Can't afford to grow my own!

betterlife

if you have a poundland they have veg and herb seed 10 pkts for £1 bought some today hopefully they are ok x

Lalaladybird

I have asked in sainsbury's this evening if I could have any of their black flower buckets and they got the manager to call me and I can go in and get 6 buckets next time I'm there :j I will go to lidl for seeds on Thursday. So excited about this

mum_of_4

Plastic bottles, cut the top of use these as plant pots.
loo roll inners
Ice cream tubs, butter tubs,cream tubs, mushroom boxes the list goes on.

steerpike

Aldi seeds are great - very cheap - from onr packet we grew about 10 tomato plants last year and gave lots of little plants away too.
The plants were disease resistant and heavy cropping cherry tomatoes...didn't buy any for months

ScratchandSniff-->[X]

Lalaladybird wrote: »

The ideas for containers really are fantastic - guttering, toilet rolls...brilliant!!! I'll head down to the supermarket to ask for the free buckets - I thought they re-used them There is an allotment site nearby, I shall pop down there too.

Ask around the allotment site - if it's anything like ours, people will have sacks of flowerpots to get rid of. There may be a "swaps" area too, and if they have a shop they'll probably sell cheap compost etc. There's often a big barter economy going on too, so if you are good at something, let them know!

For more containers, walk around a market when they are tidying up. Or ask in shops. They buy in bulk and their containers are correspondingly larger. I reckon the only time I buy something to plant in is if it's going outside the front of the house and therefore has to be more presentable, heavy and non-nickable (although there are ways around that - ask a painter and decorator for his leftovers and get creative). For starting off seeds, anything goes.

The only things to be careful of with containers is how clean they are (i.e. what they've had in before) and putting holes in for drainage. You want something waterproof too, so personally I wouldn't do drawers in case they disintegrated or metal stuff because of catching myself on rusty edges but it's up to you.

You do realise you are well on the road to not being able to walk past a skip without raiding it, don't you? And a pathological obsession with pallets....:rotfl:

Good luck.

Lalaladybird

Just wanted to report back how well I have done since I asked for your advise everyone....

I have managed to get 7 free black flower containers from the supermarkets and a couple of free trays from poundland that they use to hold all the pot plants (I'd have spent a pound but the free containers caught my eye ). I bought a big bag of decent compost. I have grown some herbs from seed and will pot them up this afternoon and I have planted seeds for some veg from seeds I bought cheaply at poundstretcher. I am a happy gardener:o I really feel like this will be a lifelong love. Thank you greenfingered ones for your help xx

Jack's_mummy

Well done you. Keep us posted with your progress

buckster

I'm new to all this but I have started by planting tomato seeds, herbs, peppers, strawberrys and in March I am going to try to grow carrots, leeks, spring onions, swede etc. What I want to know is, when I have a couple inches growth on my plants and I then pot then into larger containers do I need to feed the plants or is there enough in the compost for them to grow lol. I have no idea about gardening . I read that someone said for leeks you need deep containers, how deep is sufficient? I bought a few containers from
woolies when they went bust which are about 10 inches deep, would that be enough

cheerfulness4

Google seed exchanges / swaps. Many generous people will help a newbie gardener out for seeds for just a SAE if they have nothing to swap and will state this in their posts.

As stated above, the exchanging of details isn't permited on this site.

foxxymynx

poundstretcher has compost in for 49p
pound shops have tubs in and seeds (all the ones you mentioned)
morrisons has huge planters BOGOF for £7