13 CHEAP or FREE Vegetable Garden Ideas to Grow More Food for Less Money

In this video, we'll show you 13 free or cheap gardening hacks that you can use to save money on your garden. Whether you're starting from scratch or just want to make your gardening budget work better, these tips will help!

Don't let your garden costs get out of control! In this video, we're going to show you some simple and easy ways to save money on your garden. From growing your own vegetables with cheap DIY soil mixes to using dollar store finds, we'll show you 13 free or cheap gardening tips that will help you make the most of your garden space!

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#gardening #homestead #diy #frugal #moneysaving #vegetablegarden

[fuzzytale]

A lot of public libraries have free seed libraries. One of my local libraries has a wonderfully curated collection of heirloom seeds free for the taking-- they order them in bulk and then repackage them in tiny manilla envelopes with pictures and instructions on them. Also, sometimes you can get pots from new building sites when they're doing the landscaping-- they'd much rather you take all the pots from their trees and perennials than have to haul them to the dump

[jonniricard]

these are great tips! I agree! I started my garden with seeds I literally saved from Organic tomatoes and peppers I ate! Then bought seeds 4 packs for a dollar from Dollar Tree! Since then it has become an obsession and I am loving building on the initial garden I started! I have saved the first pepper plant grown form seeds I saved from a pepper I ate about 7 yrs ago and I call him the "OG Pepper" and get incredible large red peppers from him. (I overwinter him in my house and decorate him with christmas lights over the holiday season.)

[vimondireksri]

1. Homemade soil amendments and fertilizers can save a lot of money.
2. Make friends with local gardeners. Swap plants. Seeds. Ideas.
3. Grow veggies from store/market vegetables.
I don't cut corners in my garden but I do cut costs. I only buy a few things for my garden. Tools and seeds mostly and I've got a seed buying problem 🤣😂😀🤣 No kids so I have more time than most.
4. Building your own trellises out of wood and trees from your area and from neighbors.
I've got several neighbors in my area who drop off their leaves, grass and tree cuttings, etc.
5. Whatever I can't use gets turned into wood ash, compost, mulch and biochar.
Gardening doesn't have to be an expensive hobby. I grow at least 50% of our vegetables for about $10 a month and give loads away. My wife even sells a bit which makes my garden virtually free because a few neighbors pay top dollar for locally grown organic veggies.
Downside is it takes time. I love building things out of things I find in my garden. When you find that perfect stick that fits the final piece of the puzzle it feels so satisfying.
6. Meet some local organic livestock farmers. I get manure free from one up the road. All I need to do is bag it up. Another neighbor has chickens but no veggie garden. She just sells eggs. I go in and clean out the pen every few months. I get enough to add to compost, fertilize the garden for free. I've got so much I even sprinkle it on my mulch paths just to break it down faster. I'll add some more times to save, save, save $$$$ the next time I revisit this video. This list is long enough. :)

[Oktopia]

This year I don't have any trays. Instead over winter, I collected plastic food containers and toilet paper rolls. I have started all of my seeds in this totally free setup, only splurging on some plant lights (in lamps I already had). I even had seeds saved from last year's plants, making my expenses on seeds even lower. I've always been frugal, but now I have it in a comfortable and efficient way. This Sunday I went around my rural town and got people's old Christmas trees. I will chop off the branches to use as mulch and fill in beds. The stems will become trellises for climbing plants. Also, people liked to get rid of the trees and I got some good points with my fellow townies.

[poeticpursuits]

Last year was my first year really investing my efforts in gardening. I had grown just some cucumbers and carrots the previous year but last year I wanted to grow potatoes, but there was no way in heck I was going to dig those out of hard compacted clay. Not happening.

So, top tip, get some large 10-20 dollar plastic storage tubs. Make holes in the bottom, fill the first half with random organic matter, for example this year I used some wood chips and sunflower stalks and last year I used native soil mixed with anything I could find.

Then fill the top half with looser soil and top with mulch of your choosing.

I grew potatoes from the supermarket in these tubs and they produced well and it was so much easier than digging in a heavy clay soil. This year I got more tubs so I can grow carrots and beets in them as well.

This also is a budget way to do raised bed gardening for people with back issues or the elderly who can't really get down to the ground anymore and for someone who only makes 30 dollars a month it was the only way to do potatoes.

(I had never seen anyone use those grow bags before, but now that I have seen your video they may have worked just as well if not better, but I received some of the tubs for free, so they were a very good choice for me)

[trotter]

I love using old flower buckets from my local supermarket as plant pots.They let me take loads of them for free and all i have to do is poke some holes in them

[AmandaRedmond]

Mediterranean herb garden! That sounds like something I should try next year. Will you do a video series on how you choose to plant it out and harvest?

[marlatinker]

My favourite tip is getting free nursery pots from the trash at the cementary. The pots the flowers for the graves come in get discarded there

[bettyadkisson]

Ive been getting black pots from aldis for free and i sure will be using my green house for seed starting. I started most of my seeds last year for cheaper garden and yes i used seed potatoes from aldis and will try starting red raspberries this year. Mother always had a green thumb and passed it on too me . Moms chery bushes was the easiest too start just put the seeds in compost and watch them grow, just transplant them were you want them. So good for jams and jellies or syrups.

[OkayReneetru]

I failed this year in my first attempt at a garden in Tennessee. I protected my garden from the deer and other critters with a filament netting, which prevented polination. Such pretty flowers but no squash or cucumbers or eggplants or peppers showed in spite of lots of blooms. I tried to figure out how to polinate by hand but it seemed I did not have both male and female blooms. I have so many critters that will take anything I grow before I can get to it. I am going to try again next year and for now I am enjoying the beauty of the flowers before they fall off. Haha!

[sherimetschan]

Hey there! I was looking for a video that covered shade cloth and its use. I gather it's extremely hot where you are but I didn't see anything. If I missed it let me know. I currently use old bed sheets when it's blistering hot but I'm trying to use something more appropriate and streamline what I have that could possibly be more efficient and take less storage space and possibly be multi use. You got me thinking maybe I can have some sort of modified shelf for starting seeds in my shed if I can streamline my system. Cleaning out all the miscellaneous containers for dedicated seed starting trays will be 1st up. Thanks again!

[sarahkirbach]

I hit up the dollar tree for lots of gardening stuff including gardening clips, cups like you said and trowels - even seeds like their blue scotch kale seed, Swiss chard, herbs, and flowers are unmatched in price

[jodibraun]

The pop-up grocery stores sometimes put out racks of old pots. Last year I picked up tons of everything from seed starting cells to gigantic pots, trays etc. They're not the most attractive, but they work!

Also, in our town, if people put things out on the curb, it's free for the taking. I've found some really great pots this way, too. I've even gotten old terracotta pots that are maybe chipped or whatever, but still serviceable. Just the other day I picked up 6 15 gallon pots from a neighbour's curb.

Growing herbs in landscape fabric or newspaper lined baskets is inexpensive.

Growing potatoes in cardboard boxes is great, too.

Check out what you can get for free in terms of compost, vermicompost and woodchips. Our municipality makes both compost and woodchips for free. I'm not sure of the quality of the compost, but the wood chips are great. There's a very kind fellow who regularly drops MOUNDS of vermicompost in the parking lot of a business around here 2-3 times a season. It's all free. As much as you can gather. I've already collected 3 5 gallon containers from the pile, and after showing a little restraint for a couple of weeks so that others can pick some up too, I'm going back to get more today.

If you're after logs, city tree trimming services will usually allow you to cart those off directly from the cutting site, so they don't have to haul them away.

Also, Jadam natural fertilizers are easy and inexpensive to make. I've found excellent information about them on Hew Richards' and Spicy Moustache's channels. I made some last year that's all ready to go this year. It was an excellent use of the Canadian thistle and other perennial weeds I had Growing in my yard. 😊

[ezekielman]

sorry bruddah, ty for the good information. am running into the same issue with grow bags, trying to make them a little more sightly. 🙏🏽

[GardenMyselfHappy]

Really great ideas here. I love the bag ideas as a first year grower. We have a diy store in the UK that sells buckets for £1 they're strong builder types and do well with holes drilled for drainage.

[TheWoodlandGardener]

Hi there! I'm new to your channel and really enjoyed this video. Such great tips! Love the one about using furring strips and yarn as tomato supports. Much more cost-effective than metal stakes/posts (which I've used in the past). The cheap furring strips seem like a perfectly good option, especially when getting started. I hope you get great results! Thanks for sharing these tips! Angela

[homebodyjen]

I totally agree about the raised beds. I have this gut feeling that our native soil is very good and could be even better with a little amendments, but I have this fear of gophers tearing everything up. We have a lot of gopher activity around here so we made 18 inch beds with hardware cloth underneath. Thankfully we got the soil in bulk from a local nursery and it has proved to be very good quality. I also have a bunch of grow bags to increase growing capacity.

[_Churchy]

Another great video! My raised bed is part of a project in the block of flats that I live in (I'm in London) so I had zero control over how they were built and filled, hence the heavy clay and sand "soil" that we are working with. In addition the beds were overfilled and compacted so I bought a bunch of grow bags for the excess soil we removed. Just from one 2.5m X 1.5m bed we filled 8 ten gallon bags!

Eventually we will amend that soil as well to grow potatoes, carrots, maybe some different varieties of cherry tomatoes. Any other suggestions for things we might grow in them? Do you think a fruit tree might grow in a grow bag, in a block of flats in the middle of London?

Thanks in advance 👍🏾

[ginninadances]

Dollar seed company! I'll have to try them out!

[ponypetedm]

Save your own seeds it’s really easy and free, keep chickens they provide fantastic manure which can easily be turned into fertiliser and if you set up a chicken composting system you can cut your feed bill in half you can grow the rest of there food as well they will give you manure, fertiliser and compost oh yeh you get eggs as well.