It doesn’t have to be expensive.
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In October, most people are winding down their gardens and getting ready for winter. However, while some people are tucking away their garden beds until spring, there are those who still have the itch to grow a thing or two! Or if you’re like me, you are looking for a way to grow food and save money.
I’m a beginner gardener, but eager to learn and experiment. I also love fresh tasting flavorful food seasoned with fresh herbs and peppers. There’s nothing like a homemade pizza with fresh basil from your garden sprinkled on top. Or late-season green bell peppers stuffed with flavorful ground beef and rice and baked.
My family loves fresh herbs. At the store, they come with a high price tag. Just 3 ounces of fresh basil is $4! As a cost-saving measure, my husband and I decided to grow the herbs ourselves. I’ll share what we’ve learned as beginner gardeners on a tight budget.
While it can be expensive to start and keep up a garden, but it doesn’t have to be. There are a lot of ways to have a small, inexpensive beginner garden that saves you money and provides high-quality ingredients that you’d otherwise have to pay top dollar for in the grocery stores.
I’ve learned several tips and tricks while starting and researching my budget beginner garden. Here are my top 5 tips on how to start a budget beginner garden. These have saved me and my family a lot of money!
I can’t emphasize this enough. Look around at what you have before you decide that having a garden is too expensive. You may already have everything you need!
Look in your attic, garage, and shed. Use your imagination. What do you have lying around gathering dust that could be used as a planter? Do you already have some mulch or a bag of dirt in your shed that you forgot about? What about seeds? Do you have a few hidden away in a drawer that you could use to plant a late-season garden or an indoor garden?
We used a simple free wooden pallet to create a vertical garden. We put our peppers and herbs in it. It’s right by our back door so we don’t forget to water it. It’s simple, easy, and cheap.
This might take a little bit of research, but there’s a handy-dandy interactive map online that will show you your hardiness zone with a click of a button! Just go to the United States Department of Agriculture here and click on your location. It will show you what your “zone” is. After that, look up your particular zone and what plants grow well where you live. Here are some examples from EcoScraps:
Once you know what grows well, then you know what to plant. Simple!
Like everything else, gardening tools and supplies go on sale. And yes, there are coupons for gardening supplies. Keep an eye out for sales papers for your local gardening centers and pick up a few items here and there as they fit into your budget. Pretty soon, you can have a nice little stock of gardening supplies while not breaking the bank.
We waited for a sale on dirt before buying our premier gardening soil. We have a small vertical garden, so we wanted to have some quality soil. We were able to buy enough to fill our vertical garden and put back a bag for when we make another pallet vertical garden to fill.
We also watched for clearance at the grocery store. They have live plants too! We found a nice little thyme plant that just needed some TLC marked down to just 99 cents! What a steal.
If you want to start a fall garden or indoor winter garden, or if you live far enough south that you have a second growing season, that’s great. Check out what plants do well in your area and keep an eye out for good deals.
If you don’t want indoor plants and your area is too cold for an outdoor garden, consider getting a tiny “greenhouse.” YouTube has numerous and easy tutorials on DIY greenhouses. You can even make little greenhouses out of clear totes.
Know what you want and what you’re able to keep up with. My family has a lot going on with two small children, so we wanted to start small and keep a manageable garden. We have our little vertical herb and peppers garden going, and we also have a small plot with late-season zucchini growing in it.
It’s small, but it’s a start. We would eventually like to have a large garden with lots of herbs and produce, but we realize that we need to work up to it. There is no shame in starting small!
In addition to those five tips, here’s a resource that I have found very helpful, especially as a beginner gardener. I’m still learning about gardening and, in particular, fall and winter options. Journey With Jill, a blog and podcast, has been extremely helpful to this clueless beginner!
I’ve been learning that there are growing options for the eager gardener no matter where you live or what the season. The bonus for me is that Jill has both a blog AND a podcast. That’s perfect for busy moms like me who don’t always have time to read an article, but I can turn on her podcast and learn about gardening on-the-go!
And don’t forget about YouTube! There are so many helpful tutorials on everything from the traditional outdoor garden to indoor hydroponics and grow lights. Have fun with it!
Here are some resources on this site:
Do you have a beginner garden? Do you have a garden this fall, or do you grow some edible indoor plants? Please tell us about in the comments, and give your best advice for gardening newbies.
Jenny Jayne is the mother of two wonderful boys on the Autism spectrum and is passionate about Autism Advocacy. She is a novelist who writes Post-apocalyptic fiction and a freelance writer. Her first novel is coming soon to Kindle eBooks near you. Her guilty pleasures are preparing for hurricanes, drinking hot coffee, eating milk chocolate, reading romances, and watching The Office for the 50th time. Her website: https://jennyjayneauthor.wordpress.com/
About Jenny Jayne
Jenny Jayne is the mother of two wonderful boys on the Autism spectrum and is passionate about Autism Advocacy. She is a novelist who writes Post-apocalyptic fiction and a freelance writer. Her first novel is coming soon to Kindle eBooks near you. Her guilty pleasures are preparing for hurricanes, drinking hot coffee, eating milk chocolate, reading romances, and watching The Office for the 50th time. Her website: https://jennyjayneauthor.wordpress.com/
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It doesn’t have to be expensive.
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