Digging for Dollar$

How to Save Money in the Garden

George Weigel
Penn Lines Contributor

 

Plant prices are up sharply the past two years.

So is the cost of insecticides, fertilizers, deer repellents, mulch, tools, and other accessories gardeners use to keep their green investments alive.

Even bagged dirt is no longer dirt-cheap.

But none of it seems to be discouraging Pennsylvanians from gardening.

“People are just gardening smarter,” says Mary Ann Ryan, the Penn State Master Gardener coordinator in Adams County. “For example, we’re seeing a lot more interest in starting plants from seed, which is cheaper than buying plants.”

“We sometimes hear complaints (about prices),” says Mary Jo Gibson, a Penn State Master Gardener in Columbia County who also manages the greenhouse at a local retailer, “but the younger gardeners, in particular, seem to be taking it in stride.”

Gibson thinks higher prices might be making more of an impression on the “less young” because they remember when prices were much lower.

As Ryan puts it: “Long gone is the day of the $10 perennial container.”

These days, a gallon-sized perennial can easily fetch $20 or more. So, with interest in gardening growing — along with prices — how can those who love to play in the dirt enjoy their hobby without breaking the budget?

We did some digging, talked to a few experts and came up with an abundance of tips.

Saving on plant purchases

You could pay full price at prime planting time like the majority of gardening consumers, or you could pay half or less with some bargain-sniffing strategies.

Start by looking for markdowns on overstocked, out-of-bloom, or past-prime plants. These are often perfectly healthy… just not attractive enough to fetch top dollar.

Four top savers: 1) perennials relegated to a bargain rack after they’ve finish blooming for the season; 2) annuals and vegetables that are still viable but unsold after the spring rush; 3) trees and shrubs that are misshapen but fixable with pruning and patience; and 4) tulips, daffodils, and other spring-blooming bulbs that are often 50% off when unsold, but still plantable until the end of October.

If you shop local, join your favorite garden center’s loyalty program. These offer discounts, coupons, rewards and special sales to regular customers.

While you’re at it, let local garden center managers know you’re interested in plants they want to clear out. You might get a call before plants go on the clearance rack — and maybe even year-end freebies.

Often, lower prices can be had by buying directly from area greenhouse growers or smaller, outlying plant-sellers.

“I know more (gardeners) are driving to the country garden centers,” landscape designer Erica Jo Shaffer, a member of Adams Electric Cooperative, says. “The prices on the outskirts of bigger towns are always better.”

Bargains are sometimes possible through mail-order and online vendors; however, expect the plants to be small and “bare root” — i.e., shipped with weight-saving packing material around the roots instead of soil. Coddle them in a pot for a year to maximize success.

Plant bargains also can be found from unconventional sources, including plant societies, Master Gardener plant sales, libraries, public gardens, farmer’s markets, schools, and garden clubs — all of which often hold plant-sale fundraisers using divisions from members’ yards, locally started seedlings, and discounted greenhouse transplants.

“Our garden club has an annual plant sale, and we sell out of perennials,” says Sheila Croushore, president of the Somerset Garden Club, Somerset County, and a member of Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative. She notes these plants — mostly divisions dug from members’ own gardens — are small, but go for $5 to $7 each.

Lori Voll-Wallace, the Penn State Master Gardener area coordinator for 17 Northern Tier counties, says some groups also run “seed swaps” in which gardeners trade excess or saved seeds with one another at no cost.

You might also encounter plants at yard sales. These sometimes can be bargain-priced, dig-your-own gold mines. “But sometimes it’s the invasive stuff people are trying to get rid of,” Shaffer warns. “Be sure you know what you are getting.”

Landscape companies are another overlooked resource. Landscapers routinely dig up healthy plants during renovations simply because they’ve outgrown the space or a new homeowner doesn’t like them. They may let you salvage their dig-outs before they go to a dump.
 

Landscape designer Erica Jo Shaffer, a member of Adams Electric Cooperative, says many gardeners hunt for bargains on the outskirts of town — in the country — where prices are often lower.
BARGAIN HUNTING: Landscape designer Erica Jo Shaffer, a member of Adams Electric Cooperative, says many gardeners hunt for bargains on the outskirts of town — in the country — where prices are often lower. (Photo courtesy of George Weigel)
 

Ways to trim the plant budget

Wherever you buy plants, opt for less-expensive smaller sizes. “It’s much cheaper to buy small, be patient and watch the plants grow,” Croushore says.

Buying small especially saves on trees, which can double in price for just 2 or 3 feet of additional height. Research has found that smaller transplant sizes usually establish faster and catch up to their bigger brethren within a few years.

Another good strategy: Buy fewer plants up front and allow more space between them, Shaffer says. “Lots of people are putting in new plants way too close together, both in the landscape and in their containers,” she says. “Those extras add up fast.”

Starting new plants from seed also yields more plants to the dollar than transplants.

“We’ve been getting a lot more questions lately about seed-starting,” Ryan says. “I assume it’s a direct relation to prices because it’s definitely cheaper to start from seed than buy mature plants.”

During winter, vegetables and annual flowers are fairly easy to start from seed inside. Basic workshop lights with fluorescent tubes are sufficient for growing seedlings, which usually need only about six weeks of inside growth before being ready to plant outdoors.

Even less expensive is planting seeds directly in the ground outside, bypassing the need for lights, pots, potting mix and such.

A third plant budget-stretcher is mining your own plants for expansion. Most perennial flowers can be dug up and divided into fist-sized pieces after several years of growth, giving you free plants to use elsewhere.

Clumps of spring bulbs also can be dug up and divided after their foliage browns in spring, and some shrubs will yield newbies if their “suckers” (roots that send up shoots) are dug up and transplanted. Virginia sweetspire, summersweet, hydrangea, diervilla, kerria, lilac, bayberry, sweetshrub, sweetbox and forsythia are good sucker-transplant candidates.
 

Sheila Croushore, president of the Somerset Garden Club, Somerset County, and a member of Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative
PLANT SALES: Sheila Croushore, president of the Somerset Garden Club, Somerset County, and a member of Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative, says local garden clubs often host plant sales — another place where bargains can be found.
 

Check with friends and neighbors to see if they’d like to trade divisions, which can yield free, new varieties for your yard.

New shrubs, trees, roses, and evergreens can be created by snipping 4- to 6-inch pieces off the tips of “mother plants” and sticking them into moist potting mix. That induces roots to grow from the buried cut ends, giving you a new “baby” of the plant. This works for many annual flowers and tropicals, too.

If you’re spending too much on annual flowers (the ones planted anew each spring), save money by converting space to perennials (plants that come back year after year). Limit those $6 annuals to pots, hanging baskets and window boxes.

Perennials may cost more up front and don’t bloom as long as annuals, but the payback is usually three years or less.

Some annuals, such as ageratum, celosia and cosmos, are good at “self-seeding,” meaning they come up on their own each spring from seed dropped by last year’s flowers.

This is a way to fill beds without any new expense and only limited work (i.e., removing seedlings you don’t want or transplanting self-sprouted seedlings where you do want them).

Save on your potted-plant budget by scavenging the yard for perennial flowers that you can dig and divide to use in pots. The best are ones with colorful foliage that add interest beyond the few weeks they’re in flower, such as coralbells, hosta, golden sedge, variegated liriope and ferns.

Return the perennials to the ground in fall to overwinter and mine again next year.

Another money-saver is using “double-duty” plants. Most so-called “houseplants” (crotons, palms, snake plants, peace lilies, rubber plants, etc.) are tropical or subtropical species that do perfectly fine outside in northerly summers and inside over winter.

Consider using plants you’ve bought as houseplants in summer pots, dressed up with coordinated annuals. Conversely, instead of discarding tropicals bought for summer pots at the end of the season, convert them into houseplants over winter.
 

Even cheaper than buying greenhouse transplants on sale or starting your own seeds inside is direct-seeding.
PLANTING THE SEEDS: Even cheaper than buying greenhouse transplants on sale or starting your own seeds inside is direct-seeding. Once the frosts are done and the soil warms up, simply tamp seeds into loosened, moistened dirt. (Photo courtesy of George Weigel)
 

Ways to save on gardening products

The fastest way to save on gardening products is to cut out things that you — and your plants — really don’t need.

Some possibilities: wound dressings for pruned trees (not necessary and sometimes counter-productive); leaf shine (a soft, damp cloth with diluted soap cleans dusty houseplant leaves); compost activator (a few shovelfuls of finished compost or soil adds decomposition microbes); anti-transpirant/anti-desiccant sprays (somewhat helpful in transplanting but research shows little-to-no-cold-weather protection); moisture-holding gels for potted plants (research shows little-to-no-water-saving benefit); landscape fabric (inhibits soil oxygen and traps moisture in poorly drained beds, plus weeds grow on top, if you mulch over it); and tree fertilizer spikes (trees usually get the nutrients they need from soil, decomposing mulch, and/or fertilizer on the surrounding lawn).

Next is reducing the amounts of products you use, such as fertilizer. Plants take up only the nutrients they need. Adding more than that doesn’t make them grow bigger or better and wastes money, plus it’s potentially polluting.

If plants are growing well, there’s usually no need to add anything. If they’re not, a soil test will tell if lack of nutrition is a culprit — along with exactly what nutrients are needed and in what amounts.

Extension offices and many garden centers offer inexpensive DIY soil-test kits to help you spend fertilizer dollars wisely.

Bug and disease sprays are another potential cost-saver. Some gardeners routinely use pesticides “just in case,” both wasting money and potentially killing beneficial insects that would’ve controlled pest bugs naturally (and at no charge).

Most bugs and diseases target only specific plants, and much of the damage is temporary or cosmetic anyway. Consider products only when particular plants are under threat from intolerable or potentially fatal damage — and when there are no better alternatives.

Sometimes, free or less expensive alternatives are available for garden products. For example, an index finger stuck a few inches into the soil can give an accurate read on soil moisture vs. investing in a soil-moisture meter.

Ryan advocates stretching expensive potting mix by mixing in your own compost or by “refreshing” last year’s mix with half new mix (assuming last year’s mix wasn’t bug- or disease-ridden).

Croushore says she cuts down on purchased-soil costs by making her own raised-bed soil out of DIY compost and newspaper on top of a cardboard layer (i.e., “lasagna gardening”). The only component she buys is a light layer of mulch, applied every other year.

Many municipalities now collect leaves in fall and offer the resulting free or low-cost compost to residents the following year, saving on bagged or bulk purchases. Ditto for tree companies, which often are willing to drop loads of chipped tree branches in home driveways, saving themselves hauling/dumping fees.

Even costly hardscaping materials, such as bricks, stone, patio furniture, garden ornaments, and fencing, are sometimes available for free or heavily discounted from neighbors advertising them on local social-media channels.

Lots of household-waste items are also fair game for repurposing in the garden, including storage tubs that morph into flower containers, cut-off soda bottles that serve as plant protectors, and butter tubs that become seedling pots. (Note: See the sidebar at left for 20 household rejects that can serve new life in the garden.)

Money-saving gardening practices

Changing how you garden is one last avenue for limiting expenses. Consider the following:

1) Collect and save your own seed. The mature flowers from many plants yield seed that can be saved and planted next year. Hybrid varieties usually don’t work well, but heirloom or “open-pollinated” varieties can supply years’ worth of new plants from a one-time seed purchase.

2) Make the most of retail seed. Most seed bought in packs is good for two or more years, especially if you store it in a cool, dry place (the refrigerator is perfect).

3) Make your own compost. Start a pile or two where you can recycle your property’s leaves, grass clippings, spent plants and kitchen scraps into highly nutritious (and free) compost. If you do buy bagged compost (or soil or mulch), look for discounted broken bags.

4) Don’t yank the annual flowers after they die back at fall frost. Some types are cold-hardy enough to survive at least some winters and grow anew next spring. Possible returnees include dianthus, snapdragon, pansy, dusty miller and salvia.

5) Watch for annuals that pop up on their own. Flowering annuals might sprout in spring from your own self-seeders as well as seeds brought in by birds, bugs and the wind. If you recognize these as flowers and not weeds, you’ve just been gifted free flowers.

6) Save on mulch by covering bare ground with low, spreading groundcover plants. Examples are creeping sedum, creeping thyme, leadwort and liriope. You’ll pay more at planting time, but as the plants spread, they’ll hold down weeds without having to buy mulch anymore.

Sure, in this new era of gardening, you may have to show some restraint, but think of the alternative.

“Higher prices are affecting gardeners the same way higher food prices are affecting how we eat,” Shaffer says. “It feels more ‘budgety,’ like we can’t quite run amuck with our spring fever the way we used to. But gardeners ‘must’ garden, so I don’t know any of my friends or clients who have stopped. Instead, they’ve adjusted.”

20 Household Items That Can Be Repurposed in the Garden

Gardening can give a second life to all sorts of household junk, er, “resources.” Here are 20 re-tooling possibilities:

1.) Old shoes, baskets, backpacks, pocketbooks, etc. Just about any worn-out item that’ll hold soil can morph into a plant container. Just be sure it has drainage holes.

2.) Vinyl blinds, plastic detergent bottles. Cut in strips with a point at one end and use as plant labels. Use a china marker or wax pencil for writing.

3.) Old nylons. Cut them into strips to make soft ties for tomato plants, for staking new trees, or for securing any tall, floppy vine or plant to a support.

4.) Old shirts. Besides transforming into rags, these can be cut into strips and used as soft plant ties.

5.) Dishes, glassware, vases, ceramics. Old, one-off, and even cracked dishes and such can be crafted into garden ornaments.

6.) Kitchen scraps. Banana and vegetable peels, eggshells, coffee grounds, salad remnants, and other organic food waste make ideal “fuel” for the compost pile along with yard waste, such as leaves, spent plants, and grass clippings.

7.) Newspaper, junk mail, office paper. All can be shredded and added to the compost pile. Somerset Garden Club President Sheila Croushore makes her own seedling pots by wrapping newspaper around PotMaker molds sold in many seed catalogs. An empty vegetable can also can serve as a free mold.

8.) Old carpet. Cut it into strips and lay on the ground as a weed-preventing mulch between rows in the vegetable garden.

9.) Empty milk jugs. Wash and reuse as plant protectors over young veggie-garden plants on cold nights. Or use the cut-off bottoms as seed-starting containers.

10.) Plastic soda bottles. Cut a vertical slit and wrap the bottles around young trees, shrubs, and vines to protect them against hungry rodents.

11.) Margarine tubs, yogurt cups, egg cartons. Poke holes in the bottom and use as seed-starting containers.

12.) Foam meat trays. These make excellent water-catching trays for homemade seed-starting containers or for growing seedlings in cell packs that you’ve cleaned and recycled from previous plant purchases.

13.) Plastic wrap. After food-bowl duty, save a few sheets to drape over seed-starting trays. It traps moisture like a mini-greenhouse.

14.) Window cleaner spray bottles. Rinse them well and use to mist seed trays or tip cuttings. Or use them for spraying animal repellents.

15.) Mayo jars. Cleaned well, these make ideal storage containers for saved seeds in the refrigerator.

16.) Aluminum foil, cardboard tubes from toilet-paper and paper-towel rolls. Wrap around the base of squash family plants to keep squash-vine borers from laying eggs at the base of plants.

17.) Used sandpaper. Staple strips of it to the tops of raised-bed boards or other wooden-bed edging to repel slugs, which detest crawling over scratchy surfaces.

18.) Old mailbox. Relocate it to the garden, where it can become a repository for markers, labels, string, and all of those other little things you forget to bring from the garage.

19.) Old broomstick, leftover PVC pipe. Make your own watering wand for reaching hanging baskets and window boxes by using metal hose clamps to secure your garden hose to them.

20.) Dehumidifier water. Save on the water bill by using water from dehumidifiers on houseplants or outdoor potted plants.

 

 

 

 

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