Your best cost cutting tips for the Garden please

[NotAnotherNewNappy]

I am trying to make our gorgeous/wild new garden feel like our own. Unfortunately, all my bright ideas end up costing £££.

I always thought gardening was a nice humble, sustainable activity... But I can't seem to do anything without whipping out my credit card. So please tell me, what are your top tips for keeping costs down in the garden?

I'll start... I save all my smashed crockery to line the bottom of container pots for drainage, rather than buying stones or gravel.

Look on Freecycle for compost bins and get compost going (does take time though)

Our local garden centre puts pots out you can help yourself to.

Make pots for seedlings from newspaper wrapped round an aerosol.

Recycle yoghurt pots and meat trays as plant pots/seed trays and fruit punnets make good mini propagators.

Talk to friends and relatives who have gardens, they will be happy for you to take cuttings, split clumps of perennials, give you strawberry runners and raspberry canes etc.

Keep an eye out for church/school/allotmemt plant sales at this time of year where you can get bargain plants.

Save seed from plants in your garden.

Have a go at growing from seed. Places like Lidl and Wilkinson's have cheap seed and places like Premier Seed on EBay and Moreveg are cheap.

Keep an eye on Freecycle for plants.

Join us on the Garden club thread in the Gardening section, currently called the Rhubarb Appreciation Society.

Wynken's already said most of it.

Join your local horticultural society - most sell tools, compost and sundries at less than shop prices and have regular plant swaps/sales.

Old jumpers wool are good to put at the bottom of pots to aid drainage

Morrisons plants are good and cheap. At the moment they also have small clay pots of £1 and large ones for £5..

Any local stables or farms will he happy for you to take away manure.

If you are going to do hanging baskets keep old tea bags to line them.

Boot sales often have people selling cheap plants.

Lidl at the moment are selling quite a bit of gardening stuff cheaply. They have a large black compost bin for £25 and it is twice the size of the ones in wilkos for around the same price.

Thank you

I have been dithering about a compost bin because of the initial outlay, will I really need two? I can get them buy one get one half price from the council but wasn't sure if it was really a bargain or not.

The fruit punnets as propogators is a great idea. I have a couple and can get some seeds started tomorrow, would've paid for trays otherwise.

Why would I line hanging baskets with tea bags?

depends on how big your garden is, but the best way to do compost is to have 3 bins. My dh made ours from old pallets and an old shed. They are 3 in a row.

1 st one is full, closed and stewing. (since end of last summer, ready in the autumn)
2nd one is getting filled
3 rd one is compost from summer before which is ready and lovely and we are using now - just put a load in the bottom of a rhubarb trench.

The compost bins don't have to be big, need to have some air and my mums (which are serious) have lift out fronts to help shovel out ready compost.

Poundland actually have a lot of cheap stuff, eg large plastic plant pots, and netting etc (not brilliant quality though)

Wait a couple of months and all the fetes will have plant stalls with cheap plants. Buy perennials rather than annuals. Ask friends and neighbours for bits of their plants.

Do not go to garden centres.

When the basket is watered the tea bags will hold the water so that the basket doesn't dry out so quickly. Also if you have any roses you can sprinkle used tea leaves (loose or in tea bags) around your rosebushes and cover with mulch. When you water the plants, the nutrients from the tea will be released into the soil, spurring growth. Roses love the tannic acid that occurs naturally in tea.