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5 Things You Can Do this Fall to Save Money in the Garden next Spring

September 24, 2018

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We’ve all been there.  Promising ourselves that this is the year we will stay on budget in the garden centre.  But $100 soon becomes $200 and then you realize that you need “just one more thing” and suddenly your best attempts at not spending too much quickly spiral into $500 on bedding plants and seeds in the blink of an eye.

So what’s a gardener to do?

Here’s 5 ways this Fall you can make a dent in your gardening budget next Spring.

Looking for a way to be more frugal in your garden? I'll share my best tips and ideas for beginners on saving money in their vegetable or flower garden. Here's to gardening on a budget!! #gardening #budget #frugal #hacks #tips #ideas #for beginners #vegetable #flower

Plant Heirlooms and Save the Seeds

The easiest way to save money in the garden is by saving seeds.  Sure, you’ll have an initial investment, but after that your cost is essentially zero.  Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, lettuce, squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers are all really easy vegetables to start with.

When you do buy your initial seeds, make sure you get heirloom, open pollinated varieties and not hybrids.  If you plant a seed saved from a hybrid vegetable, you’ll get a plant that resembles one of the “parents” that went into making the hybrid, not the hybrid itself.

Not sure where to buy seeds?  Here’s a list of Canadian companies, and one for the US.

Looking for a way to be more frugal in your garden? I'll share my best tips and ideas for beginners on saving money in their vegetable or flower garden. Here's to gardening on a budget!! #gardening #budget #frugal #hacks #tips #ideas #for beginners #vegetable #flower

Collect Seeds From Easy to Save Annuals

Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to spend a fortune to make your front yard look amazing?  Save seeds from marigolds, sunflowers, nasturtiums, zinnias, calendula, and more for an easy and cheap flower garden next year.  Or plant them amongst your vegetable garden for some wonderful companion planting benefits.

Divide and Share Overgrown Perennials

More established gardeners are often happy to share perennials plants that have grown a bit too big for their intended space.  The parent plant often ends up revived the next growing season and you end up with some free plants for your yard.  Win!

Before you get too excited, you might want to read over this list of plants that can quickly turn into a nightmare in zone 2 and 3, and this one for all the warmer zones.

Favourite plant on the list?  You can still plant it!!  Just know that if you’re not willing or able to maintain it every year, you’ll quickly have an overgrown mess on your hands.

Take Cuttings of Annual Plants and Grow them Indoors Over Winter

For years my mother has taken cuttings of her favourite coleus and german ivy plants and grown them over the winter.  Then, in Spring, she takes multiple cuttings from those indoor plants and has enough plants that she doesn’t need to buy them from the nursery.  Although lets be real. . . a new variety or two always makes it’s way into the cart.

How do you take a cutting?  It’s quite simple.  Cut the plant so that it has a bit of a stem.  Put the stem in water until it grows roots, usually in around a week.  Transfer your newly rooted cuttings to a pot with dirt.  Put them in a spot with adequate sunlight, water every few days, and repeat the process in spring.

Looking for a way to be more frugal in your garden? I'll share my best tips and ideas for beginners on saving money in their vegetable or flower garden. Here's to gardening on a budget!! #gardening #budget #frugal #hacks #tips #ideas #for beginners #vegetable #flower

Get Serious About Composting

Don’t throw away those kitchen scraps and old leaves!  They are the perfect ingredients for making a nutrient-rich compost for your soil.

If you’ve never composted before, know that composting can be a bit of a waiting game (unless you vermicompost or hot compost).  Your home compost will need to sit a couple of months and sometimes up to a year to be fully ready to use in your garden.  The time depends on a couple of factors, such as how frequently (if at all) you turn it, and if you live in an area that has extremely cold winters or not.

If you live someplace where the whole winter is below freezing, the composting process will stop for the winter and re-start in the spring.

Check with your municipality if they have a compost program.  Some cities offer free compost to their citizens!!

Looking for a way to be more frugal in your garden? I'll share my best tips and ideas for beginners on saving money in their vegetable or flower garden. Here's to gardening on a budget!! #gardening #budget #frugal #hacks #tips #ideas #for beginners #vegetable #flower

Kristen Raney

Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots.  She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden.  She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.

4 Comments
Filed Under: Gardening, Saving Money Tagged: compost, flower, frugal, Garden, Gardening, perennial, plants, propagate, save money, tips, vegetable

About Kristen Raney

Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots.  She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden.  She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.

Comments

  1. Alayna says

    September 26, 2018 at 1:14 pm

    Hi Kristen! I live in Regina and am wondering if you have any advice for what to do with herbs for the winter. I'm fairly new to gardening still and have lots of parsley, lemon thyme, sage, lavender, and chives that I don't really know what to do with. Mostly just how much I can cut from the plants without taking too much for them to survive the winter. Thanks!
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      September 27, 2018 at 9:29 am

      Hi Alayna, thanks for reaching out! There's a couple of things you can do. 1. Pick all the herbs you have now and either dry them or freeze them for use all winter 2. Pot them up and bring them indoors (I think this is what you were getting at in your question). I think as long as you leave 3-5 inches of the plant, they should still grow a bit over the winter in a south facing window. 3. Leave the hardy ones outdoors to overwinter. Your chives will be just fine, but I don't think the rest of them can overwinter--especially the lavender. However, if you still have the tags, check them to see if they're hardy to zone 3. If you have any more questions, reply to the comments again, or join us on the Shifting Roots FB page or the Growing Roots Gardening Community group on FB. I usually get to those a little faster than I do blog comments.
      Reply
  2. Heidi says

    November 16, 2019 at 5:38 pm

    I wish I had the space to grow my annuals indoors over the winter... I mean, I guess I kind of do, but my cat would dig into them. I need a greenhouse! :)
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      November 28, 2019 at 10:03 am

      Yes! Cats are wonderful, but they do tend to get into everything.
      Reply

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Welcome!

Hi, I'm Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

P.S. First time gardener? You'll want to download the quick start gardening guide below!

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Welcome!

Hi, I’m Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

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Are you gardening in containers this year? When y Are you gardening in containers this year?  When you're shopping for vegetable seeds, look for varieties that have names with words like patio, tiny, small, etc.  While lots of vegetable varieties will do fine in a container, you'll have an easier time with ones that are specifically bred for that situation.⁠
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📸 by @blushbrandphotography
I'm living the pepper dream in this photo. While I'm living the pepper dream in this photo.  While these ones are a bit on the small side, who doesn't want ripe peppers in July in zone 3?!?! ⁠
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Over the years I've gotten better at growing peppers, and I promise I'll spill my secrets in February when it's actually time to start them.  Until then, get yourself all or one of my four favourite varieties: ⁠
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🌶️Carmen⁠
🌶️Escamillo⁠
🌶️Candy Stripe⁠
🌶️Hungarian Hot Wax⁠
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Do you have a favourite pepper variety?⁠
⁠
Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately? It Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately?  It's so easy to get completely overwhelmed, especially if you're new to gardening.  Why are there so many varieties of everything and which ones do I choose?⁠
⁠
Here's how I try to narrow it down.⁠
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🌤️ Short growing season like me?  Try and prioritize varieties that have short dates to maturity.⁠
🥗 What do you or your family actually eat?  While I think you should always try a couple of new things, there's no sense in planting a giant garden filled with vegetables that you're not going to cook with. ⁠
🥒 Do you care whether your vegetables are heirlooms or hybrids?  Heirlooms are the kind that have been around for 50+ years and you can save seeds from.  Believe it or not, this year we're prioritizing hybrids for some of our garden.  The Hermit @mgsraney is obsessed with production this year, so anything that's going in "his" greenhouse better be able to produce a lot.  I'm using more heirlooms in my "glamour garden" as we call it, because I want things that are pretty and I can save seeds from.⁠
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What do you prioritize when you're picking out seeds?⁠
Last week we started thinking about our plans for Last week we started thinking about our plans for cut flower gardening, now this week we start thinking about plans for our vegetable gardens.  Unlike cut flowers, there's not as many vegetables that need to be started ridiculously early.  However, it's still fun to plan and dream and get your thoughts sorted.⁠
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I'm curious--what size of garden do you have to work with?  Are you on an acreage or farm, city backyard, or do you have a couple of pots on an apartment patio?⁠
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As for me, I have quite a mix.  I have my container garden on my backyard deck, the small cut flower garden in my yard, then vegetables in raised beds.  We also garden at my Mother-in-law's acreage, so there's a giant garden over there where we're figuring out how to grow food on a larger scale.  Then finally, sometimes my Mom grows things for me in her garden if I'm nervous that I'll ruin them in my own garden--call it a backup garden if you will.⁠
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📸 by @blushbrandphotography
I hope you've enjoyed this week of chatting about I hope you've enjoyed this week of chatting about the best flowers to plant in a cut flower garden.  There's so many options, these 5 that I talked about all week don't even come close.  If you need more help creating a small cut flower garden, I created this plan intended for a raised bed (but you can plant it in-ground too.⁠
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Head over to my insta links page on my profile, and you'll see the button to click on that will take you directly to it.⁠
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#cutflowergarden #cutflowers #raisedbedgarden #raisedbedgardening  #growyourown #greenthumb #raisedbeds #urbangarden #urbanfarm #squarefootgardening #slowflowers
Hey friends! There's a lot of new faces in this l Hey friends!  There's a lot of new faces in this little corner of IG, so I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Kristen and I'm the gardener & content creator behind Shifting Roots.  I'm wife to @mgsraney and mom to 3 kids, ages 8, 23 months and 7 months.  Needless to say, our house is BUSY.  I garden in zone 3 in Saskatoon, SK, so if I can grow it in my short growing season and cold temperatures, you probably can too.⁠
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Here's a few fun facts, can you relate to any of these?⁠
🍅I don't like raw tomatoes, but I grow a ton of them because I like tomato sauce.⁠
💐I probably sound like every flower is my favourite flower, but my two favourites are peonies and zinnias.⁠
🌈I can't pick a favourite colour--I love so many of them in different circumstances.  If you force me to choose, I think I've got it narrowed down to coral and turquoise, but even then I still want to throw in yellow, emerald green, fuchsia. . . ⁠
🖤Even though I love colour to the moon and back, you'll often find me wearing black and white in real life, because it's just easier and I don't have to think about it going together.
When you think of rudbeckia, do you think of those When you think of rudbeckia, do you think of those maybe-slightly-boring flowers with yellow petals and a brown centre? (Please don't come at me with your pitchforks if that's your favourite flower!!)⁠
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Rudbeckias, like these orange and burgundy ones, can be so much more!  Pair them with sunflowers & amaranth for an especially striking late summer bouquet.⁠
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🤞I'll have amaranth and sunflowers this year to play around with.⁠
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Need help planning the cut flower garden of your dreams?  It doesn't have to be complicated.  Grab your copy of Cut Flowers Made Simple and have pails of flowers like this one at your fingertips.⁠
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See my link in bio and click on the ebooks button.
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