Money Saving Suggestions For Your Gardening
As the new growing season begins, we will again be visiting the plant nurseries and home improvement centers to purchase supplies needed for our gardens. Seeing the high prices for these products can give you “gardening sticker shock” and you may want to look for less expensive ways to enhance your gardens while saving money!
There are a number of ways to utilize inexpensive and/or discarded items found around the house that can be useful in your gardens.
Here are a few suggestions that can reduce your costs:
Don’t buy bags of organic mulch. Take, instead, old newspapers or any discarded non-glossy, non-color paper and shred them. Move away any existing mulch and place a layer of shredded paper around the plants. Carefully replace the old mulch and water thoroughly. The new paper mulch will biodegrade putting organic material into the soil while maintaining soil moisture and lowering the soil temperatures.
Many desert plants require calcium and phosphorous. Instead of purchasing costly bags of bone meal or phosphorous, grind up discarded eggshells and place around desert plants. This blend will add these needed nutrients as well as sulfur to the soil. This will enrich the soil and reduce high pH levels.
If you landscaping includes “acid-loving” plants, or you want to lower pH levels. Mix 1 cup of vinegar with 1 gallon of water in a watering can and pour around plants each growing season.
Used coffee grounds (regular or decaf) raked into the soil will lower alkali levels, add needed nitrogen to the soil, and repel insects. Do not, however, use around tomatoes since they don’t like coffee!
An effective, inexpensive protection against rodents and rabbits eating your plants can be found right in your kitchen. Make a mixture of red pepper flakes, raw eggs, and powdered cloves and pour around plants.
Instead of using expensive insecticides, mix 2 teaspoons of dishwashing liquid (preferably Dawn) with one pint of water in a spray bottle and apply to the leaves and flowers infested with aphids, thrips or other “sucking” insects.
These suggestions will benefit your garden while saving you money.
Have a gardening question? Contact me at: Theplantwhisperer28@gmail.com