Money saving in your garden

Fay

Hi everyone
I'm sure this has been done before and there must be 100's of MSE tips in different threads but I wondered if it would be a good idea to try and bring them all together in one thread? I try to be money saving by growing my own veg and this year annual bedding plants...but I still end up spending an awful lot of money on it

So what are your top free/MSE tips for gardening?

I will start us off with the obvious ones that I know of
-toilet rolls for pots
-pots made out of newspaper
-making my own compost (although make nowhere near enough-this is one of my main expenses)
-saving easy seed like french beans and runner beans
-I've reused old metal buckets I found when we moved, sprayed them and now grow peas and flowers in them
-I'm about to spray paint the inner of an old metal bin today as a tall planter

I would love to take cuttings and keep seed but struggle with how to do this...perhaps someone will come along with an easy to understand tip/guide for this?

So what do you do to save money in the garden?

Davesnave

Real Seeds already do a guide to saving seed, so rather than re-invent the wheel, here's the link:

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedsavinginfo.html

For most people, saving seed of some vegetables won't be practical, but there are still many types where it's straightforward enough.

Davesnave

In ornamental gardening, my top tip is don't be a fashionista.

Soon we'll have Chelsea and a whole plethora of plants ,which are supposedly new or improved, but frankly, you don't need any of them. Not yet.

It's much better to see how trendy plants perform in a real garden environment, so give them a few years to bed-in first.... in other people's gardens. If they're still being sold in five years time, there's a better chance they'll be much cheaper, and also more likely to perform well.

If it helps, I'll admit I've fallen for many a 'must have' plant, like orange echinaceas. I didn't need them, and that's just as well, because I haven't got them! :rotfl:

Gertrude Jeykll, Margery Fish and a whole host of others managed fine long before the RHS Plant Finder. You can too.

jammy_dodger

a top tip i found on here somewhere was to cut up old margarine cartons and ice cream tubs and use the plastic strips for plants labels just use permanent marker

also keep back a bit of rotted manure to tie in an old sack and suspend this in a water container outside to collect the rain i use this as a feed diluted for plants and veg

amcluesent

There was a thread on here which IIRC showed that grow your own wasn't money saving compared to buying in season produce at the market.

Fay

amcluesent wrote: »

There was a thread on here which IIRC showed that grow your own wasn't money saving compared to buying in season produce at the market.

That's quite depressing isn't it...I wonder if growing your own bedding plants are more money saving. I've had some great successes this year but also some failures-including petunias from seed

Joan49

Quote:-
Originally Posted by amcluesent
There was a thread on here which IIRC showed that grow your own wasn't money saving compared to buying in season produce at the market.

I feel that is a bit of a sweeping statement. We could never afford to eat as much soft fruit as we do if we had to buy it fresh or frozen. Not to mention a nearly all year round supply of lettuce and herbs. I think it rather depends on what you are growing.
Wouldn't like to comment on bedding plants but after a couple of years setting it up, mainly from seeds and cuttings, I now have a cut flower garden on my allotment that means i can afford cut flowers in the house for a good proportion of the year

Greenqueen_2

If, like me, you`re on a water meter then it makes sense and saves money to have as many water butts as you can accommodate.

wallbash

I feel that is a bit of a sweeping statement.

Sweeping but true . If you factor in the amount of time and effort to produce those crops we all grow , much cheaper to buy them .

quote........We could never afford to eat as much soft etc

But if you were NOT gardening and spending that time ,in gainful employment even on a fraction of the minimum wage you could afford them .

To sum , we garden for enjoyment and getting the freshest produce possible , but its hard to say we honestly save money.

cootambear

well, as many posters on here know, I do not dismiss, and I heartily promote, the benefits of mass production, cheap food, gm crops, and the easy availabilty of food which has liberated women from the demands of cooking and preserving every day, and going from little shop to little shop to get the groceries in.

For example, isnt it great that your kids can eat oranges and bananas year round?

Gardening is for me a choice, not a religion, not a way to change the world.

It is by far and away the case that, as a whole, supermarket food is cheaper than grow your own, especially if you take in to account the hours that we put in to produce it.

But gardening is a little more than pure economics.

It is a pleasurable hobby

And it gives you a chance to grow really tasty foods

Lets take economics, morality and piety out of it

Willow21

A brilliant tip I heard the other day was a use for old venetian blinds cut down as plant labels written using a permanant marker.
Another good idea is to collect seaweed from the beach for use on your potatoes as it contains loads of the essential nutrients needed for goods potatoes. I found some really crunchy dried green stuff today, so hopefully that will work just as well as composting the stuff.