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Starting seeds is a great way to save money on your garden since you&#;re growing from scratch rather than buying established plants. However, you can go the extra mile and save even MORE money starting seeds.
Here are some great ways to start seeds on a budget and make your garden journey a truly super frugal adventure.
We covered the basics of indoor seed starting, but today we&#;re going to focus on lots of money saving tips for each part of seed starting to make your garden even more cost-effective and all of them are great for anyone trying to save money gardening.
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Save RecipeBefore we go any further, there is one important thing to note. There are two things that you simply CANNOT cheap out on: seeds and soil. These are the bedrock of your entire seed starting empire, and if you go cheap here, you&#;ll pay for it later.
As I said, don&#;t cheap out on seeds. Buy quality seeds to help guarantee a good harvest. If your seeds don&#;t germinate, you don&#;t save money! This is one of the seed companies that I love.
It&#;s best to go with heirloom varieties when starting seeds if you can, as they&#;ve been proven to be winners in both health and production. In addition, you&#;ll be able to save those seeds for next year, which will reduce your future costs.
Cheap starting mix can be a cheaper way to go, but you will likely pay for it by having poor quality seedlings. Quality soil will give your fledgling garden has the best chance to thrive and produce.
This brand of soil and this brand both have good reputations. Alternatively, peat pellets are another great route that yields good results.
There are a lot of websites out there touting all the things that you&#;ll need to start your garden plants indoors. From heating pads to fancy grow lights, starting seeds indoors could even cost you the same as or more than it would to simply buy plants at your local garden center if you follow some of the tips out there.
Don&#;t fall for the hype. Sure, all that stuff is nice to have, and it can make a marginal difference, but you can often do just as well without them. You truly don&#;t need all that fancy stuff to grow healthy plants that will thrive.
Yes, seeds need warm soil to germinate, however, that doesn&#;t require a heating pad. You already have the heat running in your home during winter, and your seeds are in tiny containers. They&#;ll be warm enough.
If you want to go more the conventional route, here are some great DIY options&#; this DIY heat mat and another DIY heat mat.
So, tap water is not only bad for you, it&#;s bad for seeds and seedlings as well. It has chlorine, other synthetic chemicals, and heavy metals in it, all of which can harm fragile seeds. However, you don&#;t need to spend tons of money on specialty or distilled water when starting seeds. All you need is good filtered water.
Having quality filtered water is imperative for overall good health, so just use the same filtered water for your seedlings that you would use for yourself, however as noted in the post linked to above, I do recommend using a filter that removes fluoride.
Some websites and stores say that you need a fancy seedling watering device like a mister that will gently water your seeds without disturbing the soil or harming delicate seedlings. You don&#;t. While you do for sure need to be careful with watering, you don&#;t necessarily need to buy anything.
Instead, here&#;s a frugal &#;DIY seedling watering can&#;: simply take a small water bottle, poke a hole or 2 in the lid, and fill with water. Boom. Instant watering device.
When you turn the bottle upside down and gently squeeze, you&#;ll be able to gently water your seeds or seedlings without too much pressure or soil disruption.
One of the most common questions when considering starting seeds is whether or not you you need a grow light to grow seeds indoors. The answer is&#;maybe.
If you choose to try your luck, here&#;s how to start seeds without grow lights. Place your seeds in front of a sunny south-facing window. You&#;ll need to pay attention to them, however, and they will get more &#;leggy&#; typically than their &#;light grown&#; counterparts.
A better way to go without spending too much is to try good, old-fashioned fluorescent &#;shop lights.&#;
This set of 4 shop lights is a very inexpensive option. Many even come with hooks on the back and pre-installed cords, so you can just hang them and plug them in.
You can also start seeds under LED lights, which helps avoid the mercury concerns of fluorescent bulbs. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that LED lighting is more directional and the light is at the bottom of the tube, so plants at the outer edges of your planting system will tend to lean inwards.
You&#;ll often see literature on starting seeds advising you to cover your seeds with plastic domes (either one large dome or smaller, individual domes) until the seeds sprout to speed up sprouting.
If you can be patient, you don&#;t need to do this, so you can save here. If you&#;re in a hurry, skip the dome, and just use some plastic wrap and toothpicks to keep the wrap at the proper height, removing it once the plants sprout.
Rather than spend a lot of money on specialized containers at your garden center, use things that you have around the house for. You can make seed starting containers from a variety of different cheap or free containers, and they all work very well.
Want more information on cheap seed starting trays? Feel free to contact us.
One thing to keep in mind is that it&#;s best to use containers that are the same height to prevent headaches when positioning your grow lights.
If you&#;re like most people, you have a lot of seed containers lying around your home, just waiting to be used. Containers of all types make excellent planting vessels for your new crop. Use the following in place of purchased pots for starting seeds.
Biodegradable Containers are a little more unwieldy in that, if they get too wet, they will decompose, but they are handy in that you can plant the seedlings directly into the ground once they are ready. Here are some free / almost free options that work great.
Here are some other great DIY seed pots for more inspiration.
Just like I mentioned in this post on getting free plants, you might just be able to land some free seedling flats. Often times, your local big box store&#;s garden center will give away flats at the end of the gardening season. You can also check with your local garden center too.
While this won&#;t help you for the current season, it will give you some nice seed starting containers for the next one. Larger flats make it more convenient for when it&#;s time for hardening off seedlings since you can move them in and out of your house more easily.
There are lots of fun and cute plant tags out there, but they can get really pricey fast.
One method I&#;ve used is to wrap some scotch tape around a toothpick or a straightened out paper clip. Make a little tag out of the tape and write on the tape with a Sharpie pen. Easy and cheap!
You can also just make a paper diagram, or take a photo of your garden and label it using an app on your .
I didn&#;t know this when I started gardening, but there are some plants that do better when started indoors and some which should be sown outdoors. Knowing the reasons for seed sowing indoors vs. outdoors will help you make good decisions in this area.
Plus, that post also has a list of plants you should simply not start indoors.
No one wants to go to all of this effort (even if it doesn&#;t cost that much) only to have it fail and then your money is completely down the drain.
Starting seeds on a budget can be easy and even fun. Between recycling and some easy DIY projects, you can do a lot with very little if you know how.
Hopefully, you&#;ll be inspired to give these frugal tips a try so that both your summer and fall garden vegetables will cost as little as possible to bring from garden to table.
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It&#;s officially that time of year! Depending on where you live, it&#;s time to get your veggie seeds started indoors so you can enjoy the earliest possible harvest. If you&#;re trying to live on a budget, this is an absolute MUST! If you&#;ve never gardened before, I know you might be thinking that you&#;re not cut out for it. Take it from the person who has killed basically every plant she ever looked at&#;if I can do it, you can too!
This is my FAVORITE time of year. It&#;s so exciting and so homesteading-esque to be starting our own seeds and raising our own food. One of our biggest priorities in our house is to be able to be more self-sufficient. Growing veggies is one of the very best ways to get started on your homesteading journey and of course, you have to find a way to do it on a budget!
One of the very best tips that I can offer as you get started is to not get sucked into the pretty gardening displays at your local home improvement or grocery store. Yes, there are really cute seed starting kits and lots of things that are marketed to help you start your garden, but these things are definitely not the best deal.
If you think outside the box just a little bit, you can save a TON on supplies that will work just as well.
One of the main things you will need in order to start your own garden is &#; you guessed it! &#; SEEDS!
My absolute favorite place to shop for vegetable seeds is Walmart. They often have displays of American Seed brand seeds for just 20 cents a pack. You can absolutely not beat that! We get suckered in and buy way too many seed packets, but really, one or maybe two will probably be way more than you need per item you&#;re planting.
Extremely easy plants to start with are tomatoes and zucchini because they produce crazy amounts of fruit from just one plant. Tomatoes are a great thing to have way too many of, in my opinion. They&#;re so versatile and let you replace store bought items with things you can make yourself. Ketchup, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa to name a few.
Next, you&#;ll need some soil and something to plant your seeds in. Potting soil is definitely not recommended for this purpose, but you can pick up some seed starting mix at your local Walmart or home improvement store.
**Huge money saving tip** Check out your local Lowes for ripped bags of soil! They often put these on clearance for just one dollar! You can&#;t beat that. In fact, if you find a few bags, pick them up and throw them in the garage or basement &#; they&#;ll be just as useful next year!
For the containers, this year we&#;re using Dixie cups. Yes, these can be expensive, but another great tip is to buy them at Big Lots when they have their 20% off sale. Sign up on www.biglots.com for their e-mails and you&#;ll get notified of these sales when they roll around. This is the cheapest place I&#;ve found to buy Dixie cups.
Empty egg packaging also works great for this purpose.
One of the most frustrating things in gardening is planting something and not knowing what you planted in what container. My easiest tip to avoid this headache is to just label your cups with a sticker. I bought a pack of labels from Dollar Tree and used these to mark my cups. You could also write right on the Dixie cup, but it&#;s a little awkward to try to write on something so tiny. I just thought the stickers were easier.
Now you&#;re ready to plant! Simply fill your cups almost all of the way up with your soil. I left about ¼ inch of headspace at the top.
Next, make a small hole in the center of your soil with either your fingertip or a pencil eraser. You can also just lay the seeds on top and push them down with the pencil eraser, but I like to make little holes to make sure my seeds actually get covered.
Drop 2 seeds into the hole you&#;ve made in the soil in each of your cups.
Now spritz them with some water from a water bottle or use a dropper. You can also moisten the soil before putting it in your cups to skip this step. You want to be very gentle when watering because you don&#;t want to uncover your seeds by washing away the soil on top.
Finally, put them in a container and cover them. The little plastic shoe boxes from Walmart work great and at only 98 cents, you really can&#;t beat the price!
Keep a close eye on your seeds and make sure to uncover them and move them closer to sunlight when they&#;ve sprouted.
Based on the information on the back of your seed packet, determine when to plant your seedlings outdoors. This is based on the last frost in your area, so be sure to know your zone.
For the last 7-10 days that your little seedlings will be indoors, be sure to water them less frequently and take them outside to &#;harden&#; them. This gets them used to life outdoors and gives them a much better chance of survival when you actually transplant them. We&#;re just going to place ours on the front porch to let them harden off for an increasing amount of time each day, starting at one hour the first day.
That&#;s it! It sounds like a lot of steps, but starting your vegetables from seeds can save you SO much money in the long run. Just check out the prices for vegetable plants at your local nursery. If you can grow a few of that same plant for just 20 cents plus the cost of supplies to get them going, you&#;re going to have veggies for pennies on the dollar.
Plus, you get the satisfaction of growing your food from seed yourself!
Go grab some seeds from Walmart, a ripped back of soil from Lowes, and some Dixie cups from your bathroom and get started. I promise, you won&#;t regret it!
Do you grow your own veggies? Is this your first year trying? Be sure to let me know how it goes in the comments!
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