Cheap by nature - gardening offers thread!

[shovetheholly]

To remind myself as much as anything else!

Aldi have vegetable plug plants in tomorrow, £1.99 each. 10 varieties - pictures show broccoli, caulis, tomatoes, peppers. Also, rhodos for £5.99 if they are your kind of thing.

[shovetheholly]

Last week, Lidl and Aldi also have strawberries at £2.99 (Elsanta at Aldi, Ostara, Elsanta, Sonata, Korona at Lidl( for 6 and gooseberry bushes (in pots) for £1.99 (I got hinnomaki green and red).

[shovetheholly]

Roses for £1 each at Poundland, in pink, white and red!

[MyNightWithMaud]

Lots of lovely things in Lidl tonight - fruit trees, fruit bushes and hibiscus looked particularly good.

Lots of useful kit (copper slug tape, gardening gloves + herb snips etc) in the 99p Store. I've had poor results from their roses and shrubs, but the bare root perennials are generally good. They had spathyphyllum and some other pot plants too.

[ShootTheMoon]

Gardeners World and Thompson & Morgan are offering 48 free cottage garden plants (plugs) for £5.95 postage - just what I need for a big empty bed!

[MyNightWithMaud]

Beware, though, that the plugs will be teeny-tiny and will need a lot of nurturing.

[ShootTheMoon]

Oh, yes, absolutely

[MyNightWithMaud]

Your general point is a good one, though; there are lots of offers via magazines and websites. My free-for-postage hostas from GW magazine are starting to sprout. ::grin::

[hangoninaminute]

Anyone got an pics of what the gardeners world offer plug plants look like when they arrive? How small? What nurturing do they need? Greenhouse?

[MyNightWithMaud]

The plugs are about 1cm across. They are so small that they send you a little dibber (like a tiny knitting needle) to poke them out of their plastic case because a finger would be so big.

I've got the offer several times because I grow the plants on for the school plant stall. I don't have a greenhouse, so use the cold frame. Because the plugs are tiny, with tiny roots, they're vulnerable to over/under-watering and (because I'm a bit hit and miss with this) I've lost quite a few along the way. The plugs I got last year are just now reaching the size where they could be planted out.

[ColdCottage]

The pound shop also had blueberry and raspberry plants, though the acid soil for the blueberry plant cost me £4.99 elsewhere.

[MyNightWithMaud]

Ah yes, and the 99p Store had grow bags and (admittedly small) bags of multipurpose compost with added John Innes.

[shovetheholly]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has struggled with those very tiny plug plants! They are worth a punt for under six quid, though, particularly if you have space to fill.

I need to find a 99p store!!

Yesterday I went to Aldi in search of greenhouse staging, and managed to get two four tier lengths (90cm) for £9.99 each. It doesn't look like the most robust stuff on the market on the picture, but I will report back once I've put it together. They also had:

• cheap gloves
  
• garden sieves
  
• secateurs
  
• hoses and brass hose accessories (bought some of the latter as I'm sick of the plastic ones pinging off and then getting soaked)
  
• cloche tunnels

[shovetheholly]

Oh, another thing regarding seeds - though most of you probably know this already - King's Seeds are amazing value at cover price, and even better if you can join your local allotment society (mine is a princely £4 a year) which gives you something like 50% off. To give you an idea, most packets of veg and herb seeds then come in around £1 compared to £3 at Thompson and Morgan. I went a bit mental last autumn and spent £20 and now have literally dozens and dozens of things to cram into my allotment. They are not all going to fit!

[shovetheholly]

And another one: the May edition of Gardener's World magazine costs £4.25 comes out 24 April, and has a 2-for-1 entry card to a load of gardens across the country. It is amazing value - even if you only go to one or two, you will easily save the cover price.

However, even better - you can get 5 issues for £1 each at the moment if you go here: www.buysubscriptions.com/homes-and-gardening-magazines/gardeners-world-magazine-subscription?offerCode=GWW115 If you do this now, you should get the 2-for-1 issue, and then four other magazines for free. You need to remember to cancel the direct debit in June though!

[MyNightWithMaud]

Yes, GW can be quite light on content (if you've been a subscriber for years, you see the same kind of articles coming round on an annual cycle) but has great offers, and discount codes for the main gardening websites. Other magazines (Practical Gardening and Amateur Gardening, iirc) have free seeds on the cover of their current editions.

[Gatekeeper]

buy a daily mirror today (thursday) and get a £5 off a £40 shop at Aldi

[shovetheholly]

Oooh, Gatekeeper, nice one!

[hangoninaminute]

Thanks maud. I might give it a go as I've got an empty cottage garden to fill. But I've never gardened (properly) before so they'll probably all die!

Must find out where my nearest aldi is!!

[PoisonPension]

Thank you for this thread.

[shovetheholly]

Just back from Aldi again. They have heavy duty plastic potting worktrays (the kind of thing you put compost in to scoop it up) down to £2.50. Also, lots and lots of new veg plants in modules.

On Monday 6th April, there's a new garden event with a pressure washer for £80, one of those hedge cutters on a pole for £60 (electric not petrol), a hover mower for £30, loppers for £10, and a strimmer for £20. They've got an incinerator, a garden bag set (for planting not tidying), edging, weed control, a wheel barrow, and loads of gloves, clogs etc too

[shovetheholly]

Another dispatch from Aldi. TRUGS FOR £2.99 THIS WEEK! And two kinds of gloves, one for heavier work, the other for light seed tray work.

Also, sow-where-you-grow varieties of seeds, brilliant for companion planting at the allotment - for a bargainous 39p a pack. Clematis montana for £4.99 (decent plants too) and box triangles for £10. There are also various packs of summer bulbs for £4 and shake-and-rake seedmixes for £1.50.

Loads and loads of non-vegetative stuff in this week: incinerators, topsoil, gloves, clogs, hose reels.

There are also obelisks, a water feature, stakes and trellises, but these are all HORRIBLE in my opinion

[shovetheholly]

Some of the obelisks have a crown on top. A CROWN! If I hadn't been so busy vomming in my trolley, I would've taken a picture.

[shovetheholly]

Parkers bulbs have a lot of offers on shrubs at the moment - enkianthus for £3.99, miniature buddleia 'blue chip' for £3.99, viburnum bodnantense for £2,99, along with lots of cheap perennials and regale lillies for £1.99. Free tuberoses with every order. Be warned that plants from here are usually disappointingly small, but will grow!

Aldi have lots of climbers in - more varieties of clematis than you can shake a stick at, passiflora, jasmine, perennial sweet peas and solanum for £1.79 each.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

My local Home Bargains has large box balls today for £14.99. They are about 50cm-60cm in diameter and look healthy. They say they were £49.99 - not sure how likely that is and I know £15 isn't exactly 'cheap' but looking online I think they'd usually be much more expensive.

[TheSpottedZebra]

Inspired by the herb thread, i bought some lovely herbs from Asda today, @ £2 each. From the garden bit in the vestibule, not from the salad section. There were some dead ones, and ones close to death, but I had a rummage and found much fresher stock. I bought a lovely lemon balm, spearmint, a curry plant, and 2 types of thyme. Although they were both just labelled as thyme, they're clearly different.