How Green is Your Garden

Image by Joi via Flickr

Just like any other gardener i like to keep my gardening spend to a budget and with the current circumstances and money at a premium the last thing normally on the “to do list” is the garden!

This year i set out to spend as little money as possible on “non essential” items for my garden at home, little things such as plant pots, compost and plant seeds can soon add up and before you know it you have done a mad trolley dash around your local DIY store and obliterated your debit card or handed over your hard earned cash and come home with a pocket of loose change!
 
Well there are a few things you can do to penny pinch here and there and you will be amazed how you can save money on the simplest of things, so in the next few lines i will tell you what i do to save the pennies in my day to day gardening adventures.
 
How many times at home do you eat “pot snacks” and “yogurts” and other such treats and just throw away the empty pots?

well these can be washed out with all your other pots and pans and recycled into plant pots! simple just wash and go, all you have to do is clean them and add a few drainage holes and if by magic ……….free plant pots!

I have saved a fortune this year already in my own greenhouse by recycling pots rather than buying costly new ones!

I also save toilet roll tubes as these are ideal for growing sweet peas and runner beans etc in, i line them up in a seed tray just to keep them standing up properly, add compost then the seed or cuttings and there you have it, just treat them in the normal way and plant them out when ready in there tubes and they will be snug as a bug!
 
As i have mentioned so many times before (like a broken record!) i like to produce as much of my own compost as possible and have a large plastic composting bin at home, i bought mine from my local council at a discounted rate and it has worked it’s weight in gold for the past couple of years, i put nearly all of my household “green” waste in there, fruit and vegetable peelings, tea bags, dead cut flowers, egg shells the list is endless, and of coarse all of my garden trimmings end up in there too, you can add grass clippings but as a rule dont add continuous amounts as this can attract lots of aphids/flies and can turn your developing compost into a pile of wet, smelly sludge! and believe me that’s not very pleasant!
After i have added a few layers of green matter i always add a few sheets of your local newspaper to the mix as this helps add structure to the compost and also helps regulate the moisture content so when you have finished reading your latest edition of the “Wich magazine!” why not add that to the compost bin too? 
 
If you are like me and like to grow your own plants from cuttings and seed, why not re-use “iced lolly” sticks as plant labels? they are ideal for the job and sit nicely in there seed trays and pots etc, and as plant labels can be quite expensive you will be able to save a bit of money by using an alternative!
 
In the past i was a staunch believer in buying all my plant seed from the well known and trusted commercial seed companies until i noticed the prices were creeping up and up on a yearly basis, so after a little shopping around i found you could buy the same vegetable and plant types from local supermarkets and stores without the banded names for half the cost! as the TV commercials say “every little helps” and it does, seeds can be rather expensive so getting hold of them a little cheaper is an added bonus.
 
So whatever your garden brings you in the coming weeks why not recycle a couple of my ideas for yourself and save some of that hard earned pocket money, and remember its good to save money but its also heart warming to know your doing your bit for the environment too without having to rush into the garden and “hug a tree”!

Image via Wikipedia