Best Budget Garden Tips from Our Readers We asked our readers for their best budget tips for the garden, and they delivered! Tips from our readers for gardening on a budget
If you’re trying to save money gardening, there are lots of things you can do. Composting, seed saving and dividing perennials are some great solutions. But what else can you do to pinch a few pennies? We asked our readers how they stretch their garden dollar and they had some great ideas! Take a look at their tips to see how to grow a beautiful garden without busting your budget.
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Host a seedling swap
Sharon and her friends pool their resources and coordinate who will start which vegetable seeds each year. One person might start all the beefsteak tomatoes and the eggplants, another might start the cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. In spring the friends meet up to distribute the seedlings, and everyone gets just what they need.
Tip submitted by Sharon Moore, IL
Cut the cost by dividing plants with friends
Debi and her friend look for large perennials with potential for division at the garden center. Then they split the cost and the plants! The perennial bachelor’s button (Centaurea montana) above has multiple crowns in one pot so it’s easy to pull or cut apart. But for a plant with a dense root ball and a single crown, you may need to use a soil knife to cut it into pieces and get the divisions you want.
Tip submitted by Debi Jones, TN
“I combine a broken floor lamp and a broken umbrella to make a ‘new baby plant shade structure’. After a couple of days, the plants can take our Southern sun.”
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I have stored my seeds in many ways—in jars, in plastic storage containers, in used bubble mailers, in cute “binder” gift books, in Ziploc bags. Keeping seeds organized can be a challenge, especially when you grow an extensive vegetable garden. There’s the question of how to organize and categorize. But did you know that your seed storage conditions can also affect the viability and germination rate of your seeds? In this article, I’m going to share some tips on how to keep seeds and container options for storing them.
Would you like to maximise your cantaloupe harvest? This list of good companion plants for cantaloupe will help you give your plants the best chance of thriving and fruiting.
A is for annual membership of one of Ireland’s world class great gardens open to the public. Examples include Blarney Castle in Co Cork (12-month adult pass, €100, blarneycastle.ie); Mount Usher in Co Wicklow (€40, mountushergardens.ie); Killruddery in Co Wicklow; (killruddery.com from €60-€100); and Mount Congreve in Co Waterford (from €70, mountcongreve.com).
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Mushrooms in the garden can be an unsettling sight, indicating changes in the soil and in growing conditions generally. While growing mushrooms is becoming more popular as a home interest, fungi can be unpleasant in gardens when they arrive out of nowhere. These unplanned garden guests can also be toxic, so you’ll want to remove them if you have curious children or pets.
Most ornamental grasses will stay intact through the latter part of the year, providing useful colour and structure in the autumn, when herbaceous plants are dying back. Some are particularly vibrant, picking up on the colours of the trees to echo their shades of russet and yellow, but with lower, softer silhouettes and lots of movement. Using them is easy. Weave them into a herbaceous border, or create more impact in larger gardens by repeat planting, as Piet Oudolf did at Scampston Hall in North Yorkshire, with his sinuous banks of Molinia caerulea subsp. caerulea 'Poul Petersen'. Some grasses are deciduous while others are evergreen. It is the deciduous grasses that can dramatically change colour during the autumn.
We’re in Beeton, Ontario, today, visiting Marina. We’ve been to her beautiful garden before (Marina’s Garden in Beeton, Ontario) when it was just a few years old, and we’re back today to see how it has thrived and grown since then.
Last week, I told you about a garden talk I attended at the Robert Mills Carriage House and Gardens in Columbia, SC. Jim Martin (The Magnolia Plantation and Gardens Director of Horticulture & Landscape) was the second presenter. He discussed using bulbs to create “special little moments” every day.