Some Frugal Gardening Tips

Our first garden produce from the raised bed!



These radishes are a little small, but this is my way of thinning them. I very gently pulled these out leaving the other radishes some room to grow. My hubby loves radishes, so he made a quick snack of these. Radishes grow and mature so quickly, which makes them a great vegetable to grow, for children or adults. They give you "almost" instant gratification.

I have some frugal gardening tips for you today:

1. Save your seeds in the refrigerator. I always save any partially used or unopened packages of seeds in a large ziplock type bag in the refrigerator. They will last for years this way. It is important not to let them lay around outside in the garden in the sun too much, before you get them into storage.

2. Buy plants on clearance. As a small perk of my job, I get to leave 15 or 20 minutes before everybody else to take the mail to the post office. Our post office is located in the same shopping center as Lowes. In fact, I drive right by the garden center. So its easy for me to see what plants are on clearance on a daily basis, if I choose. In this store, the clearance plants are located toward the back of the garden center. Sometimes when I check there are no plants. Sometimes there are some plants, but they look dead. Other times I have bought plants that had seen their better days, but with a little TLC have become some of my best plants. Last week I found perfectly healthy plants marked down to unbelievable prices. 6 packs of bedding annuals were 20 cents!

You can find clearance sections for plants at Walmart, also.

3. When buying plants look for pots that have more than one plant in the pot. Yesterday I bought a small Hosta for $3.00. BUT, there are at least 5 small plants in the pot, which I will divide before planting. Of course, if you are looking to have large plants to start with, you wouldn't want to divide them. I don't mind having small plants, since I realize it takes a while to have large established perennial plants.

I did this with a few pots of variegated money grass (Lirope) many years ago. I bought about 6 plants and divided them before planting. Now I have many healthy, good sized plants and can keep dividing them for more plants.

Happy gardening!

This post is a part of the From Seeds to Harvest series found HERE. and Frugal Fridays at LIFE AS MOM.