10 Tips On How to Garden On A Budget

Ready To Learn How To Garden On A Budget?

A Q&A with Gardening Experimenter Fiona Anderson

When I first started growing my own food I was shocked to discover how expensive it can be. This is rather ironic because for many of us the goal is to live a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle by cultivating our own fruits and vegetables.

But the reality is that containers, soil and fertiliser along with other gardening paraphernalia can end up being relatively costly over time. Not ideal in the current economic climate!

The good news is that it is possible to grow your own food without spending a ton of cash. Gardening on a budget isn’t always easy and definitely takes some organising. But if you plan ahead of time, you can move towards a more self-reliant lifestyle without unnecessary expenditure.

Here to explain more about this is Fiona Anderson, an experienced gardener, who has spent substantial time experimenting on the best ways to grow fruit and vegetables inexpensively.

I got to know Fiona via my Facebook group about growing food in small spaces. She’s a top contributor to the group and an oracle of knowledge when it comes to finding creative ways to garden.

Read on for Fiona’s top 10 tips on how to garden on a budget!

Table of Contents

How Fiona Discovered Gardening

Hannah: Fiona, great to have you here. Could you explain to the readers in a bit more detail
about how you got into gardening?

Fiona: I first started gardening when I lived in a first floor flat. As I had big windows in one room, I grew tomatoes in pots, with bamboo canes to tie them to. While I didn’t get a huge harvest, it was hugely satisfying to eat tomatoes straight off the vine – and very tasty too. However, growing in a flat is challenging.

At the time, I read a book called “Indoor Gardening”, which is sadly out of print, but which had several things to try. If I were in that situation again today, I would try growing peppers, sweet potatoes and other vining plants indoors in big tubs, The key for a small space indoors is to grow things upwards, to maximise the space and being indoors means you can grow stuff that would prefer a greenhouse.

Hannah: Vertical gardening is definitely a good way to maximise space. What are you doing with the garden at the moment?

Fiona: At this time of year, I start with my Winter Sowing (WS) in old milk bottles. I first heard of WS a couple of years ago and gave it a whirl and have been convinced by it.

Basically, the old milk bottles are prepped by cutting them almost in half, leaving a hinge, putting in drainage holes, adding compost/potting mix/etc, putting seeds on top of that and adding a sprinkling of soil, then resealing the halves together, using gaffer tape and leaving outdoors in all weather.

I number my bottles with paint pens and keep a list, because re-using them is easier with just a number, rather than with the seed names written on.

Outdoors in the back garden, I’ve taken up everything in my beds and put down manure and more compost, then covered over with plastic sheeting.

If I’d been more organised, I would have grown green manure plants in those beds, after harvesting the main crops, but real life has intervened! In my front garden I do have one bed of field beans growing as green manure, though.

Ultimately, when it comes to vertical gardening, choosing the right containers is probably the most important step you can take.

How To Garden On A Budget: Top Tips

Hannah: Growing food isn’t as cheap as it sounds. How can those who are on a budget keep costs down?

Fiona: Ok, I have a few tips…

• Newspapers
• Cardboard
• Pallets
• Milk bottles
• Stuff neighbours put out
• Old dustbins
• Cheap cat litter trays
• Budget stores supplies
• Charity shops
• Garden tools

1. Newspapers – I collect a bunch of newspapers at a time and used to carry round a bag just in case. The vendors are extremely happy to get rid of a whole load and in those metal stands, there’s usually plenty of leftovers at the end of the day.

I used to use newspapers for making pots for seeds, and you can use an old tin to make the shape round. I used to stand these pots in a cat litter tray, for ease of watering and for carrying in and out for hardening off. These days, I use torn up and scrunched newspaper pages in my compost.

2. Cardboard – I use this for lining my compost cages, to keep the contents warmer and to prevent the mess leaking out the sides – it does that anyway, but less annoyingly so with cardboard sides.

I get my card from either stuff my other half orders in, or big card envelopes, or looking around on recycling day, to see if my neighbours have tossed any out on the kerb beside their bin.

3. Pallets – Most pallets in this country are fine to use, but I avoid the ones that are coloured, or that have ‘MB’ stamped on them – there’s info online about pallet codes – so I avoid getting chemicals into what I’m growing. I just wander round the local area, and if I see builders at work, I’ll ask them if I can have their pallets once they’ve finished with them. They’re usually happy to give them away, as otherwise they have to pay to dispose of them.

Indeed on one occasion, a builder gave me two of his workers to carry the pallets down the street for me and on another occasion a different builder drove round to drop off four pallets for me! I never knew there were so many types of pallets, but I do check if it’s possible to carry them, as some can be too heavy for me.

I have a sack truck now, that my partner gave me, that I use to transport them, which is very much easier. I also use pallets for making compost cages. I now have two of the pallet cubes that are rarer (and very much heavier) and I use them as the base to attach bamboo poles to, to grow squash up high on several levels.

4. Milk bottles – My other half drinks two bottles of milk (two litre size) a week, so I rinse them and save them as planting pots. Most types of bottles of two litre size and above are fine, I just use milk bottles because it’s easy. As only 12% of plastic has ever been recycled, I figure the more I can reuse several times, the better.

5. Stuff neighbours put out – My neighbours here do put out stuff they’ve finished with, as freebies. I’ve got small, medium, and huge planters, as well as seedlings. I also have one local who has been giving me their lawn clippings since the first lockdown, because they like to be green. I do keep that in a separate compost cage, so any potential chemicals have time to leach out, away from my main compost cage.

They actually had their lawn treated and their contractor’s website says it can be used as compost after leaving for several months. I also have a local gardener, who mainly clips old people’s gardens, so he’s happy to give me that, as it saves him having to pay to take it to the tip. Unfortunately, he’s running down his business and retiring.

6. Old dustbins I use to drown weeds in – Some weeds can be used straight for composting, but others are pernicious and invasive, so I put those in old dustbins (I found a couple here when I moved in) and add water and just leave them for months or years, until they’ve rotted to gloop, then I can use that gloop on my compost heaps.

7. Cat litter trays – These are very useful and I do think it’s a lot cheaper to repurrpose (!) cat trays, than to buy specialist stuff.

8. Budget store supplies – I’ve not noticed any huge difference in quality of stuff from some budget-type shops than from specialist suppliers, so I do tend to check those out first. The exception is certain specialist seed suppliers, where I’m looking for something budget stores don’t supply, but even seeds from them are fine, as long as you’re not looking for anything unusual.

9. Charity shops – While I have spent some cash on new gardening books, I bought a lot of books from charity shops first, to read around and get a feel for what I might like to try or to avoid when gardening. New books are expensive, though ebooks are cheaper. But charity shop books give you a feel for what’s possible.

10. Garden tools – You’ll see vast arrays of tools in some gardening books, but I only use a few. In my opinion, it’s best to start with one or two, then only buy more when you actually need that particular tool, otherwise you’ll have a whole array of unused stuff hanging around.

So I like secateurs, gardening gloves, a trowel and a kid’s pointed small shovel, plus twine to start, I’ve also splashed out on a Zubat saw, as I needed to take down a few small trees and that wasn’t cheap at all, but I could never have physically managed a normal saw, so that actually was worth the money. I’m a 60 plus woman and can do most stuff, but I just don’t have the upper body strength for big spades, forks, or saws.

Growing Food In Small Spaces

“I would recommend growing upwards, using pots and bamboo stakes. One year, I grew sweet potatoes this way and ate the leaves for months.”

Hannah: Some amazing tips – you are certainly very resourceful. Now, as you know from the Facebook group I run, a lot of us live in flats or other small spaces without a ton of room to grow vegetables. Often it’s easier to grow vegetables indoors on the windowsill because of a lack of space outside. You’ve touched on this previously in the blog – but do you have any further tips on how people in this situation can make the most of the space?

Fiona: As previously mentioned, I would recommend growing upwards, using pots and bamboo stakes. One year, I grew sweet potatoes this way and ate the leaves for months, before harvesting the tubers in November. The leaves are tasteless, so I just tossed them in my stews etc.

Some years I have great results, others not much at all, so hit and miss, but great when they work. Tomatoes, obviously. Even beans, Basically anything that’s vertical, to maximise your space. But also just grow things you like – not much point in having a bumper crop of something you just endure eating.

Hannah: Good point! Have you conducted any interesting experiments recently?

Fiona: My back garden is set up in a more traditional allotment style, with ten beds and loads of fifty litre containers. I use those containers for experimenting with new (to me) vegetables like oca. I actually wasn’t impressed with the results, although I’d read about it beforehand.

On the other hand, my yacon grew a lot bigger, but not as big as in the article I read, possibly because it was in a container. I intend to grow mainly perennials and decorative edibles in my front garden, so I’m testing out various things each year, just to see what works. The front garden is shingles and weed matting and will take a lot of time to deal with, so I just do one area at a time, so plenty of time to experiment meanwhile. And if my test perennials survive, I’ll have something to plant out, when there’s space for them.

Hannah: Do you have any other tips on how people can think out of the box when it comes to gardening?

Fiona: Well, I outlined the specifics above, but I think it’s a mindset too – you just need to get used to looking around and noticing what’s there for the taking. Before I started gardening, I’d have been too shy to approach people, but now asking builders/neighbours/etc for stuff is easy and I also look at stuff with the idea of “how could I use that” rather than splashing out on dedicated gardening stuff.

How To Garden Sustainably

Hannah: What’s great about your approach is it’s sustainable as well as inexpensive. How do you tackle problems like the extreme weather conditions we’ve seen in the UK over the last couple of years?

Fiona: Whatever your view on climate change, it can’t be denied that last year’s 40 degree weather was a horrible shock. I took note of what survived and what didn’t and this year I’ll be planting two or three varieties of things, to see how they survive – I don’t want to spend my life carting water around or looking at dead plants, so experimenting to avoid that is essential. I’ll also be looking at what people in hotter areas grow, and try more new types of veg. As to watering itself, I looked at buying ollam pots, like Mexican farmers, and decided that was horrifyingly expensive, so used porous terracotta pots (with blu tack in the hole) instead. That does make life easier, as does having an increased height in my raised beds, and mulching on top of the soil.

Hannah: Thank you so much for your excellent advice Fiona!