12 ways to garden on the cheap
September 12, 2009 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Gardening
Gardening is often promoted as an inexpensive activity, but in truth it’s not always easy to garden on the cheap. That said there are some areas where you can cut gardening costs big time.
- Save your old seeds (check to see if they still work).
- Compost for homemade soil – even if your yard is small you can compost. In fact, you can compost indoors if you want.
- Don’t buy new – garden tools, gardening books, pots, and so on. Most gardening supplies can be easily found at thrift stores. You can also borrow from or share garden tools with friends. It’s also super easy to check out books about gardening from the library.
- Try some easy DIY landscaping instead of paying someone to do it for you.
- Always use reusable items and recyclables such as egg cartons for starting seeds or reuse the plastic seed pots you used last year (clean well to avoid disease). You can also make your own growing pots with recycled materials.
- Be water aware. Build a rain barrel, water at night, only give plants the actual water they need, and so on. Using less water can save you big time.
- Make homemade weed killer -Mix one ounce orange oil and 1 teaspoon liquid soap with 1 gallon of 10% white vinegar. Shake it up and use it to spot treat weeds.
- Use the least evasive pest control methods first, which are often much cheaper than advanced pest control supplies.
- Buy seeds locally from the farmers market or a local farm store. You can often buy just what you need vs. a whole packet. at the local farm store.
- Swap seeds and plants with neighbors.
- Plant a garden that will naturally thrive where you live. Plants made for your climate will thrive better with less care than exotic plants.
- Use what you’ve got such as leaves and newspaper as mulch.
[image via stock.xchng]
It is an old wives tale that you can check seeds “to see if they work”, as you put it, by floating them in water.
Since you obviously have no knowledge of horticulture yourself, you should check your facts before you publish this rubbish. Can’t your boss buy you a botany book?
Actually I did not write that tip – the tip I linked to is an About tip, from a New York Times company site, so maybe you should take it up with the New York Times if you hate the tip. Normally I write about checking seeds on a paper towel, which of course you won’t like either I’m sure, but then I thought I’d link out.
You proved my point exactly – you don’t write from personal experience, but from trolling around on the web to see what you can glean from other people’s experience (or in this case, an old wive’s tale).
I’m a working horticulturist and it’s so clear to me you don’t know a thing about this topic.
BTW, About.com is another setup like yours. Just amateurs writing about topics they’re not educated or experienced in. It may be owned by the parent company that owns the NYTimes, but that in no way means there are Times quality writers working for it.