Money Saving Gardening Tips

Anyone who’s visited a garden centre this year will have seen how much more expensive things are. I’m not sure whether it’s worker costs, energy prices or problems with supply chains, but gardening essentials such as plants, seeds, and compost are all more pricey. So I thought it was time to share some money saving gardening tips.

#1.Divide Perennials in Your Garden

I’ve written about dividing perennials before. I typically do this with my own plants when they’re too overcrowded and start looking a bit poor at the centre of the plant. Dividing freshens a plant up. But it also is a nifty way to increase your stock of a plant for free! Kerching!

It feels a bit daunting the first time you do this, but be brave. After all, there are all sorts of plants you can divide – hostas, sedums, phlox, hardy geraniums, asters, daylilies, ornamental grasses, heucheras, primulas…I could go on.

And the good news is that now is the perfect time to split summer-flowering perennials. Simply lift the plant with a garden fork so that you get all of its root ball. Then – depending on the roots – either divide the plant using a sharp spade, or tease the roots apart. If it’s a large clump you might divide your plant into four or more plants.

#2.Divide Perennials You Buy

If you are buying a perennial at a garden centre, a good money saving gardening tip is to split the plant before you put it in your garden. It will soon regain its size and you’ll have two plants for the price of one. I’ve done this quite a few times, especially when planting up a border with a swathe of something.

A swathe involves probably three or five of something. But five new plants is pricey! However buying two plants and dividing them up to make my five is easy. Sure my border won’t look quite as full as it would with five new plants in the first year but you’d be amazed how quickly the divided plants catch up.

#3.Take Cuttings

Another way to increase your stock of plants for free is to take softwood and hardwood cuttings. I talked about this only a couple of weeks ago – so check out my blog and have a go. You’ve nothing to lose and so many potential savings – and a lot of gardening joy – to gain.

You can do root cuttings too. They are for me one of the most magical cuttings to take. As you get the wonderfully weird sight of a new plant poking its head out of the root.

If you have kids and want to get them into gardening, get them to help you. They’ll be hooked (though they’ll need a bit of patience waiting for the plant to emerge).

Root cuttings are best taken when plants are dormant – November through to March. So start thinking about it now. Not all plants work with root cuttings. It’s ideal for certain perennials that have rubbery roots – verbascums, oriental poppies, campanulas, phlox, Japanese anemones, anchusa and acanthus. So if you have any of these give it a go. Check out my root cuttings blog

#4. Make Your Own Potting Compost

When I was thinking about money saving gardening tips I though I must cover potting compost. It’s so expensive. But before I begin let me explain what potting compost is and why you need it. It’s a light, well-draining growing medium that’s good for plants grown in pots and trays. You can buy special types depending on how you are going to use it: For seeds, for young plants (potting on) and for established plants. But whichever you buy, the gist is that it’s very different from regular compost or garden soil which is too heavy and dense for most young pot plants.

So it’s definitely worth having, but with so many container plants, I spend a small fortune on potting compost. And the stuff has gone through the roof price-wise. A couple of years ago you could get three bags for £10 deals. Now, a single bag is often £10. And if you go for something a tiny bit cheaper it’s absolute rubbish.

So when I read the other day about some recipes for making your own potting compost I thought, I’m going to have a go.

Seed compost

First up let’s look at seed compost. Seeds don’t really need nutrients to get going, they just need moisture retention. And leaf mould is perfect for that. So the recipe for seed compost couldn’t be easier, simply sieve leaf mould, that’s it!

Now you don’t need to buy leaf mould, make it yourself. It’s so easy peasy. I’ve explained in detail how to make leaf mould. But the short explanation is stick fallen leaves from your trees in a large polythene bag, put in a bit of water – not too much, puncture the bag so air can get in and store the bag for a year. You go from scruffy sacks of leaves to this beautifully crumbly stuff in a year or so! Sorted.

Young Plants – Potting On

I’ve two recipes for young plants.

Option 1 – Collect some garden soil – do this from around the garden so you don’t create a massive hole somewhere. Sieve it to remove stones, lumps, and of course weeds. The last thing you want is weedy potting compost.

Then get organic matter (homemade compost or leaf mould) and again sieve it to remove lumps.

Mix the two together at a ratio of 70% soil, 30% organic matter. If your soil is very heavy you might want to lighten up your potting compost mix up and improve its drainage by adding some horticultural grit, perlite or coarse sand. If you do this, these elements want to amount to about 10% of the total mixture.

Option 2 – This second option I like the sound of more. Simply mix together 1/3 sieved leaf mould, 1/3 sieved garden compost and 1/3 sieved soil.

Established Plants

Garden soil is too heavy to use on its own in a container. In my experience you will want to mix it with something else to lighten it up as otherwise you pots may become waterlogged.

So mix 50% soil with 50% sieved homemade compost. There’s less need to sieve the garden soil as the established plants should be able to cope with the odd lump or bump, but I probably still would.

The homemade compost added to the soil not only lightens the mixture but adds nutrition to it. But the goodness won’t last forever. During the growing season the plant will use it up after six weeks. So, for your established plants kept in containers feed them. You can use slow release fertiliser which you add to the mixture when planting or a liquid feed. I tend to do a bit of both.

#5. Make Your Own Feed

This brings me neatly onto the next of my money saving gardening tips – make your own plant food.

At the peak of the growing season, when I’m feeding my pots every week or so, I can easily get through a bottle of liquid food each week! That’s one heck of a cost. So making your own plant feed is definitely worth having a go at. There are loads of recipes to try:

• Comfrey Feed
• Borage Tea
• Nettle Feed
• Grass Clippings Tea
• Green Tea
• Egg Shell Spray
• Urine

You can find them all here

#6. Don’t Impulse Buy

The last of my tips is around curbing your impulses! When I’m at a garden centre I’m forever amazed by the things I see people buying. Pots with a handful of tulips in bloom. These planted up pots cost so much more than the individual bulbs would cost and will last about a week once the person gets them home. Madness.

But it’s understandable. Garden centres are crammed with plants which look lovely and colourful. And if your garden is looking a bit lack-lustre it’s so tempting to try to solve the problem with a quick splurge.

But I would suggest that the most important of my money saving gardening tips is to resist the urge to impulse buy. If you don’t you will very possibly end up with something which isn’t likely to flower for long, or doesn’t fit with your garden scheme or plans.

By all means go to garden centres and have fun. Look at the lovely plants, get inspiration there, have a cuppa and cake, but don’t spend unless a plant is one you are actually looking for.

To help me avoid making expensive impulse purchases, I have a mental note of the colour schemes and heights of plants I’m going for in my borders and pots. If a plant doesn’t fit with these I look at it, love it from afar but I don’t get my purse out!

The only impulse purchase I’m allowed is from the sale table. This is often crammed with plants whose only crime is to be a bit small or out of season. You can occasionally find a real bargain. My lovely acer above was on a sale table once. What a wonderful bargain it was!

So that’s it. Six money saving gardening tips from me. Do you have any ideas of your own? Do share – happy gardening x