Gardening on a budjet

Visit your local diy store regularly. Most chains don't really know how to look after the plants they look after. My local homebase is a very good example of this, all their plants are kept in the shade and are watered once a day everyday by some spotty teenager who really doesn't want to be there. A lot of them therefore become over watered and then the price is severely knocked down.

I'd say about 30% of my plants have come from this one store, all on deaths door that I have saved and they have now been given a second chance to thrive. You can help an overwatered plant by wrapping the rootball in newspaper to dry it out.

Also look on ebay in the gardening section. Look for plants that are local to you. Don't bother with looking by time remaining as you will pay a fortune in postage. I don't hardly pay for postage anymore on ebay because it's so expensive. There will be quite a few listings of plants people just want dug out for them for next to nothing.

Don't be afraid to talk to your neighbours. A couple across the road I met last winter because they were removing a load of lavender plants, as well as the top soil in this raised bed as they were dismantling it. I went over, introduced myself and asked if I could take the plants as they were only going to be thrown away. They were quite happy to let me and I eventually took away most of the top soil in the raised bed too. Roughly about 3 tons, this was good quality stuff too. I saved myself well over £200 and the couple had a huge amount of room left in the skip they had hired.

This ended up in a really good friendship with them as a result, we often go round for cups of tea and help each other out too.

 

I occasionally ask to see GC manager when I see something I want but s not in perfect condition. Mostlly I will get it cheap or even a freeby. Jungle Jane, we share same thinking I think, if you don't ask you don't get. Also, at this time of year space is needed for Xmas stuff so their plants are often in the way

 

managed to get
100 ltrs of bark chips for temp path
18 meters of garden edge
20 meters by 1.5 of weed control fabric for
£36 quidfor mums garden

 

Yes, but mum's are worth it. Sounds like the weather has dried up just in time.

 

they sure are

 

Baught another 200 ltrs of bark
15 packets of seeds using thompson and morgan code
two bags of gravel
total cost 90 quid so far - not bad for a new garden.

 

Just being nosey, but how you managing to source everything so cheaply?

 

Clueless , when was last time you`ve been around your local garden center ?
couple of weeks ago I went down mine and they had all compost bags , sand , barks and peat , reduced to 1 pound , got 4 bags of compost and 1 of sand for £5 , then in one of them even find a free plant.

 

• The whole sale place are selling the last of their stock of compost and bark in my area as it is out of season now so my local shop has passed the saving onto me.
• The edging is the cheap plastic stuff so that's not expensive bought off ebay
• The gravel was really cheap from homebase at 2.50 a bag.
• The weed control fabric is around a pound a meter on ebay.
• I used the discount code for the seeds and because i bought a lot i saved 8 quid

Hope this helps

 

I think the 'out of season' thing helps. At the weekend I bought a bag of compost from the new local farm shop. I didn't look at the brand, I just chatted to the lady and then paid £4 while someone else put it in my car.

Wife said asked if £4 was expensive. I told her not really, sort of cheap to average. Then when I got it home I noticed it was John Innes, which I never usually buy because its too expensive as a rule.

 

John innes for four quid thats amazing

 

To be honest , I used john innes n1 once , paid 3 for £10 , didn`t like it at all ...
but as we are out of season , i can get really cheap compost....alway good to have few bags around

 

Are Campanula really that easy? I have some seeds but seeing how big my shop-bought Campanulas are, I always imagined they'd be hard!

P'S, when is the best time of the year to divide Campanulas?

 

Really that easy!

Late spring is best. If not then I do it in September too.

 

I'll give it a go next year