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Growing a garden on a budget seems a bit “duh”, doesn’t it? Isn’t gardening an automatic money-saver, grow your own produce and all that? Well, not always…

When I quit my job to focus solely on Thrifty Guardian, our already-tight budgets were tightened a bit more to ensure we could maintain our savings and allow for a cushion should the momentum on my site slow.

One thing I cut (much to my husband’s dismay) was our previously robust gardening budget from previous years. Normally our gardening budget allotted for more than just vegetables and included landscaping – that we of course did ourselves but nevertheless could get pricey as we worked to turn our backyard into a sanctuary.

Gardening on a Budget

As I considered the cost of our garden versus what we’d end up spending at the Farmer’s Market for produce, I realized we still needed to allot something for the garden lest we go over-budget on food. We do almost all of our home shopping at Lowe’s and while I do love their prices (especially if you have their credit card and get 5% back!), we still had to find a way to cut back a bit.

So what are your options? Can you have a beautiful, bountiful yard on a budget?

Well, of course!

Gardens on a shoestring budget are how our grandparents and great-grandparents survived the Great Depression, and there are certainly some modern and some not-so-modern ways to get back to truly enjoying a gardening hobby without spending an absurd amount of money.

You might find the ingenuity needed to cheaply garden can be as rewarding as biting into a juicy tomato or the crisp green beans you grew yourself.

Getting Started – Garden Beds, Containers, and Soil

Raised beds made from store-bought lumber look beautiful and they’re quite useful (especially if you have a male dog who likes to “mark his territory”…), but fresh lumber is expensive.

There are a few other options that are readily available in most places that won’t cost you an arm and a leg:

Palettes

Chances are good you know someone who is always making insanely cool stuff from palettes. Well, that’s because once you’re comfortable with it, they’re a cheap source of lumber that has a rustic appeal to it. Check out your local Facebook re-sale groups or Craigslist and you’re sure to find some at a low cost. Picking apart some decently fresh palettes and reassembling them into garden boxes of various sizes is a great way to cut out the price of raw materials, and it also allows you to be one of those people. Ya know… those people; Pinterest palette people.

Cinder blocks

These guys. LOVE them. They’re everywhere, and even brand new, they’re only about a dollar at Lowe’s. They’re great for many reasons, but here’s two: you can use them as the border of a raised bed, then use pond liner or tarp as a liner for the inside, creating a pretty easily constructed garden bed. OR you can use them as individual double-planters. We did this last year; I used some painter’s tape and spray paint to stencil on a cute little design. They’re great for planting in your front yard and can add a nice POP of color!

Containers for individual plants

Those great little greenhouses with the individual cells are nice but of course cost money we don’t want to spend. A great way to start plants is in cardboard egg containers, just make sure you poke a hole in each bottom for drainage. Once you’ve got your young seedlings, you can widen the hole and then plant the entire carton in the ground. Cat litter containers are also great for individual plants that like space, like tomatoes, and are easy to move around as needed. Upcycle!

Finding Soil

Soil is often easy to get ahold of if you look on Craigslist or Facebook resale groups. People are always moving tons of dirt when building, and will often welcome someone willing to come by and take it off their hands. While I don’t recommend using this soil when starting your seeds, it can be great to fill in beds, flesh out your lawn when re-seeding, or used to help landscape.

How to Find Seeds and Starts Cheap

Again, since quality seed packs can sometimes be expensive, finding other ways to get seeds and starts is essential.

A few options are:

Joining a seed bank or trading group. Again, Craigslist or Facebook are great for this!

Better yet – talk to your neighbors! We have all sorts of plants, particularly hostas, that we gladly divide up and share with friends or neighbors. Let your friends and neighbors know you’re looking to flesh out your garden and they might have some plants they’d gladly give you starts of.

Though a much more extensive topic than can be covered here, harvesting, drying, and storing seeds from your produce is a great way to ensure you have seeds for the next year, particularly if you’re growing heirloom varieties in their original forms.

Reusing Food to Grow Plants

Use discarded food scraps. We got all of our tomato plants this year from a mushy tomato in the fridge. I literally tossed it into a pot of soil and about three weeks later we had a dozen healthy tomato starts to separate and transplant. Any fruit or veggie with seeds would work (in theory).

Some plants, like green onions, will grow back quickly if you just put the remaining roots in water after you’ve cut the green off.

Fresh basil (and other herbs for that matter) will often root easily when the bottoms are cut diagonally and placed in water. We have a few herbs outside this year that are remnants from store-bought herbs we had this winter, that we put in water, grew roots, and then transplanted.

Potatoes are great because they do the work for you. The “eyes” they grow are basically starts. Chop them into cubes and plant them (as long as they have eyes). You’ll have more stalks than you know what to do with.

Tend Your Garden

Once you’ve gotten your containers and your seeds, it’s simply a matter of the day-to-day tending of your garden. Soon you’ll have bountiful crop of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and all sorts of delicious goodies, allowing you to trade or sell your the excess of your bounty.

The simple act of gardening is a great way to get exercise (just make sure you wear some sunscreen!) and it provides a great return on a minimal investment, while allowing you to recycle things you were probably going to throw out anyway.

And if you’re looking to add in some decor, sign up for programs like SnagShout and there’s a good chance you can find a bunch of cheap (if not FREE) garden decor – it’s where we got all of ours from and we didn’t pay a cent! All it took was a few minutes of reviewing the product, which is something we often do anyway.

Add in a good compost heap (or create your own DIY warm farm!) for your food waste and you’ll reduce your spending, your carbon footprint, and your waistline – all of which of very thrifty ways to live!

My personal favorite thing about gardening is the time spent watering. Sometimes I let my son help, but often I’ll sneak out in the evenings, using the time to reflect on the day and enjoy a few moments of peace and sunshine to myself.

Do you garden? What do you most enjoy about it? Tell me in the comments section!

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