Every gardener has ambitious goals.
We want our gardens to be lush landscapes of abundance, whether the space we have is big or small. We want perennials that give us happy memories year after year. We want annuals that we can chop and change, giving our space a quick seasonal makeover as our moods and goals change. We want to cultivate a garden that we want to spend time in.
And some of us want to grow something delicious, something that makes us happy, something that makes us excited to go into the garden the moment we jump out of bed.
But as every gardener knows, the path to creating a vibrant outdoor oasis can sometimes come with a hefty price tag.
However, with some know-how and a few tips doesn’t have to.
Whether you’re a seasoned gardener looking to cut costs or nurturing your budding new green thumb, there are many ways that you can create the garden of your dreams on a shoestring budget.
From money-saving tips, and clever DIY projects to cost-effective solutions for tools, to rediscovering the beauty of repurposing and thrifting, learning about successful seed-saving, and gaining knowledge about natural techniques for pest control, you can cultivate a flourishing garden paradise in any space, all while watching your pennies.
When I first started gardening, I put a lot of money into things that I probably didn’t have to. These days, now that my budget is tighter (like most of us), although I am happy I spent when I did, I am even happier to have some ways to save my money, while also still enjoying the peace and excitement of growing a garden.
Budget-Friendly Gardening Tips
Nothing much is cheap anymore, is it?
You walk into a garden shop or a big franchise store, and you can easily spend R500 just like that on gardening items, like tools, pots, and seed. And don’t even get me started on the price of compost.
This is the reality that we are dealing with.
We do have a choice though; we can give up and let the garden go to ruin, or we can get thrifty and learn to solve our problems without running to a shop.
Starting with the Basics
Having some gardening tools is a must for any gardener. You could prep your garden and maintain it with your bare hands, but let’s be realistic; that is hard work no one wants to do.
Some essential tools to have that will make your life so much easier include things like a hand trowel, a hand fork, a large garden fork, and a large garden spade. These tools will help you plant, weed, dig up a big of ground (if you are not going to do a no dig garden, or if you have to do some basic ground work to get you going), and to shift through compost.
You can also invest in a cheap watering can, which you can use instead of a hose pipe. I like using a watering can, even though I have a basic irrigation system set up, because it helps me be more water conscious (if I let myself use a hose pipe, we will be waterless or bankrupt really fast).
If you have shopped around in the garden section of a shop lately, or in a nursery, you have probably seen just how insanely expensive these tools have become. I would suggest that if you have the money, buy some of these tools when you see them. Gardening tools are a lifelong investment if you get the good ones and you treat them with care (like not leaving them out to rust).
If you simply don’t have a budget for tools, look online at second hand shops, like Bob Shop, or go to a local auction or second hand shop. You can also visit your local China mall. They are popping up all over and they generally have a basic garden section that will have what you need.
Seed Saving and Propagation
When I first started gardening, I saw the price of seedlings and decided to not go down that road. At the time, it was actually quite cheap compared to what it is now, but along with wanting more than 6 plants for R30, I had a desire to learn how to grow seed.
Looking back, I am glad I had this desire, because over the years I have collected a seed collection that has my mother worried about me having a possible addiction.
Starting a grand seed catalogue when you are on a budget is out of the question for most.
Seed has become an expensive thing to collect, and many gardeners, like me, have spent years growing the collections that we have, rather than splurged on hundreds of packets in one go.
Besides, when you collect over the years, you end up seeing how your own needs and goals have changed, which is quite interesting. I started out thinking that the bell pepper was the best and only pepper worth growing. Then I realised that I don’t even like those peppers much, and started looking for something more suitable to my cooking style. I then branched out into the more rare kind of peppers, like Ghost and Bhutan peppers, to make sauces and such.
With seeds, you have so much more food variety than you would have if you bought basic seedlings from a nursery.
You might be wondering what on earth this has to do with seed saving and propagation, and saving money.
Well a lot actually.
When you grow from seed, you are not just creating a new plant. You are creating a plant that is going to adapt to your climate; from germination to growth to harvest.
This is really helpful, and it can save money, because when it comes time to propagate the plant or save its seed, you will have a new generation of plants that carry those very same genetic traits. This means the plant has a better chance of thriving in your area and it could also be better at handling pests. And besides, saving seeds costs no money and you will always end up with more seeds than you’d get in a packet.
Seed saving is really easy if you know what you are doing.
Plants like cucumbers, zucchini, butternut, pumpkins, peppers and beans, are about the easiest to collect seed from. Once you have harvested the plant, simply scoop out the seeds, let them dry, and pack them away in a cool, dark place where the humidity and bugs can’t get to them.
Tomatoes require a little more effort, but they can be easily propagated by cutting off a sucker, letting it sit in water until it grows roots and then planting it out. When saving the seed, you can putting the seeds in water, and once the seeds separate from the jelly-like flesh, you can let the seeds dry and then store them.
Saving seed and propagating from cuttings is the absolute cheapest way to get new plants.
I particularly enjoy letting some of my plants go to seed, and then letting the seed fall. The garden then regenerates itself with no effort. I also take tomatoes off the vine and squash them into the ground where I want new plants, and then separate the resulting seedlings and plant them in a new space. I tend to get far more than need when I do this. I also save seed from my annual flowers and I have stacks of packets of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds from a favourite vine.
Soil Improvement on a Budget
It doesn’t help to have seeds on the grow and all sorts of plants ready to go in the ground, if you haven’t got your soil prepped.
The price of compost, inorganic fertilizers and even organic plant foods is off the charts expensive and when you are on a budget, buying these things might not be feasible. Even the cheapest compost is close to R40 a bag, and if you have a big space or raised beds, you will need a couple of bags to replenish the soil with goodness and that will eat into your budget.
A compost heap is something every gardener should have. Not only is it free, but you also have way more control over what is added to it. Our uncooked kitchen refuse is added to our compost heap every other day, along with all of the garden refuse. This has allowed us to have access to a huge amount of compost throughout the year, and it has also reduced the waste that leaves our home.
I also make my own compost tea, using the richer parts of our compost, and I try to regularly buy cheap bananas so that I can make banana tea, something my tomatoes thrive on. I also like to buy organic plant food. I use it every few weeks and the bottle lasts a really long time.
Another budget friendly soil amendment is manure. This can be pricey depending on your source, but there are farmers out there who might be happy to give you manure for free or at a reduced rate. Horse manure in particular is ultra-nourishing and horse owners often end up with so much manure that they don’t know what to do with it. It doesn’t hurt to ask around and see what’s out there.
When it comes to nourishment and conserving water (check out my blog on saving water in the garden), I love to mulch using grass or straw. I have a friendship with a local farmer who uses straw mulch for his plants, and whenever he has leftover, I am welcome to take it. Since my beds are not massive, a decent bag of straw goes a long way and when it breaks down, it adds goodness and structure to my soil, especially the soil that is a little more compact.
A word of caution though, when using straw as mulch, try to find out if the straw has been treated with a weedkiller (herbicide). If you mulch with straw that has been treated with a weedkiller, you could very well kill your garden and poison your ground.
DIY Pest Control
Ants nipping off seedling tops, aphids smothering brassicas, beetles demolishing squash plants, and grasshoppers, slugs and snails turning your garden into their personal smorgasbord; bugs can be one of the most demoralising aspects of gardening.
If you are growing from seed, it can take months to get your plant to the point that it is giving you food or beautiful blooms, and in just a matter of hours, all those months of growth are devoured.
There are all sorts of pest destroying options on the shop shelf, but they are not all organic, they are not cheap, and they are also often not safe for pets.
Organic gardening is not a walk in the park and sometimes if you want to make sure that you have a favourable harvest, it is tempting to reach for the inorganic pest control options.
Don’t feel bad. I have done it myself. Lately though, my goal is organic and so I am trying out ways to do pest control the safe and budget friendly way.
I will admit that I don’t have an overwhelming pest problem, partly because I plant seasonal veg and make use of marigold plants like they are glitter in a club, but I have had problems with ants, grasshoppers, aphids and squash beetles.
For the squash beetles, soapy water (good old Sunlight liquid), either sprayed on the bugs or used to drown them by picking them off the plants, has worked for me. But when the summer season stretches on, the squash bugs take over and I go with the flow. Usually my squash plants are by that time big enough to withstand an attack and so I still get a harvest.
For powdery white mildew, which is a really common problem, I use Kumulus which is quite cheap in the shops, and that little bottle is still going strong 3 years later. The mildew can also be controlled by spraying fresh milk onto the affected leaves. If you are spraying a squash plant, make sure that you do so in the morning, so that the leaves can dry out.
For my least favourite bug, the aphid, and for red spider mites, I use Neem oil mixed with Sunlight. It is fairly cheap, and it does the job well. Make sure that when you use Neem oil that you spray it at night. The oil can cause your plants to get a nasty sunburn when applied in the midday sun.
Diatomaceous Earth, which is made from sedimentary rock, is a helpful organic powder that can stop the ants from getting too friendly with your seedlings.
If you are looking for more solutions, the web is full of them, but in my experience not all of them work. I am a big fan of companion planting. I have found it works quite well, and it gives me the green overgrown jungle of my dreams.
Budget-Friendly DIY Projects
Personally, I think it is quite boring to buy all of your garden accessories and décor. Everything looks so very much the same lately, so whatever you add to your space runs the risk of being so generic that your garden just ends up looking like everyone else’s.
When you undertake some DIY garden projects, you not only get to create a stunning garden that reflects your personality, but you also get to save money.
Building Garden Beds on a Budget
Building raised beds for your vegetable garden will give the space some definition which is helpful if you have a smaller area to work with.
Raised garden beds can be built from pretty much anything and popular materials include repurposed corrugated iron sheets, wood cut offs, logs and pallets. When you build a garden bed (get layouts here from The Instructables) you can make it as big or as small as you like. To fill the beds, layer them with sticks, big branches and garden refuse at the bottom, and a mixture of soil and compost on the top. This method saves money and it builds the soil, as the bottom layer breaks down.
Build tepees
Bean tepees are my favourite summer garden feature. Using long sticks, or bamboo if you can get it cheaply, you can create a structure that you can grow your climbing beans on. You can also build similar structures to support tomatoes and cucumbers.
Chicken wire or cattle panel fencing supports
If you have left over blocked metal fencing or if you can get some recycled fencing, you can build supports for your cucumbers to climb up. These sorts of structures will give your garden interesting looking features and it will also provide some shade to the other plants during the height of those hot summer days. This set up also ensures that your climbing plants have space to grow, and it can make harvesting a breeze.
Beautify your rainwater tank
Rainwater harvesting is a must in South Africa and if you have a tank already, you know that these they are not the prettiest things to look at. You can transform your tank into something beautiful if you use recycled pallets to turn the tank into a large wine barrel looking feature, complete with plants on top. You can look this idea up online.
Create walkways
There are all sorts of repurposed materials as well as very cheap paving options that you can use to create walkways throughout the garden. If you like an overgrown space like I do, having the walkway is a great way to create a path through the jungle. I found really cheap terracotta paving bricks at Concrete Creations, a family owned nursery local to me.
You can also use hardwoods, mulch and crushed stone, wood chips, upcycled pallets that have been treated with a marine sealer to prevent rot, and upcycled building bricks. If you create a space between the paving option you are going with, you can plant something like Sweet Alyssum to add some natural and interesting beauty.
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Gardening is something that has kept me sane and inspired during some difficult times and now more than ever before, returning to nature is something I am passionate about and will always encourage people to do.
You really don’t need thousands in the bank to garden; seeds want to sprout, nature wants to grow abundantly, and even after the longest droughts, the rains will return. You just need to be savvy and resilient, work with what you have and do what you can, right now in this moment, to nurture the nature you have been entrusted with: your garden.
Do you have budget friendly gardening tips? Leave them in the comments below.
