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Spring is over and gardening season is on my mind and right now gardening on a budget is important!
Gardening has many advantages and can easily save you money on your grocery budget if you are growing vegetables or herbs.
I love getting my kids involved as much as possible.
My daughter and I grew a few herbs last year and she really enjoyed helping out with the upkeep.
This year I’d like to get all of my kids involved but do not want to spend a fortune for all my kids to have their own garden.
Table of Contents
Gardening on a Budget
Start with a plan. You need to do some research into what types of vegetables you want to grow.
The best way to decide is to try to grow what your family eats most of to keep your costs down at the grocery store.
Make sure you research what will work best with your climate and space you have available to plant.
Start Small
If you have never grown a garden or do not have a green thumb you want to start out small which works well for gardening on a budget.
Using the container method will not only save you space in your backyard but this gives you a chance to use items you already have to start planting.
That old coffee mug, basket lying around the house or even egg cartons work perfectly.
By using this method you can test out what works best with sunlight and your specific climate.
This is a great benefit to keeping pests away as well.
You can easily move the planter on a table or inside a patio to avoid them eating away at your efforts.
If your garden has some large trees competing for sunlight nearby check out Los Angeles arborists for gardening advice.
Start with Seeds
Buying a pack of seeds is very cost effective.
You can usually find them for a few dollars at a hardware store or a nursery.
You do not even need to use the whole packet.
By only using half you can cut costs even more with trading the rest with a friend or neighbor.
This is basically your own two for one sale.
Freeze the Leftovers
If your garden supplies endless vegetables or herbs you can freeze it.
Most vegetables can be blanched and frozen.
In fact, I like to do is semi freeze them on a cookie sheet once they are blanched then I toss them into a Ziploc bag.
This prevents them from sticking to each other once they are frozen.
To summarize my thoughts; are that Gardening on a Budget is possible with a little planning, research and creativity.
Just think of what a investment of seeds will save you at the grocery store. In short, I can’t wait to give it another try this year.
If you are a gardener I’d love to hear your budget tips as well.
Do you plan on giving gardening a try this year?
How do you manage gardening on a Budget?
My tip is also not to forget about planter pots or wooden barrel planting.When my kids were little they would choose a planter and plant tomatoes or cherry tomatoes and other things in them.I have a tiny plot were I plant climbing beans and climbing cucumbers and a few herbs in.
Great tip Wanda! I love getting my kids involved too whenever possible.
Thanks for the info. Can’t wait for the weather to break!
i will be starting a garden in about another week, since i don’t have much space, i will be doing some in my kitchen, spices and such,, i will be sharing with my neighbor, she seems to grow stuff better than i do loll thanks for the post..
I have been wanting to start a garden and this year I said to myself, “By golly Cheryl, we are going to plant a garden this year.” I never thought about using egg cartons but I will be saving them now. I found that Listia is also a great place to get garden seeds. I have won 3 auctions already for seeds and will be entering more.
I’ll have to check that out, thanks for the tip. It’s always nice when you win things for free that you would have bought anyway.
I got seeds 4/$1 at the Dollar Tree. I’ve used them before–they grow. :]
I’m a container gardener myself. If you can consider one container a garden. I grow flowers in it from seeds every year, and it amazes me every year when they begin to poke through. For a few months, that thing is my baby.
Starting small is a great tip. People often don’t realize how quickly gardening costs add up.
So far I’ve been fortunate growing flower gardens. I do have spices that I grow yearly. Its great to have these on hand so as to beat the high prices at stores. I’ve been thinking about growing tomatoes this year. I hope I’ll be successful. It is cost-effective to freeze the yield and swap goods with neighbors as well.
Yes, we’ll be gardening again this year. One tip that I can think of is: when deciding on where to put your garden, if you must put it in the path of your dog’s normal routine, in our case, as soon as our dog leaves the back door, he has a course around the backyard that he always takes, so again, if you must put the garden in the way of his course, you’ll need to put something around it so he doesn’t just trample right through it.