Budget Vegetable Gardening Tips
Every Tuesday morning I’m lucky enough to be a guest on a gardening radio show on Seattle’s NPR station KUOW 94.9. It’s tons of fun and even though I’m supposed to be the expert I always learn a lot from the callers and my fellow panel member Greg Rabourn and Marty Wingate. This past week we discussed budget gardening tips and there were so many great ideas that I thought I’d share a few of my favorites.
Buy Bareroot. If you’re interested in planting fruit trees, grapes, or raspberries, now is the time to buy these plants barerooot. Bareroot plants are simply dormant woody plants that have had most of the soil around their roots removed (hence the name bareroot). They are typically sold for significantly cheaper prices than similar plants grown in containers because bareroot plants cost a lot less to ship. If you’re in the Seattle area, the marketplace at the NW Flower and Garden Show is a great place to pick up bareroot plants and it starts next Wednesday.
Buy Seed in Bulk. Many seed catalogs, including Territorial and Johnny’s Select Seeds, sell seed in different sized packets. The bigger the packet you buy, the more you save! Get together with a group of friends and order your favorite seeds together and you can save 25% or more.
Borrow Rather Than Buy. When we built our vegetable garden last spring, we borrowed our neighbor’s tiller rather than renting one. We also regularly share our wheelbarrow with the couple two houses down. Many communities also have tool share programs. If you live in Seattle check out the Phinney Neighborhood Association. They have a tool library program that is so cool. They loan out everything from garden forks to hammers, which means you could build raised beds without having to buy a single tool!
Shop plant sales. Don’t get me wrong, I love to shop at nurseries, but some of the best deals to be had on plants are at plant sales hosted by local gardening groups, arboretums, and botanic gardens. In the Seattle area my favorite plant sale is the Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale, which will be held on May 2nd and 3rd this year.
Participate in a Seed Exchange. Seed exchanges are a great way to get free seeds and discover new varieties. Alan at Birds n’ Such has an online exchange happening right now. Or you can organize one with friends. When you’re trading seeds just remember to label the packets and mark how old the seeds are.
Forage for Free Plants. A caller on the garden show Tuesday said that when she sees a house for sale that has nice plants, she calls the realtor to see if the homeowners would be willing to let her come in and clean up their garden in exchange for her taking a few divisions. She said she’s gotten tons of cool plants this way, including fruit trees! You can also find great free plants on Craig’s List if you’re willing to dig them up.
Find Free Fertilizer. Greg Rabourn turned me on to a program I’d never heard of. The Manure Share Program sponsored by the King Conservation District (check your local conservation district to see if they offer a similar program). They have a list with free sources manure and offer everything from rabbit to llama to chicken to horse manure. All you have to do is call and arrange to pick up the manure. It gives new meaning to the term “free shit”!
If you have ideas for saving money on your gardening budget, let me know! With the state of the economy, we’re really watching our family’s budget and the garden is definitely a place where we could scale back how much we spend.
Hey Willi,
Great garden saving information! You have me looking on Craigs list now for plant deals – lol!! Learning how to propagate plants and trees is another way to save money. It doesn’t work for every plant but it will with many. Most people don’t mind if you break off some of their plant stems to propagate.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:22 pmI still have plenty of seeds left. I hope to collect a better variety of vegetable seeds this summer and have more exchanges in the near future. I think seed exchanges are fun and a great way to save money. Thanks for linking!
I have used craigslist a lot for getting free/reasonable plants, too. Also got a couple of loads of free horse manure before. Since we don’t have a pickup, we rented Zipcar pickup… We used blue tarp before loading manure, so it didn’t smell or no much cleaning afterwards. Hope it’s ok for zipcar folks for this particular use…
I was also given raspberries and flower bulbs from our neighbors. I gave them strawberries in return. I love these community based plants swap.
As far as hardscaping goes, I also got a great deal from craigslist – free gravels, landscape rocks, wood chips, lumber for raised bed/chicken coop/potting bench, garden bench, …etc.
I also stop by Restore/Second Use to find cheap material for gardening/landscaping – such as pvc pipes for green house framing(stoled your idea!), concrete footing for arbor, …etc. (No I don’t use old toilet as our garden statue/pot… I’m not THAT kind of girl).
February 12th, 2009 at 8:25 pmthere are ways to get free seeds too! Check out freecycle/craigslist and put wanted ads up. Most people have OLD seed they want to get rid of, or extra’s they saved from previous years.
Some organizations give away free seeds, check out wintersown.org they offer flowers or tomato seeds, excellent organization!
Learn to save your own seed! Goes without saying really!
Ask friends/neighbors for cuttings/bulbs/seeds/fruits to gather seeds/etc. Remember the saying – if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Compost – start your own pile or worm bin
Manure – check ads in local paper, or craigslist
wood chips – check local city, utility companies or tree trimming services
February 12th, 2009 at 8:26 pmLots of great ideas. I never thought of cleanup at for-sales! And doesn’t King County have a native plant restoration program where if you help clean up you can take some certain plants home?
February 13th, 2009 at 1:06 amAlan–I agree that propagating seedlings is a great way to save money. And it’s fun!
C–I had no idea Zipcar has trucks! That’s great to know. Our truck met an unfortunate end and I don’t think Jon would appreciate if I loaded a bunch of horse manure into our Toyota hatchback.
Di–Thanks for turning me on to wintersown.org. What a cool idea!
Melanthia–Yes, King County does have a native plant salvage program. You can salvage native edibles like salal and salmonberry:
February 13th, 2009 at 11:32 amhttp://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/stewardship/volunteer/plant-salvage-program.aspx
I needed this. I have been looking at gardening catalogs lately and feeling unpleasantly stingy
We have gotten a lot of plants from relatives who split their daylilies or irises (even gooseberries and wild strawberry runners!) and gave us the resulting loot.
February 13th, 2009 at 12:09 pmI’m trying to grow a small selection of veg but have quite a shady garden. In the past i’ve had good results with runner beans and courgettes but other veg seem to start well then die off.Im very much new to this but very keen and i find this really frustrating.Hope you can help me Victoria.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:14 pmYou can get a lot of seeds from the veggies you already buy. We planted “seed” potatoes by letting our potatoes grow eyes. I also collected the seeds from the peppers I used over the winter. I save all of my kitchen scraps for a compost pile in our backyard. Our garden this year cost us a grand total of $5 to plant and we have not bought veggies at all since we started growing
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I’m not sure if this is helpful, but we grow some rabbits and the quantity of leftovers is quite big(we feed them mostly with Lucerne).We decided to use these leftovers, together with the manure, as rings around the trees in the garden, so it will keep the moisture at the trees root and stop growing the unwanted herbs.
Also, we are trying to use the crushed egg shell to keep the snails out of the garden, but that is still an experiment.
The corn stalk, we’re using it to protect the fig tree and other sensible plants in the winter.(We have nights with -20 Celsius degrees in the winter).
July 21st, 2011 at 8:05 am