Simple ways to save money while you garden
The garden center’s clearance table can become dangerously tempting in fall: that perennial you refused to pay $30 for in May is suddenly wearing an $8 sticker. Saving $22 sounds like a fantastic gardening win, but planting clearance perennials in fall only saves money if the plant survives long enough to return next spring. Fall…
It seems logical that giving plants one final meal before winter would help them survive the cold, but the opposite can happen when fertilizer encourages growth at exactly the wrong time. As days shorten and temperatures fall, perennial and woody plants begin hardening off, a process that prepares living tissue to withstand winter conditions. Penn…
A bag of garlic looks like groceries, but biologically, you’re also looking at a surprising amount of potential planting material. Each bulb separates into individual cloves, and each healthy clove can potentially grow into an entirely new bulb, making planting garlic in fall one of the more satisfying ways to turn a small amount of…
A $60 shrub marked down to $20 can make the garden-center clearance rack very difficult to walk past. Fall discounts on trees and shrubs can be genuine bargains, particularly when retailers simply need to reduce inventory before winter, but a low price doesn’t automatically make a struggling plant worth rescuing. Plants that have spent months…
We’ve all found one: a forgotten potato at the back of the pantry with several determined-looking sprouts growing from its eyes. Throwing it away feels wasteful, especially when those sprouts make it look ready to become an entire crop of free potatoes. Technically, planting grocery store potatoes can produce plants because the potato itself is…
Every autumn, homeowners rake up something surprisingly valuable, stuff it into bags, and send it away—only to spend money on mulch, compost, and soil amendments a few months later. Fallen leaves contain organic matter and nutrients that can be recycled right where they land, and Penn State estimates that the leaves from one large shade tree can provide…
After the last tomatoes are picked and exhausted vegetable plants come out, a perfectly bare garden bed can feel satisfyingly clean. The problem is that soil doesn’t necessarily benefit from spending the next several months exposed to pounding rain, wind, weeds, freezing temperatures, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles. University of Minnesota recommends keeping garden soil covered…
Opening a box containing a plant you ordered online feels a little like Christmas for gardeners, especially when you’ve been waiting weeks for a hard-to-find variety. The temptation is to unwrap it, give it some water, and immediately place it beside your other plants or into the garden. However, plants can carry insects, eggs, mites,…
A two-dollar bag of pinto or black beans looks like dinner, not a packet of garden seed. But dried beans are mature seeds, which raises an irresistible frugal-gardening question: could you take a handful from the grocery bag, put them in the ground, and eventually harvest far more beans than you started with? The answer…