Save on Gardening

Following are five ways to save on your garden: 1) Grow from cuttings. Instead of spending at the nursery, use cuttings from your current plants to grow more greenery. 2) Skip the weed killer. Chemical killers can get pricey. Use a spray bottle of vinegar to kill unwanted grass and weeds, and even keep ants away. 3) Check online. From fertilizer to lawnmowers, try craigslist.org before shelling out big bucks. 4) Visit the dump. Large garden pots cost a fortune; old bathtubs don’t. Try your local dump for creative containers. 5) Reuse, recycle. Old panty hose legs make great ties for tomato plants—they even stretch a little to let your plants breath.

Plants like hyacinth, tulips and daffodils start out as bulbs, but as they mature the bulbs divide, producing fewer blooms and a lot more green. Every three years, dig up your daffodils, split the bulbs and plant them elsewhere in the garden.

Buy old bowls, clay pots, vases, even cookware at tag sales for next to nothing. Visit your local nursery, buy paper white bulbs (available even in the winter), plant them in compost in your tag sale treasures and place in the sunlight (called forcing). Once the shoots break through the soil, cover the compost with small decorative stones (available in 10 pound bags), tie a bow around the container and you've got a much appreciated flowering plant even in the dead of winter.

Swapping plants with friends is fun and a great way to increase the variety of plants in your garden. You can swap bulbs or transplant existing plants and enjoy your garden all the more.

Use empty cardboard egg cartons to make seed starter trays. If you use the heavy cardboard trays, you can compost the cardboard when you pop the seedling out, or you could bury it next to the seedling to decompose.

Pachysandra is one of the easiest plants to transplant. Simply cut off tendrils with at least a few leaves. Place these cuttings in a bucket of water with a bit of rooting compound or fertilizer for about a week, until you see little white hairs (the roots) on each cutting. Then, dig a series of small holes, stick a cutting into each hole and water well. The cutting itself may die off, but the roots won't. In a single growing season, you can double the size of your pachysandra beds - for free.

Mulching your garden keeps down weeds during the summer and keeps perennials warm in the ground over winter, but a 25-pound bag of bark mulch can cost $10 and, frankly, your plants won't know the difference. Use the leaves you rake up in the fall and pile them on your gardens.

Old leaves, dead plants, weeds, grass clippings - anything green should be tossed in a compost pile somewhere on your property. Over the course of a couple of years, these greens will turn into beautiful compost, perfect for indoor plants, window boxes and patio plants.

Perennials live year after year. Annuals live for a season then die off. Instead of spending a potfull of green on annuals, buy perennials. After a couple of seasons, you'll only buy annuals for a spot of color here and there.

The National Arbor Day Foundation will send you 10 free trees for your $10 dollar annual membership. That's a buck a tree and they include flowering trees, oaks, fruit trees and more.

The best time to pick up deals on home and garden supplies is after July 4. That's when retailers mark down their inventory and you can save from 40% to 70%.

Nurseries buy plenty of bulbs for fall planting, but as the fall planting season winds down, nurseries will cut the price of the leftover bulbs by as much as 50%. Check the bulbs for mold and make sure they're still firm.

Garden tools are expensive. Buy the best you can afford then paint them a bright red so they don't get lost in the underbrush. Buy one pair of top-of-the-line pruning shears and never buy again.

Always buy plants in the smallest containers, usually the one-quart size, instead of the larger specimens. You'll save a bundle on plants and you'll enjoy watching the little guys grow.

Annuals grow for a single season then die off. Buy your annuals early, in small flats, and plant them as soon as the last frost date passes. It will take longer for smaller plants to mature and flower, but they'll be just as beautiful as buying the full-grown plant at a much higher cost.