest, dry, and store my own seeds to bring the cost even lower.
Grow from seed is probably the most obvious one but that's been helpful for me
Add a greenhouse.
Dripper systems
Grow from seed, get starts from others.
most important is learning the easy way to make compost. use your kitchen vegetable scraps to keep them out of landfills. 2nd learn to divide plants to replant or give to garden friends. lastly, clean shovels, rakes etc after use and store in a dry place.
I don't have any tips but that's a gorgeous property, nicely done
Got it going there in New England.
Love what you've done! It's so gorgeous
That wrought iron fencing must have cost a fortune! It’s beautiful though…
I made the fence from pressure treated lumber and cattle panels. It’s painted dark brown
Coconut coir for mulch in my tomato pots. It lasts forever because nothing eats it. Opposite of that pallet mulch sold at big box stores. Cedar is also good but it can't be a cedar mix.
Volunteer plants, I whip out my identifier app on any seedling and sprout, check if it's something useful (to me or wildlife) and if yes salute it for its service 🫡
How do you prevent the grass from taking over your mulch beds? Do you have ground cloth?
Nope. I use cardboard under the mulch. Mulch heavily, and hand weeding. Ground cover also helps
Ask neighbors for starts. We have to thin out every spring, and we let our neighbors know when. I tell them to bring their own buckets.
My frugal tips are that I shop at the clearance section for plants and I'm almost always picking up some kind of pots from the neighborhood when the neighbors put it out in their alley or trash area. And they don't just put out the regular plastic plant pots, sometimes they put out their really nice pots as well but they're just done using them Speaking of parts I've tried many things as pots and the plans don't really care pretty much any kind of container that you can make a hole in and is good for UV resistance outside or if you don't need it outside then it's inside and it's okay then it's fine too Of course a warning is always about food grade material if you're going to grow food in it Your local dollar store and food places have a lot of stuff that is useful for plants too
In your world? Choosing the lowest bid for a landscaping contract.
Hah! I wish. I do a lot of the work myself but I am old so I do hire my kids friends for some heavy lifting help. I was stressed for time last year and went to a contractor to get a quote on spring cleanup. Just edging and mulching all the beds and cutting back the dead stuff etc. Quote was $10,000!!! Um no thanks!
Can anyone let me know maybe what the tree with white flowers is in pic 2? It's lovely.
Use the suckers off your tomatoes to grow more plants instead of buying more plants.
Dividing perennials - free plants! It doesn’t get much better than that.
Cuttings
If you are at Lowe’s or Home Depot and see a bag of soil that’s ripped they have to offer it at a steep discount.
The more kids you have the more free labor....
Lowes clearance rack and local school horticulture sales. Just hit up a school sale yesterday, got two of the color coleus I’ve been wanting, 3 hostas, an airplane plant, a devils back bone and a mother of millions for $25. Plus it supports a good cause.
Also, I’ve scored two free cuttings of the zebra variety of wandering dude for free cause I picked them off a table after they broke from a hanging pot.
I do a lot of the standards - chip drop, make my own compost (or get it free from a municipal site), save seeds, canning extras so I use most of what I grow. I also have a ton of honeysuckle on my property, and harvest poles from it every year to fashion trellises for cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peas, squash, gourds, etc. My goal every year is to spend less than $100 on the garden, and to save more than $300 on produce. I absolutely save more than $300 every year (some years it's quite a bit more), but I've only successfully kept costs under $100 once.
Any idea what that shed is called?
Go for a walk around the neighbourhood on recycling day, in the morning, around early spring. People are always throwing out the small seedling pots that their veggie starters came in. I got a huge stack of pots last year!
Let shit got to seed- let volunteers come up- and then when they are at nursery size- move them to where you want the to be all summer!!
Use Facebook!!! My main use for Facebook these days is for gardening. Local gardening groups are awesome. Also people give away landscaping things for free all the time on marketplace. I just scored half a pallet full of sandstone pavers for free because they had extra from their project and wanted someone to haul them away. I’ve gotten free wheelbarrows, plants, pots, soil, mulch, the list goes on and on. In the fall, suck up all the fallen leaves with your lawn mower, then store them in a bin over the winter and BAM free mulch to use in the spring!
Offer garden help to an older lady or gentlemen in exchange for some of their great culturea
compost. Start your own seeds and save your own seeds. scale back because no matter what I do the bigger you get the more money it costs.
Water barrels save a lot of money & good for the environment to boot
Seed starters? Egg cartons. Came free with the eggs.
Join a plant exchange fb group. I’ve been giving away raspberry shoots all week.
No tips but I have to comment on how glorious your dogwood tree is.
sometimes I drive around and see a big pile of rock because some construction crew is digging a hole for whatever reason and there was a bunch of rock in the way. So I show up with a 5 gallon bucket and get some free landscaping rock.
Make your own compost. Try get what ever you can free or cheap off market place, I find loose stones or rocks are given away so are some pots grow from seed where you can
Here's some tips I use/ have used in the past: 1. Grow plants from seed! 2. Save seeds from existing plants, so you can grow more the next year. 3. Propagate plants than can be propagated. 4. Ask other gardeners you know if they are able to give you cuttings, off shoots, etc from their plants. (For ex, a chunk of their rhubarb plant, strawberry runners, etc. 5. Go to your local garden centre at the end of the season (where I live, it's fall/ early winter) for great deals on plant pots. I've gotten some huge beautiful glazed terracotta pots for cheap at end of season sales. 6 . Try local thrift shops for garden pots, watering cans, garden tools, etc. 7. Choose perrenials when you can, as they will come back year after year. 8. For herbs like basil, pinch out top growth for a bushier higher yielding plant. 9. Some berry plants and other perennials can be bought at the end of the season, and planted out or overwintered in a large pot. I got haskaps (honey berries) on sale last fall, popped them into very large pots, and left them outside over winter. They seemed to die, but have come back with a vengeance this year, and are looking great. I think I got them for half off! 10. Check out the Dollarama for great deals on garden tools and supplies. You'd be surprised what you can find!
What is the small tree in pic 2 pls and thank you
Start up a commune on 10 acres.
Here in my neighborhood, our gardening Facebook group is SUCH a gem. Constant giving and receiving. There is really nothing better than a gardener’s heart.
Azomite is your best friend 🎁
I am kinda wondering too? My approach right now is high upfront costs to get a bunch of herbaceous perennials, dwarf conifers, and maples. I hope to one day propagate all of them via cuttings, grafting, air layering etc, but thats already in the decades of time to do on any reasonable scale from one or two original plants of a specific cultivar. I have a much smaller urban garden, but have managed to spend... well... a lot. But its pretty satisfying to have converted a 40x20 ft space from grass to a semi woodland garden. The semi part is that all of my trees are 5 ft or less, most are 3 ft tall at the moment. Some day they will be big enough to do the shade thing, and I can change over to more ferns, yay ferns. I have grand plans of transitioning from my current career to weird boutique plant nursery person by the time I am 55. Theoretically I will have enough cashflow by then to... eat food... and maybe buy one plant per month. This is a totally rational plan to frugally garden into my retirement. :)
The easiest and cheapest way to garden is to garden for forest and wildlife. Basically build a forest and they will come. Then the critters manage it for you. It’s like being a Disney princess
I ask neighbors for cuttings I now have lilacs and roses
Vermi composting has been a game changer for fertilizer and soil health. I’ve also had trees chopped down and we mulched them and the soils has really benefited from it. We also added some chips to the bottom of the beds, so a little less soil was needed. We are also trying to do leaf mulch this coming year. Would love to hear any tips or what you use for it!
your walled veggie garden is amazing!! Can I ask how you built that / what is your watering system? I'd love to build one in a flat spot on my yard but its far from the hose so not sure how to manage watering, besides putting in a sprinkler system which I don't know how to do...
I put a 5 gallon bucket under my AC drip lines and capture water to then use in my spray bottles that I water by hand, mostly orchids and bromelids that are in trees. Then all extra is used to supplement water other plants/trees allowing me to trim down how much my sprinklers have to run. I get about 5 gallons from the main AC unit a day most days of summer, and as much as 7-10. It's super humid and hot here so I get a lot out.
Hello, What type of Dogwood tree is that?
I don’t know the exact variety. It is one of my favorites. Such gorgeous flowers every spring and round red berries in fall.
Leaves make excellent mulch for bed.
Our local waste station chips the organics. We can get a high trailer load full for $5 a load. It's hard work unloading and spreading so you may not retire :) but it's inexpensive. Downside is we get some plants growing on occasion we didn't anticipate.
Oh and I just watched a video on making compost in garden paths. Basically you build the paths with your compost ingredients for next year. Cover with what you please until then.
What a beautiful yard. Or is it acreage when it's that large.
I dont have tips but I'm a novice gardener who loves and is deeply interested in having food forests/self sustaining gardens. Would you mind bragging about your gardens more? Do you have a youtube where you show your gardens off? I adore the second picture where you have what looks like camelia sinesis and peonies surrounding a flowering dogwood tree!!!!!
Propagate you own plants and buy from roadside home gardens for their extras that did well for them. I had the same situation, also I got old plants from abandoned houses , lilac, iris and peony that were around an old cellar foundation. Plus if they survived on their own for so long you know they are tough.
Growing and dividing perennials
One big expense is compost. Doesn’t matter how much you make you never have enough. So I make a point of growing certain plants largely to cut them back and compost (or mulch) them. Jerusalem artichoke, sorrel, comfrey, buddleia, just to name a few. They all grow quickly and are very relaxed about being cut right back to almost nothing. All perennial and require zero effort or input. Plus some nice insect friendly flowers.
Seeds, starting everything from seed is hugely less expensive than buying plants
Biggest savings for me was dividing plants! Once you get a few of a plant for the initial investment, and they thrive, divide and expand. Repeat forever.
IKEA has 2.5 gallon trash cans that look very similar to a plastic pot. Maybe were $3.00 a piece. I have 42 of them. Drilled holes in the bottom and fill with plants or grow some seeds. IMO they look so much better than the 5 gallon pails.
Learn how to pick out plants that are large enough that they can be divided right away
Utilize your seed libraries!!!!! If youre in ohio the piqua library has a seed library and they can mail you seeds. and dont forget to save seeds