Frugal Gardening

May 29th, 2008

   About 80 percent of the plants in Cheryl Martin’s yard were free or dirt cheap.

   Ditto for most of her hardscaping, patio furniture, pots and assorted ornaments that dot her quarter-acre Fairview Twp. property.

   Martin is a master of frugal gardening – newly popular as gas prices, food prices and other daily expenses sap the life out of family budgets.

   The pots on her deck and in her gardens all came from yard sales for 50 cents to $1 each.

   The annual flowers in them cost pennies each because Martin started them from seeds under inexpensive fluorescent workshop lights in her basement.

   The flagstone path in her side yard was free – built from stone someone in Lemoyne set out for the trash.

   “We were at a friend’s house and saw the stones just sitting along the curb,” says Martin, a teacher for the Capital Area Intermediate Unit.

   Martin and husband, Bruce, asked to haul them away, and the people were glad to get rid of them.

   An ankle-high retaining wall that lines Martin’s wooded side-yard gardens came from stone in a Harrisburg basement. The owners were renovating and advertised them as “free” in the Patriot-News classified ads.

   All of the furnishings on the back deck came from yard sales for about $200 total. That includes a metal table with four chairs; a plant stand; three metal nesting tables; a wicker table with two chairs; a tablecloth, and a variety of pots, hanging baskets and decorative plaques.

   As for the plants, most are freebies from neighbors, yard-sale finds, trades from friends and co-workers, divisions from existing plants and bargains from year-end sales at the garden center.

   Learn to be savvy like this, and you can cut your gardening budget down to almost nothing.

   Here’s how Martin does it:

You never know what gardening bargains might turn up at a yard sale.

   * Yard-saling. The best bets: development-wide sales in maturing neighborhoods.

   “In younger neighborhoods, you’ll find mostly toys, baby clothes and wedding gifts,” Martin says. “In older neighborhoods, where people are down-sizing, that’s where you’ll find things like tables and hardscaping. I bought a park bench for $8 from an older lady who was just ready for a new one.”

   I followed Martin on a yard-sale excursion two Saturdays ago and watched as she collected a car-trunk full of pots, a plant stand, a pair of new picnic baskets, three cut-flower vases and a set of resin sun-and-moon wall plaques – all for less than $10.

   We also encountered a soil test kit, a $10 lawn spreader and a roll of plastic garden fence identical to a roll I recently bought for $10 at a home center. The owner was asking 25 cents for the roll.

   Martin spray-paints most of her found furniture and metal objects black or dark green so they look both new and uniform.

   “I like to look at people’s landscaping at yard sales, too,” Martin says. “It’s great for getting ideas. Sales give you a good excuse to be there. Otherwise, people would think I’m a stalker.”

   * Bargain plant sources. Yard sales are just one place where you may find sellers who pot up plant divisions from their yard at $1 a pop.

   Some of Martin’s yard-sale plant finds: daylilies, hosta, iris, dahlias, colchicums, cannas, sweet woodruff and even tomato seedlings.

   Just be aware that some pass-along plants seed or spread very quickly (i.e. forget-me-nots, evening primrose, ribbon grass and lily-of-the-valley, to name a few), so be prepared to control these.

   Some homeowners might even dig up a division on request.

   “I’ve never asked that, but I think most people would be flattered that you like something of theirs,” says Martin. “Plus, they can always just say no.”

   Martin also scans the ads and news items for plant sales and plant exchanges that many organizations and individuals have each spring.

   She also keeps her eyes peeled for road-side plant sales, she often trades plants with co-workers, and she has neighbors who have given her unwanted peonies and a basket full of dug-up daffodil bulbs.

   If she must buy, Martin watches for sales – particularly year-end ones.

   “Perennials might not look their best then, but you might get them for $1 each,” she says.

   Martin also has four white pines in her yard that she bought for next to nothing one year right after Christmas. They were unsold Christmas trees.

   As plants grow, she digs up divisions and seedlings and fills new areas with the freebies.

Cheryl Martin's inexpensive seed-starting stand saves a bundle in store-bought plants.

   * Start seeds. Rather than pay $2 to $4 for annual flowers at the garden center, Martin buys seed packs and starts her own plants under a tripod plant stand her husband built.

   The cost is about a fifth of buying plants, and Martin can use left-over seeds for two or three years down the road.

   “Plus it’s fun playing in the dirt in February,” she adds.

   * Recycled mulch. The Martins invested in a wood chipper, so they grind up prunings from their yard and a neighbor’s yard for mulch in their garden paths.

   They’ve also used free chips when a tree-trimming company is working in the neighborhood.

   * Think outside the box. Just because an item was intended for one use doesn’t mean it can’t serve another in the garden.

   Martin’s yard has dishes that are now bird baths, kitchen hot pads that are now trivets under pots, and cracked crocks that are now flower pots in her garden beds.

   Although she usually knows what she’s going to do with an item before buying, Martin says a good bargain-hunter’s rule of thumb is, when in doubt, buy.

   “I never regret things that I buy, but I have regretted things that I didn’t buy,” she says.

   Besides, if you end up with something you don’t want, you can always have your own yard sale.

    More ways to save money in the garden:

   * Make your own compost and use it instead of bagged amendments. If you buy bags, ask about discounted broken ones.

   * Check with your municipality as a source of free mulch and composted leaves.

   * Recycle household items, such as cut-off soda bottles as plant protectors, yogurt cups as seedling pots or an old washtub as a container water garden. More ideas: www.frugalgardening.com.

    * Use fewer flowers in your pots. It’ll take more patience for a full look, but you’ll save money.

   * Put houseplants to double use by moving them outside in a shady to partly shaded spot in summer. Cut-back Christmas poinsettias work great as pot centerpieces or in-ground mini-shrubs (although they’ll be green, not red).

   * Overwinter tropicals inside as houseplants to reuse them in next year’s outdoor pots. Best bets: cannas, elephant ears, mandevilla, tropical hibiscus, rex begonias, bougainvillea.

   * Pot up a few annuals for inside before frost kills them. Later in winter, take cuttings for free plants next year. Best bets: coleus, perilla and geraniums.

   * Collect and save seed at year end from your favorite flowers. Best bets: marigolds, ornamental hot peppers, zinnias, cleome, cosmos, nasturtiums.

   * Take cuttings of woody plants to grow your own new shrubs. How to: visit www.freeplants.com or get a copy of “Easy Plant Propagation” by Michael J. McGroarty ($14.95, AuthorHouse, 2006).

   * Cut down on pesticides by pulling weeds instead of spraying, hand-picking bugs, tolerating imperfection and using homemade treatments such as vinegar instead of Roundup or a fungicide of 1 tablespoon of baking soda, 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon of dishwashing liquid to 1 gallon of water.

   * More gardening money-savers: GardenWeb has a forum devoted to gardening on the cheap at http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/frugal. Two books on the topic (both out of print but available cheap and used online at www.amazon.com are: “Dirt Cheap Gardening” by Rhonda Massingham Hart (Storey Communication, 1995) and “The Frugal Gardener” by Catriona Tudor Erler (Rodale Press, 2001).