You need to know how you can reduce your gardening costs by using practical methods that are proven in actual gardens. You still want to have a lovely garden.
Liz Zorab from the Byther Farm Youtube channel, and blogger have also given me their advice. Both of us have done videos about money-saving gardening tips – I’m covering tips to save money on flower gardens, and she is focusing on tips to save money on the vegetable patch.
Liz’s backyard was less than an acre when the family moved in. Her goal was to be as self-sufficient and economical as she could. Byther Farm produces 80% of its food and drinks, as well as supplying a local veg scheme.
Liz shares her story with her bestseller Grounded. It is a story about how Liz and her husband almost became self-sufficient, and also includes lots of useful advice for growing vegetables, saving money, and living an environmentally-friendly life. This is a story that’s rooted in reality and will teach you a lot about gardening.
Plan ahead before you go shopping
It is especially important to do this for potted plants and herbaceous borders. You can easily fall for the most colorful plants at a garden centre.
You load your shopping trolley and spend hundreds of dollars or pounds. The colour of your garden will disappear a few months later. The plants will need to be replaced, and you’ll have spent the same money again.
These are usually annuals and also known as bedding plants. In a single year, the plant grows, blooms, produces seeds, and then dies. They only bloom for a couple of weeks in a year. If your border is heavily reliant upon annual bedding plants, you’ll need to change them out at least one time during the growing season. Then it becomes expensive.
You can also read these posts on a href=”https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/perennials-made-simple/”>perennials made simple/a>, ‘how to plan & grow succsessful flower borders/”, and ‘how to plant a border like s pro. The posts How to create a flower border, Planting a border with ease and Perennials Made Simple will help.
Plan ahead to make your borders look good for longer. You won’t need to purchase so many plants.
Even a windowill tray can be used to grow plants from seeds
Plants grown from seeds can be a great way to save money. You could get twenty to thirty plants from a packet of seeds. It only costs a few dollars or pounds.
It’s difficult to grow a lot of flowers from seeds if you do not have a polytunnel, greenhouse or potting shed. You can also grow some seed trays on your windowsill.
Seed growing is a great way to not only save money but also add color and drama to a smaller (or medium-sized) yard. You can grow flowers and plants that are not easily available in shops. For example, cerinthe.
Find flowers that are easy to grow in unusual colors, such as cosmos or antirrhinums. Amaranth is a dramatic plant that you won’t find often in bedding plants.
You will only need to buy seeds if you have plants that are self-seeding. The plants will reseed in the borders after they have set seeds and flowered. They often return year after year. Therefore, those plants are free. Some plants do not self-seed very well, but you can read a blog post about to help save time and money by using self-seeders in your garden.
It’s best to plant the seeds first in modules or trays, even if they self-seed. They’ll self-seed (not all plants will), and they’ll do it the following year. My own experience with seeding the soil has been a failure.
Poppies, marigolds amaranths, nasturtiums nasturtiums cerinthe annual annual euphorbias zinnias nasturtiums zinnias nasturtiums cerinthe annual annual euphorbias cerinthe annual annual nasturtiums nasturtiums zinnias nastur
Plant perennials, especially those that are spreaders.
Plants that remain in the ground for several years are perennials. You won’t need to replace your plants every season, saving you money and time. Some perennials are easy to spread. You can divide perennials every two to three years by digging them up.
Day lilies, Japanese anemones and day lilies are perennials in my garden that grow quickly. Some perennials can be evergreen, like shrubs. I’ve got some gorgeous evergreen Mediterranean spurge, euphorbia. Bergenia and Phlomis, two easy-to-grow perennials that will bring greenery to your garden year-round are both spreaders.
Buy bare roots plants to save money
It is cheaper to purchase bare-root hedges, shrubs, and roses. Plants in pots are labor intensive to grow, require a lot more water, and weigh more when transported, which makes them costlier. The bare root plants that are raised in the fields require less watering, and they are easier to transport or post.
Plants can be planted only when dormant. This is between mid-autumn and early autumn. Plants in containers can be planted any time.
Create your own plant support
Liz Zorab has some tips. She was frustrated with the thin, floppy wires that would fall over when her plants grew too large. To avoid expensive steel supports and to save money, she made homemade wire supports from leftover industrial wire. This includes pigwire.
For fencing, pig wire (or hogwire) is commonly used. The mesh is larger than chicken wire for instance, so flowers and leaves can grow. Liz trims it and uses wire to form a semicircle. She lays it on top of the plant, before it grows too large.
Liz shows how to do it in this video about saving money for the garden. To skip to 6:59, you can see how to create a plant stand out of pigwire. You can also find the time stamps in the video description. The highlighted time is shown. You can click on the highlighted times to jump to that part of the video. Liz has some great tips for saving on the vegetable garden.
Free or Cheap Garden Tools
You can find free garden tools on sites like Freegle and Freecycle. You can also buy used tools in markets, second-hand shops, and local social media sites, like Facebook Marketplace. Second hand tools may not be in great condition or good quality.
It is better, however, to purchase a few high-quality tools brand new. It is true that garden tools are a good example of the saying “buy cheap, buy twice”. On a couple of professional gardening pages on Facebook, people ask for recommendations about tools. I have seen many people praise Showa gloves, Felco, Niwaki Secateurs as well as pruning tools. My Felco secateurs have been around for over 30 years.
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