Whether your starting a garden or getting ready for a other growing season, January is a great time to embrace your frugal side, so here is our 9 frugal tips to be grow delicious vegetables on a budget.
1 Cover Up With These Frugal Tips
This early in the year its a good idea to cover your seedlings to give them a cosy environment to grow.
Gardeners can be a thrifty lot and easily turn,
• Water bottles and milk jugs into cloches
• Fleece blankets offer frost protection
• Old news papers make fantastic paper pots to raise new seedlings
• Old window panes soon become cold frames.
• You can even make an entire greenhouse from plastic bottles!
There is so many ways to save a fortune using recycled materials, simply check out your local allotment site to see this type of frugal genius in action.
Take pictures or make notes and it will give you some inspiration on where to start.
You could also check out this post on winter sowing for more ideas.
2.Tool Time – Frugal Tip To Save Money On Tools
You don’t need to spend a fortune on tools. A small hand trowel will conquer most jobs to begin with.
For anything bigger, try asking relatives or neighbours for a loan, while you dig ready for planting.
Check out this post for a quick run down of your most needed tools and why.
3.Frugal Tips To Clean Up Your Habit
We all end up having a ton of trays, pots and modules hidden at the back of the shed.
But they can be brought back into use with a good clean in hot soapy water to avoid any plant diseases.
If you are growing a lot of plants, why not ask a neighbour or friends for their left over containers too.
4.Containers can be Frugal Too
A brilliant way to save money is to reuse containers. I love to reuse plastic containers from left over packaging. Soda bottles, muffin containers and salad boxes all make great containers to sow seeds in.
Find some ideas in this post on how to reduce plastic
5.Food For Free Is The Ultimate In Frugal Tips
To grow healthy vegetables, they need the right balance of nutrients in the soil.
The easiest and most cost effective way to make sure they have that food without spending a fortune on additives is to make your own compost.
Turn your kitchen scraps, plant waste and newspapers into black gold and feed your soil for free.
Find out how to right here post
There’s also a great experiment to try that helps introduce kids to compost. Check it out here.
You could also grow your kitchen scraps to make food for free, yes really, find out how here
6.Seed swapping Tips
Seeds can be expensive, however when you consider a pack of seeds can contain a 1000 seeds there are ways to cut costs.
Sowing from seeds is a cost effective way to grow lots of food. But there are other ways to regrow a wider variety of seeds and save money too.
I love the lull that comes in January. The excitement and chaos of the festive season has turned into long dark days that are quiet and reflective.
I love to sit with a hot cup of tea and flick through the seeds catalogues that flood through my door. To have time to spend a few leisurely hours like this dreaming of new plants and crops I can try.
However, the cost can add up so I also keep an eye on seed swap groups online, even Facebook gardening groups can be a great place to find other to swap some of your seeds with others.
Using a plan like the free printable above. Plan your plot or growing area and mark what seeds you want to grow and where. It’s the best way to control what seeds your buying so you don’t waste money on buying too many seeds.
A great way to expand the variety of seeds you can grow without the cost.
Learn more about what to do with your seeds here
7.Plant Swaps.
How often have you sown too many seeds, and they have to throw your precious seedlings away or try find places to grow them because you can’t face binning them.
Why not offer them to friends and families.
If you know other people that grow why not swap your excess. Just like seed swaps.
There is many sites online where you can swap your seeds and plants (such as greenplantswap.co.uk)
In some areas there is even plant swap sales you could attend so keep your eye on local events.
8.Lending Supports
Some plants you grow need support. You may want a raised bed instead of a plot, if all takes wood or other support material.
Long rows of hazel fencing, tall bean wigwams?
Well for this, you could grow a small hazel tree in your garden if you have the space.
Hazels can offer fresh supports each season and lots of other possibilities too.
You will also find left over pallets open up so many opportunities.
You can build everything you need from collecting old pallets. Raised bed, cold frame, fences or even a shed.
So keep your eyes open for those discarded pallets.
9.Prevention, Not Cure.
There are ways to limit the pests and diseases that have a munch on your crops. Thinking about these early can save your crops and in turn save money in the long run.
- Mesh or old net curtains can keep your crops clear of birds and bugs.
- Old cardboard or carpet makes great plant collars,
- Slug traps- or old jam jars help keep slugs at bay
Think ahead and protect first so you don’t need to fix later.
So there’s 9 ways to garden on a budget, so what’s stopping you getting stuck in.
Let us know below what frugal tips you have..
Great hacks about money saving thanks for sharing it.
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