10 Ways to Garden on a Budget

Gardening is expensive. I've been gardening on a tight budget from the get-go. This is a list of ways of how I do it. These are in no particular order, but I do consider #10 to be the most important rule for any kind of gardening.

Note: My low-budget approach is based on the concept that low-maintenance = less money. Although no garden is truly "low-maintenance," and many gardeners take joy in the maintenance of a garden, you do spend much less money and effort on water, fertilizer, soil amendments and replacement plants when you choose your plants correctly.

1. Use mildly self-sowing perennials. Some gardeners turn up their noses at self-sowing plants because they spread willy-nilly around the garden and can create a wild, un-planned look. Aggressive self-sowers are known to encroach upon more well-behaved perennials, so steer clear of those. Mild to moderate self-sowing plants give you the most bang for your buck over the years, offering transplanting options for other areas and filling in empty spaces in the garden. If you prefer a more manicured, well-managed look, stay away from self-sowing plants. If you love the wild, more "natural" look like I do, and you have space that needs to be filled in over the years, go crazy.
There are a ton of self-sowing perennials, but these are what I have enjoyed in my garden:

Hollyhocks in  July 2012. They have now self-sowed into this whole corner and side. Blanket flower, Salvia and Sundrops (all also self-sowing) to the right behind it. 

Kenzie and I picking some Blanket flowers (July 2013). They are short-lived but self-sow if you allow some seed heads to remain on the plant

Kenzie checking out a wild sunflower (July 2013). Birds love them and so do I. They have self-sowed throughout the yard. You can also collect the seeds and sow them where you want them, or share with friends. Seedlings are easy to pull up if you don't want them in a certain area

One small Salvia plant turned into three side-by-side plants

2. DIY. Do the design and (hard!) work yourself. Although working with a professional landscape designer and landscape company is guaranteed to deliver some great results, it can get expensive. If you want a gorgeous yard but don't have the money to pay a designer, do it yourself. Keep in mind that this approach does cost you in time and effort, but to me, that makes the results even more glorious. Always use a professional for big projects, especially those that include lighting, irrigation and major hardscaping (boulders, etc).

Our DIY design in 2011

3. Research. The library and Google are your friends. You'll save a ton of money simply by googling plants and gardening ideas that you're interested in, and figuring out how or if it'll work in your garden. I also like to get books from the library that will broaden my gardening horizons.
These are two books that I now own after first checking them out from the library. They are both written by a Fort Collins-based landscape designer who I've come to love:

4. Only buy plants from local nurseries who know the area and the best plants for it. Learn from my mistakes. Don't buy plants (including veggies) from the big box store. Chances are those plants have traveled quite a ways and are on their last leg by the time you get them in the ground. Avoid spending money on replacement plants by buying high-quality plants in the first place. Plus, you support the local community by steering clear of nationally corporate stores!

5. Use groundcovers. Like self-sowers, groundcovers can lend color and texture to large areas over time, saving you money on compact growers.

Reiter Thyme groundcover is used as a lawn alternative here.

6. Get your containers from thrift stores. Containers are sooo stinkin' expensive! We got nearly all of our containers from a thrift store, as a gift or with a gift card. This approach did give our pots and plants a kind of eclectic look, but that matches our style sensibility and personalities pretty well. If you like a more uniformed style, look for containers in the same color scheme and complementing patterns.

The large containers on the floor (the most expensive) were all bought with gift cards. 

7. Grow from seed. If you have a large space to cover, consider planting a wildflower or prairie grass area from seed. A little goes a long way, and it's way cheaper to buy a packet of seeds than a truck load of plants. This approach will cost time up front because of the soil amending, watering and weed-pulling maintenance that it takes to get things going, but it'll save you a ton of money in the long run.

8. Do a little at a time. Cultivation of any kind takes time. Gardening is all about learning, and you simply can't take any short cuts when you're acquiring knowledge from experience. I split my projects into spring and fall (and years) so that I don't have to spend a bunch of money and effort at the same time. And I always have plans for my gardening future.

2011

2014

9. Ask for gift cards as presents. My birthday is in May, so I almost always ask for a gift card to the local nursery or Xeric mail-order website (High Country Gardens) for my birthday. I always have more plants, soil and other gardening essentials that I want to buy, so help from family goes a long way.

10. And for my golden rule of perennial gardening: Always choose plants that do well in your climate and soil. You're just throwing your money away if you choose plants purely on looks. I've learned from research and experience that native perennials are great, but only if they are well-suited for your particular area. For instance, Columbines are native to Colorado (and the state flower!), but I rarely use them because they are native to creek-side woodland areas and require too much water and loamy soil, which I don't have. I chose a low-water hybrid Columbine for my shady front bed, and it still only does well when we get a lot of rain or I remember to water it often.

Don't limit yourself to natives, but do limit yourself to plants that have their origin in a similar climate and soil. For instance, plants from the highlands of Turkey and other Middle East locations have been proven to do well in the Front Range of Colorado because they have similar soils and climates. Take the time to research (see #3) and get to know your garden's microclimate, and you shall be rewarded.

I'm always looking to get more bang for my buck, so let me know what has proven to be a good penny-pinching tactic for you!

On My Birthday

On my birthday, the birds are always singing. The grass is lush and the trees finally have their leaves.

On my birthday, the air is thick with the smell of lilacs. The flowers bloom and the bees buzz.

On my birthday, my nails are dark with dirt. Veggie sprouts grow strong and flower stalks grow sturdy.

Garden is planted! May 18th

Zinnia in Bloom May 20th

On my birthday, snow in May is unimaginable. The sun is shining and the sky is blue.

A Salvia bud poised to bloom

On my birthday, three months of summer lie ahead. Plans are made and anticipation grows.

Scout saying "Happy Birthday" to me this morning, May 20th

On my birthday, I feel like I'm getting a life-long, love-filled hug from the universe.

Summer Begins with One Last Snow Storm

May snow storms are to be expected in Colorado, but a snow storm on May 11th was a tad bit too late for my liking. Oh well, what can ya do. Cover the garden, protect new plantings, and wait for the blue skies and bright sunshine to come back. Then, assess the damage. That's all you can do.

This May snow storm started with a couple of days of refreshing rain and thunderstorms. I enjoyed that to the fullest, even though pea-sized hail made an appearance somewhere in between.

May 7th hail. Small, but mighty

There's a lot of luck involved in getting your garden to survive a hail storm, and somehow I managed to get a load of it. Patrick happened to have the afternoon off, and was able to get the garden covered before everything got totally messed up. I may have lost a tomato or two (I won't really know until this snow melts), but everything seemed to survive okay thanks to the garden cover and hoop set-up we have going on.

You can see the covered garden to the right.

Once the snow melts and summer sets back in, I'll be following the hail/snow-survival protocol I covered three years ago in this post. Check it out if you need some tips for getting your garden back after the hail and snow we just experienced.

Saturday, the day before the snow storm, was a gorgeous spring day. It reached 70 degrees before the clouds moved in in the early evening. Everyone was out enjoying the weather before we were relegated to the indoors for the next couple of days.

May 10th. Roselle enjoying the Lilacs before the snow takes em out

Flower Child

Scout and Satchmo playing on Saturday morning

 Then, everything changed. Clouds rolled in, temperatures dropped and the wind started howling. Sunday morning we woke up to about two inches of snow, and it didn't stop until late Monday morning. By then, we had about 8 inches on the ground, even with the afternoon rain we got in between the hours of snow on Sunday.

Spring Snow May 11-12th. Picture taken Monday morning.

A rain interlude on Sunday afternoon cleared most of the snow off of the branches

Happy dogs in the park Sunday evening

The sun came out late Monday morning

 When you live snuggled up to the foothills, a lot can change in a small amount of time. This is what the garden looked like over the span of one week:

May 3rd. 80 degrees, sunny and filled with stubborn weeds

May 4th. 85, sunny and freshly planted with Thyme groundcover (I ran out of pea gravel mulch before I took this)

May 11th. 35 degrees and snow, then rain, then more snow. Covered in garden cloth.

We're not even in the clear yet! Lows are forecasted to reach the mid 20s tonight. Those freezing temperatures are even worse for the plants than the 8 inches of snow. I'll just have to wait and see how everything survives, then do some damage control before the summer gets into full swing.

Rain in Fort Collins is Kinda a Big Deal

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, my body turned towards our open window, I was suddenly pulled toward consciousness by a clap of thunder. My eyes sprung open, and 30 seconds later I saw a flash of lighting. For the next ten minutes or so, I lay in bed, comfortable and cozy, and counted the seconds between each lightning flash and thunder roll. Slowly, it got closer. I heard the pitter patter of rain on the metal roof of our shed. I inhaled the spring wind that suddenly swirled around our bedroom and I smiled. It was a thunderstorm. An isolated one, but a thunderstorm. It was all over after about 20 minutes, but this morning I saw that the deck was still a bit wet -- a sure sign that we got a steady rain for longer than a minute.

The radar and forecasts are looking pretty solid as far as rain goes. This afternoon, tonight and tomorrow afternoon -- rain. I can't wait to see how two rainy days change the landscape of our little yard and garden. I can't wait to relish the view of green foothills, usually tawny by July. I can't wait to take a deep breath of rain-soaked air.

Horestooth Reservoir on a stormy day in early June.

Please don't remind me what happened the last time I got pumped for rain.

The High Hopes of Early Spring Gardening

Well, I'm often warned against getting my hopes up for a rainy day in Fort Collins, and for good reason. My enthusiasm for a rainy forecast was all for naught, yet again. Remember that rainy Sunday I was getting all pumped for? Yeah, that didn't happen. It was a cloudy and windy Sunday, but most def not a rainy one. And since then, we've had a total of maybe .00001 inches of rainfall. So, yeah, you can see why I get frustrated with the weather from time to time. But seeing the news reports on the horrendous flooding currently happening in Florida  and remembering the damage of the flood last fall does tend to put things in perspective for me. Plus, I do love the Colorado-blue skies and warm sunshine we get in abundance. So, I'm going to move on from complaining about the lack of rain...for now.

I'm more than ready to talk about early spring gardening, and all of the big hopes and dreams that come with it. And May Day is probably one of the best times to have the discussion. May is probably my favorite month of the year. Not only is it host to my birthday and wedding anniversary, but it signifies the true awakening of the plant world, too. So I get very giddy in May. And this year is no different.

Mixed lettuce sprouts in my Salad Bowl container

This year, I was on top of early-spring planting for the first time in my short gardening career. I planted onions, carrots, peas, beets and my lettuce bowl in Mid-March and everything is coming along nicely except for my beets. I didn't have any luck with my beets last year, either, so I'm still trying to solve that riddle. If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear them! I planted my garlic too late last year (another learning experience), but they came back in full force this year, making for a pleasant springtime garden surprise.

My pea sprouts and a stick-and-hoop trellis. Garlic and onions in the 2nd bed in the background

Early in March, my friend clued me into the fact that peas and beets should be sprouted before you plant them in order to get the best results. So, I put my seeds in a damp paper towel, then into a plastic bag, then into my grow station to get some little sprouts. They not only managed to grow sprouts, but mold, too! So that was my first mistake, and could possibly be why my beets aren't growing. Peas are much bigger than beet seeds, so I was able to easily pick out the pea sprouts with little to no mold on them, and scratch off the mold that was there. Plus peas are so easy. I'm going to grow more next year, I think. They are basically the beans of springtime.

I'm not really a crafty person, but peas require some sort of trellis, so I found skinny sticks to stick into the ground near the spouts, then angled those sticks toward two garden hoops on the edge. I'm hoping they will grow towards those garden hoops and make a double-arch of peas over the garden bed. That'd look pretty awesome. If I ever get some DIY confidence again, there are a variety of even cooler things I could do for a pea trellis:

A cool, artsy pea trellis

Pea trellis made of tree branches

Somehow, I highly doubt my attempts would look anything like the trellises above.

Another thing I learned more about this year is something called "Companion Planting." I'm pretty excited about this concept, and it will keep coming up. As I mentioned in a previous post, the basic idea is planting plants with and near others that help them grow and keep away pests. And of course, there are always some plants that are better off being separated. For instance, pole beans don't like beets, onions or garlic, so they are a little pickier than others. It's a pretty awesome concept, and I'm totally embracing it.

Onions are really good companion plants in general, because they keep away a variety of pests, so I've planted them pretty much everywhere (I did try to keep them away from my designated bean spot). Onions are said to be especially helpful to carrots because they keep away carrot flies and help to loosen the soil, making it easier for the root vegetable to grow down. I also heard from a gardener friend that radishes do the same thing. Both carrots and onions are good companion plants for tomatoes, so I've planted a mix of carrots and onions around my designated spots for tomatoes. I'll take pictures of the onions and carrots together once the carrot tops get a little bigger.

My early-spring veggies have been hanging out in the ground for over a month now, and it's time to move on to planting my tomatoes this weekend. I have new garden hoops that I can use to put garden fabric over them if we hit any frosty nighttime lows. I'll probably plant my pepper starters, cucumbers, beans and herbs in two more weeks.

Still doing a good job guarding the plants he is.

Pepper, Marigold and Tomato starts with Thyme groundcover 

But my big, time-consuming project this weekend will be trying to dig up as many weeds as possible in the paths around the garden beds, prepping the soil and planting some Thyme ground cover to try to create a pretty, weed-resistant mat around the stepping stones. I have a big issue with Bindweed in this area, so I'm really trying not to get my hopes up. But the pictures of quick-spreading, drought-resistant and sun-loving Thyme groundcover on High Country Gardens makes that kinda hard.

A lawn of "Reiter Creeping Thyme"

"Pink Chintz" Thyme

If I can coax my "Reiter" and "Pink Chintz" Thyme to look a fraction as good as these pictures, I'll be happy. I just need something that will go to battle with the stupid Bindweed that will never, ever disappear.

My Extreme Emotional Response to Rain

April showers, or any showers for that matter, aren't really a thing here in Fort Collins. I've lived here for almost six years and I still have not been able to come to terms with the dry climate. Other than my family and friends, the thing I miss the most about the Midwest are the thunderstorms. I miss the first rain-smelling gusts of wind, the pitter-patter of rain on the roof, counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, the after-storm smell of earth and worms, and finally, the vivid greens that result.

 

Here, we don't get full-on thunderstorms, and it often seems like we don't get any rain at all. I'm serious. We are very close to thunderstorm-less in Fort Collins. Isolated thunderstorms, yes, but I can't really count those when you have to be within a 2-mile radius of a storm cloud to experience a brief shower and thunder rumble. It's extremely frustrating. I'm getting all riled up just writing about it.

 

At this point, you may have picked up on the fact that I have an extremely emotional response to rain and Colorado weather in general. I'm often asked to calm down when I curse the skies after watching storm clouds that promise moisture slide over the foothills, completely break up above us, reform to the east of us, and totally skip us with their precious gift of moisture.

 

You know what makes it even worse? This meteorological event called "Virga." I'd never heard of or seen such a thing before living in CO. Now, it's the bane of my existence. Virga is when moisture-filled clouds manage to create some precipitation, only to have it evaporate before it hits the ground. Yeah, this happens a lot and it makes me really angry.

You're so stupid, Virga. Why can't you just learn how to rain properly?

 On the flip side, I am overjoyed when I see just a few drops fall. If I see it begin to rain, I will jump up from whatever I'm doing and exclaim to anyone near or far that "it's raining!" while triumphantly throwing my arms into the air. Then, it stops, and I get that familiar feeling of precipitation disappointment. I haven't seen a good, solid rain since the catastrophic fall flood of last year, which made the experience bittersweet, obviously.

 

The whole point of this rain rant -- which could have been much, much, much longer, I assure you -- is to say that I'm super-duper excited for Sunday and the beginning of next week. Check out that forecast! We have a 70% chance of rain on Sunday! And then a chance for rain throughout the beginning of next week! The garden is gonna love it almost as much as me. Almost.

A sane person may not love seeing a week of 50-degree temps after two weeks of 70s and sunny, but I'm weather-crazy and I'm pumped!

 Bring. It. On.

This forecast has me all sorts of excited

 

Meditations on Growth and Change

Almost three years. THREE years! Has gone by since I last posted on this blog. I can't believe the last time I sat down to write a blog post, we were new homeowners,  I hadn't yet tacked on a new last name, and Scout was still just a pup. I only had one niece back then; now I have two nieces, a nephew and my friend's baby girl, who I consider a niece, as well. Patrick hadn't even thought about going back to school (he's in grad school now) and I was luxuriating in all of the possibilities that come with a salaried job with benefits.

We got married! May 26, 2012

I think about this blog so much that I can't fully understand why I'd decided to let it go. I do know that I had some worries about keeping a gardening/environmental blog. Worry of being just another writer out there drowning in the vast blog world, worry of not writing anything that anyone other than myself cares about, and worry about offending and/or angering those who do not agree with my opinions and thoughts on sustainable agriculture and environmentalism. I could go so much further into the multitude of reasons for why, and the reasons for having those reasons, but that's not what I want to do for my first post back. No. I want this blog to be a celebration of  growth, change and nourishment. I want to celebrate cultivation in all its senses.

And right now, I want to celebrate Spring! And ya'll know I do what I want. So here goes.

 Scout had a great winter! She loves the snow.

It was a harsh winter for my family and friends who reside in the arctic-blasted Midwest. In Fort Collins, we had your average Colorado winter with a few frigid days, some snowy days and many sunny, mild days. Patrick's birthday (Feb 2nd) was a classic Colorado bluebird day, which is a nice mixture of sun and snow.

The b-day boy fresh from an epic powder weekend in Winter Park

No matter how easy the winter has been, the first sprouts of Spring are a welcome sight. We started having beautiful spring-time weather in mid-March this year. As soon as it's warm enough, I post up on the deck during the weekend, bust out my garden notebook, along with a few gardening catalogs for brain fodder, and start my garden planning.

I can always count on having big dreams for my little garden. This year is no different. This year, I'm determined to extend the gardening season as well as push the space limitations on my two 8x4 garden beds. I'm also experimenting in companion planting this year. That means I did some research on what plants help each other grow, what flowers keep pests away and which plants prefer not to live in close quarters with each other.  More on all of this later. I'm still in my spring-dreaming phase, so give me some time to soak it in, along with the sun and 70-degree weather.

This is what's been going on since the first signs of spring in March:

Weeds are the 1st to spring to life in garden area

Xeric landscaping begins to show signs of life

Mid-march: Patrick and I both get to work outside

 In a rare burst of DIY confidence, I decided to collect TP rolls and use them as seed pods this year. I cut the rolls in half, cut the bottoms in four places and folded them in to create the bottom of the pot, then taped it to stay closed. They are re-used, bio-degradable and you can just plant them with the seeds. I'm not sure if I'd do it again for five reasons:
1. They got a little moldy around the sides since the cardboard never really dried out.
2. They sat at wonky angles since the bottoms weren't perfectly flat.
3. Some rolls came apart at the seams, making open sides on some of the seed pods.
4. The tape didn't stay taped and some bottoms came apart.
5. It was a pain in the butt.
Despite all of these little issues, I still managed to grow healthy veggies.

Oh, and Yoda. He's my designated plant guardian this year. A good job he has done.

Still Mid-March: Early seed starting for an extended growing season

Late March: time to transplant to bigger pots it is

After transplanting in late March, the veggies are looking promising under their grow lamp

April 20th: Veggies need to be planted or transplanted soon

April 20th: The yard is the greenest it likely will ever be this year

Grow and change. That's what we do. That's what happens in this ever-expanding universe. Try to stop it and crushed you will be. I enjoy observing the change and striving to nurture it. That way, I can be a small part of its healthy growth, deep roots and flourishing life.