Gardening on the Cheap

I've had a really enjoyable time this year trying to figure out ways to improve my garden and food supply without spending a lot of money to do it. And, in my humble opinion, I've come up with some pretty clever ways to do it. Jeff just scratches his head and snickers, but I just don't think he realizes the money I'm saving him and how much work it will save us both.

To start seeds this year, we've been saving toilet paper rolls and dryer lint. All you do is cut the toilet paper rolls in half, snip the bottom into four flaps and then fold them in cardboard box style. Into the cup, place a smidgen of dryer lint, just enough to blanket the bottom. Then fill with a bit of seed starter or potting soil and you're done. What you have is a biodegradable seed pot, with a lint liner that holds onto moisture. You just plant them straight into the garden or into a larger pot, opening the bottom of the pot to allow the roots to grow.

For irrigation, we're trying in-ground waterers. Due to the roll of our land, we have a terrible time with both run-off and puddling. To solve that problem, we've been saving milk jugs, soda bottles, anything that can hold water. This spring when we plow up the garden and furrow for planting, then we're going to punch holes in the bottoms and sides of the jugs and 'plant' them up to their spouts between the larger plants like tomatoes and peppers. When it's necessary to water, we'll simply fill up the jugs and allow the water to leech out of the holes, directly to the roots of the plants. In theory it should work. And hopefully that will resolve a lot of our erosion/flooding problems. In theory LOL.

I know some of these ideas sound hokey, but it seems more sensible than rushing out and buying hundreds of dollars of peat pots, soaker hoses and expensive watering gadgets. And isn't the part of homesteading using what's available to made do? I'd call it Yankee ingenuity. Except in my family, we're definitely not Yankees.