It’s a brand-new week and I have some cheap gardening ideas for you.
Some of these you will already be familiar with if you have read my books or watch my videos on YouTube, and others may be new. I find it’s good to review ideas now and again and get re-inspired, so let’s go for it!
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #1: Make a Free Trellis
On Palm Sunday I posted a video sharing how to make a free (and sturdy) garden trellis from sticks:
That’ll hold yer beans!
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #2: Grow Citrus Trees from Seed
I love free fruit trees, and citrus are super easy to start.
There are some interesting things about citrus genetics, too – some produce totally true to type, and some don’t. As Rafael comments:
“Many citrus cultivars reproduce exact copies of the parent tree. The process is called polyembryony, more specifically, Nucellar embryony. Citrus cultivars are quite variable in regards to the production of Nucellar, vs Zygotic embryony. Dancy tangerine is 100% nucellar (all seedlings are identical to the parent tree. Temple tangor has 0% of it’s progeny identical to itself…”
Citrus are really easy to grow, and seedlings will usually make good fruit when they grow up, like most other seed-grown fruit trees!
We’ve also grown cashews, mango, peaches, plums, pawpaws and many other fruit trees from seed. It’s worth it!
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #3: Make Free Raised Beds
Two tools!
Or, alternately, you can make a Lasagna Garden without any tilling:
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #4: Start Your Own Plant Nursery
And then start making $$$ from your plant hobby!
You can also check out my book on starting a backyard plant nursery. I’ll be starting a new one soon!
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #5: Propagate Thornless Blackberries
Instead of buying a dozen or so thornless blackberries for your gardens, why not buy one, then use your machete to start a bunch more?
I love free plants.
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #6: Make a Self-Watering Kiddie Pool Garden
I don’t always garden in kiddie pools, but when I do, I drink beer.
By the way, that’s probably the best thumbnail I ever made.
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #7: Get Food from Your Food Forest FAST!
Sometimes we think too short-term, and sometimes we think too long-term.
Here’s how to get a happy medium and start reaping calories while still building a super long-term garden:
Later this year I hope my garden looks that good! We transplanted our gardens in August onto our new property. Can’t wait to see everything in full growth.
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #8: Start Your Own Sweet Potato Slips
Go to the grocery store, get some sweet potatoes, then do this!
We love growing our own sweet potatoes, but don’t like buying transplants. I have a big pot of vines right now we did with this method. They’ll start going in the ground today!
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #9: Make Your Own Fertilizer
I love this method of creating liquid plant fertilizer:
Thin it out to start, perhaps 10 parts water to one part swamp water, then apply it to plants. If they like it, you’re good. If nothing happens after a few days, then up the dosage. Your initial inputs make a difference. It can be weak or too “hot,” depending on what you add at the beginning of the brewing.
CHEAP GARDENING IDEA #10:
Make chicken compost and turn your scraps into a huge pile of soil fertility!
We got many wheelbarrows of compost this way – it works like gangbusters, and it’s way easier than turning a compost pile. Plus, we get eggs!
Conclusion
As I’ve heard it said, “it’s not redneck… it’s… sustainable!”
Work with what you have and save cash for other things. Gardening doesn’t need to be expensive!
Got more ideas? Leave ’em in the comments below.
3 comments
This is the kind of info that helps me so much! I’ve only been gardening for a few years, and I learned most of my skills because of youtube. My grandparents were farmers in south Georgia…I’m talking full-blown, old school, everything-from-scratch, canning, ringing chicken necks, homesteading pioneer types. But I was too smart and sophisticated to care about any of that stuff then. A few years ago, I got this gnawing deep desire to start a garden. My grandparents had been gone a long time, so I turned to youtube. It took me a while to figure out who to listen to, and I made a lot of silly mistakes. When I found your channel, everything started to make sense, and it seemed like I might could actually DO this. I saw how you and your wife just figured out how to do things and seemed to have fun doing it. I remember Rachel showing us how to peel and deal with yams when y’all were living on the island, and also when she taught us how to ferment cucumber pickles in a jar. I still can see that rusted lid she put on the jar and I thought, “Hey, I’ve got some rusted lids, and I was going to throw them away. Maybe I’ll keep them.” And you, of course, who just instinctively knows how to GROW, and your reckless abandon with dirt makes it feel like all things are possible!
The following is a true story. The other day, I was trying to watch a youtube gardening video, and I was annoyed by several interruptions. I was trying to listen to my pressure canner through my cracked door as I was bottle-feeding our lamb on the porch. My loaf of einkorn bread was cooling on a rack, and I glanced up at my wall calendar and saw that it was time to take the pork belly out of the wet cure in the fridge and put it on to smoke for bacon. All this was whirling around in my mind, and I was seriously irritated that I had to keep re-starting my youtube video so I could learn to be a homesteader. At that very moment it occurred to me that maybe I was ALREADY a homesteader. I mean, canning, lamb, baking, bacon….kinda sounds like a homesteader. In all my zeal to learn everything, I forgot that I was actually learning along the way, and that I was even doing the things I had learned. I guess I was waiting for someone to give me a “certified homesteader” certificate from a youtube correspondence program that doesn’t exist.
I said all this rambling stuff to let you know that all your years of videos, and all the work that y’all have done really does pay off. There are people like me who heard a call to garden and were looking for our “Moses” to lead us through the wilderness into the promised land. And now that I’ve made it, even though I’m still on the edge of it looking in, I’m grateful for your help. Don’t ever forget what a difference you’re making. These “gardening hacks” you’re sharing are the kinds of things that should be passed down through generations. I just wish I had been smart enough to say these same words to my grandparents when I had the chance.
Wow. When I read back over this, it sounds a little melodramatic. Especially the “Moses” part. Oh well, I guess I love gardening and homesteading. So sue me. :-)
Citrus from seed is easy can can be very productive. We ended up with a 15 ft tall (and at least 15 ft wide) Myer Lemon that was a seedling. It bore fruit in 4 years and when we sold the house we picked almost 50 lbs of lemons and left as many on the tree for the new owners.
That is fantastic.