Frugal Gardening part 1

Gardening can be quite an expensive pastime, specimen plants, proprietary feeds and hard landscaping can all quickly consume a budget. However, over the next few weeks I will be sharing some of my best money saving top tips, to try to explain how I make our money go that little bit further. After all, it is the least you might expect from someone with my birthright, a proud Yorkshireman. 

My first top tip for saving money is to buy small and grow big. Most years I will succumb to one (or more) offers to buy an instant summer display. For a very modest price an online nursery or garden plant  supplier will send through the post a positive cornucopia of delights. Normally supplied as tiny plugs they can, with a little care, be grown on to make healthy plants ready for mid may planting out.

You can easily grow a hundred or more plants that might otherwise cost £3.99 or more at your local garden centre. Of course, they will have invested in the time and the trouble to grow their specimens into something of a sale-able and garden ready size. But it is good fun to watch and tend your own specimens grow by the day.

I accept that growing from seed is in many ways preferable but most of use have limited propagator space so this short cut is an additional strategy. Besides a dozen packets of seed, needed to match the variety of these offers can amount to pretty much the same or more than the initial outlay on the plug plants.

Tiny plugs are posted in plastic containers

Plugs can be as small as your thumb nail

 A healthy root system

I like to tease out the roots before potting up

Each plug is put into potting on compost

Standing in a bath of water for about 30 minutes

Be sure to label each tray of plant cells

Save more money with these labels (but they do not last terribly well once damp)

In a matter of weeks you will have a greenhouse or conservatory overflowing with plants. This is just a small selection of those I grew last year.

 

Finally, you might want to pot on one last time or at this stage it can go straight out into the garden. However, given the possibility of cold Pennine nights, even into May, I usually like to pot up and take outside to a sheltered spot or the cold frame to allow hardening off.