Cheap and easy garden tips

Who doesn’t need some cheap and easy garden tips?

Gardening is in my blood.  

This becomes apparent the older I get.  I just can’t wait to get my hands dirty in the spring!  Every year my garden grows.  Not just the plants, I mean the actual garden grows.  If a small garden is good, a big garden is better, right?  My family tries to fence me in, but I always find sneaky places to add more veggies.

Of course, every expansion comes with expenses beyond just buying seeds and plants.  To keep costs down, I’m becoming a pro at thinking outside the box and utilizing free, cheap, and found objects in my gardens.

Here are some cheap and easy garden tips for you!

The first step is to look around you at what you already have!  

You are probably sitting on a treasure trove of gardening items and you don’t even know it!  A pile of bricks that came with our house quickly became raised beds for strawberries.  

Extra gutter material makes a great “salad bar” when you attach it to a fence or wall and add dirt!  
I could probably write a whole book on using pallets on the homestead!  (Note to self:  write a book on pallets on the homestead.)  Pallet trellises, brightly painted for growing cucumbers, tomatoes and other things that need support are the showpiece of my garden.  It’s an added bonus that I LOVE to spray paint and take every opportunity to do so!

 We also attached some pallets to the outside of my garden to create an easily accessible compost pile.  A little more spray paint turned it into an American flag showpiece that all can see from the street!  
That old umbrella-style clothesline that we just couldn’t part with?  It became the coolest bean trellis of all time!  Add some bailing twine, which every self-respecting homesteader has a huge stash of, and the pole beans will grow up and cover it in no time!  

Bonus points for not having to bend down so much for picking like you do with bush beans!  

So what did I use to tack down the corners of the clothesline so it wouldn’t spin?  Well, I’m so glad you asked!  I used some old phone wire that was laying around in the barn.  

The possibilities are endless!

The possibilities are endless when you just stop to look at the “junk” around you.  Our grapes this year are going to be growing up the old antenna we took off the roof of our house.  We often make garden markers out of slats we cut from an old mini-blind.  Paint stir-sticks make great plant markers too!  They are almost always willing to give you a couple at the home improvement stores, even if you didn’t buy paint that day!  Last year I found a stash of wood railing pieces from an old deck and I drove them into the ground with a hammer and used them to label my row garden!  

Remember those fences that my family keeps building to keep my gardening in check?  Well, I use those too!  Last year I had luffa, asparagus beans, and drying beans (all were pole varieties) growing right up my fences.  
Generally, my family just smiles and laughs at my gardening antics, but they are usually quick to bring me things they think I can use.  The one exception was the robin’s egg blue toilet that was on the side of the road a while back.  I thought it would make a spectacular planter and a focal point for my garden.  My sweet husband disagreed and politely declined to stop and get it for me.  
Now with all the money I have saved, I can buy more seeds and plants.  Maybe I could even expand my garden next year!  

Caution!  Frugal gardening is a slippery slope! I hope you have enjoyed these cheap and easy garden tips!

If you are a gardening fanatic, you might like this towel that I sell on my other website!