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So as all of you know who have some land or even those of you who don’t have much land to speak of, your budget might not always allow you to do what you want when it comes to gardening and other projects around the house. So I thought it might help you out to share some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.

Free Pots and Flats

If you are gardening on a budget and you need to source some free pots and or flats, check out your local nursery or landscaping business. If they do a lot of work landscaping, they likely have a huge pile of black plastic pots and containers in the back somewhere. Ask someone in charge if they will sell you some of the pots, tell them you’re looking for small containers like 4 inch pots, six packs, and flats. They’ll know what you’re talking about and often will tell you to take whatever you want and won’t ask for any money in return. If they do charge you it’ll be really cheap. Just make sure you price what you’re looking for before you go to avoid overpaying for something you are going to have to clean and disinfect. Which brings me to the next tip.

Disinfecting old pots for new planting

You can wash out old pots and containers of all shapes and sizes for planting this year’s plants in. But you should really think about disinfecting them in case there are any diseases lingering from last year. Mix up a 1 to 9 bleach to water solution and either dip or spray all the surfaces to disinfect. Then let it drip dry and it’s ready to go.

Oxygenate your water

Use cheap regular strength (3%) Hydrogen peroxide at a rate of 1 tablespoon of peroxide to a gallon of water when you water your plants. The peroxide is volatile and will break off a single oxygen atom when it comes into contact with most organic matter. This gets oxygen to the roots of your plants and also helps to destroy pathogenic organisms in your soil and on the plants. It also keeps your plants healthy with a little boost of oxygen to those roots.

Have old coffee or tea?

Don’t dump it down the drain, add it to your seedling water for some nutrients, I’d stay away from using sweetened beverages or anything with creamers in it though. But slightly sweetened tea and black coffee are a safe bet.

Have a worm bin?

How about a quick and easy way to get the worms out of finished castings and into new bedding and food. Scrounge or buy some ¼ inch hardware cloth to fit inside your worm bin, scoop everything out and put in buckets or on a tarp in the shade. Refill your worm bin with your bedding of choice, make sure to leave enough room for the castings to go back in, add some nice worm food like veggie peelings or whatever you use, water it in to the right moisture level, then place that hardware cloth on top of the new bedding and food. Put the castings with all the worms back on top of the hardware cloth, the worms will migrate down to the food and new bedding. Let the castings dry out a little to encourage them to move, then simply scrape or lift out (with some help) the hardware cloth and dump into your wheelbarrow or tarp to transport to wherever you need it!

Easy harvest low footprint potatoes

Head over to your local dump and scrounge some old trash cans, white plastic and metal are great for this. Or buy a couple if you don’t want to clean an old trashcan. Drill holes in the bottom and about a dozen in the sides of the trashcan, put down about 6 inches of mulch in the bottom of the can, then add the same amount of compost and soil to make it about 12 inches of material. Then put your potatoes in, either whole or cut potatoes ready for planting. Cover with soil or compost to twice the depth that the potatoes are tall. Once they are growing up about 6 inches, add enough soil or compost to cover them almost all the way. Keep doing this until the can is full. Make sure you feel the soil through the holes in the sides to ensure you are watering enough to keep the whole column of soil moist. When the potatoes are ready to harvest, dump the whole thing out on a tarp, pick the potatoes up, there is likely to be about 100 lbs of potatoes per 50 gallon trashcan if you have a good harvest. Since the compost and soil is on a tarp, now you can pull it to wherever you need to add compost and soil to make a new garden bed.

Learn about growing crickets or meal worms black soldier fly larvae etc.. for bird feed

They eat table scraps, vegetable peels, or fruits and vegetables that you don’t want to eat. Lawn trimmings, oatmeal, manure, these are all things those insects will eat and thrive on. It’s very easy to raise insects to feed your chickens, quail, ducks, or any other kind of bird. If you make sure you are feeding nutritious and mineral rich insects to your birds, you can ensure you are getting great nutrition from the eggs and meat your birds supply you with.

Japanese beetles a problem?

Get a small bucket or large yogurt container, fill a quarter of the way with water and a squirt of dish washing liquid. Head out in the morning when they are more sedentary, hold the bucket under the leaf or stem and tap the beetle, they will normally tuck and roll to escape you, and fall right into the bucket of soapy water never to emerge again. While you’re out there, keep an eye out for squash bugs or stink bugs, you can use much the same method with them but normally you have to knock them off into the water. They’ll drown the same way. This is probably the most effective way I know to control them in a home sized garden

If you haven’t selected a garden site, pick one that gets afternoon shade

Most people’s gardens will benefit from being protected from the sun during the heat of the afternoon sun. If you can’t or you are already growing in a fully sunny area, think about growing something tall like sunflowers to the west of any plants that will benefit from afternoon shade. The tall plants will get the sun they appreciate while helping to shade the lower growing plants to the east of them. Win/win!

Need to water your seedlings with precision?

Take a milk jug you are finished with, poke some holes in the lid, fill with water, replace the lid and now you can water precisely where you need it. No more drowning your seedlings, or blasting them with too much water. I really like this tip

Here’s a cool one…

If you’re tired of spacing plants out with your hands or measuring tape. Get a board, mark your measurements for the spacing you need for whatever you are planting, cut in half a bunch of old wine corks, the synthetic ones work just as well if not better than real cork. Then screw the half cork directly to the board where your marks were made. Now when you place the board on the soil and press in, depressions are made right where your seeds go. Pop the seeds in and flip the board back over to swipe across the surface to cover the seeds, and use the board to firm them in. Now all your seeds are planted, pressed into the soil and all that’s left to do is mulch them and water them in!

Unexpected freeze coming your way?

Have no fear, head out to the garden with some short stakes, blankets, old bed sheets, or some tarps. And of course something to weigh the ends down with. Poke the stakes in near the plants to give something for the cover to rest on like circus tent poles. Cover the plants with your materials. Again, I’ve used tarps which are the easiest cause they cover a large area, but you can use bed sheets and blankets for smaller spots. Just make sure you take the blankets off the next morning when the air has warmed up past freezing to prevent your plants from getting too hot or suffocating. This is a great tip to keep in mind because sometimes the weather just doesn’t cooperate and all of a sudden you are about to be hit by frost and lose the majority of your garden. It’s saved mine more than once, but I normally take early planting risks with my garden more than I should.

Want mint in your garden for the beneficial insects it attracts?

Say no more – Pot your mint in a pot large enough for it to be comfortable for the whole season. Then make sure you have another pot exactly the same size or a little bit larger. Dig a hole where you want your mint to stay, place the second empty pot into the hole leaving it sticking out of the ground just a little. Backfill the soil to the pot so now it’s buried in the soil. Place the potted mint container inside the second pot you just buried. Just remember to water it because it won’t be able to access water like a plant directly in the soil can. Now all you need to do is to make sure when it sends out runners that you pull them off or snip them back. You’ll have mint in the garden, without having mint taking over your garden.

Urban setting and you don’t have a garden but still want to grow some things?

Get some bags of potting soil, fold the bag in half distributing the soil inside equally to either end of the bag. Cut it in half leaving yourself with two smaller bags each containing half a bag worth of potting mix. Set them in a corner and make sure to poke some holes in the bottom of each bag planter with a pencil or a pen. Now you can plant directly into those half bag planters. Do as many as you want all pushed against each other and now you have your own garden on a balcony. If you don’t have a balcony but you do have a sunny window, get a Rubbermaid under bed storage bin, use the same soil bag technique to grow in the bin. The bin catches overflow water and actually allows you to bottom water essentially setting up a self watering wicking bed system.

Conclusion

Some of these might seem like common sense, and who knows, maybe I shared something with you today that got you excited about your garden or that might save you some time. But the real important thing I wanted to convey to you was to think outside the box and be creative about how you approach your gardening and homestead activities. I am always thinking of ways I can save myself time or effort in my day to day activities because I really don’t have enough time to get everything done that I really need to get done! It seems like I’m always about 6 hours short on my day no matter what I do so hopefully some of these ideas will save you a little bit of time or money and make your life easier! And I wanted to remind you that we are talking about things like this, sharing ideas and solutions to problems every day on the Homegrown Liberty facebook group. We have an awesome set of moderators and we keep things clean there. I am very strict about keeping everything G rated because I want this to be a podcast and a community that you can involve your children in. We are after all, family centric!

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show, If you’d like to get in touch with me, please send an email to

nick@homegrownliberty.com

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”