Vegetable Gardening on a Budget: 21 Ways to Save Money When Growing Food

Are you tight on money? Not sure you can “afford” to grow your own food at home? Get started with vegetable gardening on a budget with these 21 ways to save money.

From what I have observed, money seems to rank as high and sometimes higher than space and time for the main excuse as to why you might not be growing your own food. Everyone has a budget they have to follow and while vegetable gardening hopefully has it’s place in your budget it likely has some constraints.

It is easy to get carried away with spending lots of money on growing food. I know, I’ve been there myself.

Garden centres, tool catalogues, seed catalogues and your local home centre all tempt you with the must-have tools, supplies and seeds; without these it seems you can’t have a successful garden. And then you buy some tool that promises success, only to have it collect dust in your garden shed. I have quite a few of those types of tools!

You can however find ways to do vegetable gardening on a budget and avoid buying a car or truckload full of garden supplies.

Here are my top 21 ways to save money when growing food.

Seeding

Start From Seeds Instead Of Buying Seedlings/Transplants

A pack of 6 seedlings or transplants at a nursery probably will run you $5 or so. You could easily leave with $100 worth of plants if you have ambitious plans to grow most of your food.

A packet of seeds will run you $2-3 and probably grow at least 10 to 100 times as many plants.

Yes, seeding your own transplants requires a few supplies but even those can be had cheaply as you’ll see below.

And if money reasons are not enough, I’ve covered other reasons for seeding over buying seedlings in this post.

Save On Buying Seeds

Seed catalogues tempt the gardener with the newest varieties of vegetables and flowers. It’s not enough for instance to buy just one seed packet of lettuce when there are so may kinds out there that you want to try growing.

So how can you save on your seed purchases?

buy a seed blend – this usually then gives you a few varieties. The only downside is you won’t know which seed is which variety.
share seeds with friends/family/colleagues. Each person buys one packet and then each of you can get a small number of seeds from each variety.
focus on buying seeds of vegetables that you and your family like to eat. But don’t let that stop you from buying and planting seeds of vegetables that are not your favourites or that you have never eaten. With the right recipe or sauce, you can make almost any vegetable taste great!
keep your seeds in a cool, dry place (I keep mine in the fridge in a box) and they will last several years. You don’t need to buy new seeds every year. Some seeds though are better to buy fresh every year.
go to a local Seedy Saturday or seed swap. Most larger cities have these once a year, often in late winter where you can bring your own seeds and then swap for other seeds.
save your own seeds by harvesting seeds from your plants and keep them to reseed the following year
get extra seedlings from gardeners like me that always seem to overseed. We end up having way too many “baby” plants and no room to transplant all of them. Rarely will you find a gardener that has the nerve to just throw the extra seedlings away. Join local Facebook groups on gardening – there are usually some people every spring that are giving away extra plants or sell them for just a few pennies per plant.
make your own seed tape and sheets – don’t buy them pre-made

Reuse Containers For Seeding

You don’t need to go and purchase special flats, pots and especially not peat or Jiffy pots in order to seed your vegetables and flowers.

Instead use these household recyclables for a free alternative:

clamshell containers such as you might get takeout salads in or other convenience foods. It helps to choose ones that are square or rectangular instead of round or other funny shapes (I have some octagonal ones for instance) as the former takes up less room. The advantage of a clamshell is that you can close the transparent top and it serves to keep the soil warmer (especially if you use a heat mat) and keeps it from drying out
yoghurt containers work well, the one-serving size for starting seeds and the larger size for repotting seedlings to allow them to grow larger before they get transplanted outdoors
styrofoam meat trays can be used as trays to put my pots and containers on to keep water from dripping on the ground
newspapers can be made into pots by rolling them up and crimping the bottoms and then placing them in a plastic container
egg cartons can be used with each egg compartment holding one seed but there is some concern about salmonella and I found the egg compartments were a bit too small – I might try this again

Just make sure you clean the containers well with hot, soapy water. And punch some drainage holes in the bottom if using as pots.

Create a Cheap Grow Light Setup

If you’re starting your own seeds indoors, you need to have some kind of grow lighting to grow strong seedlings.

Have you seen the prices of grow light setups you can buy? Often these are in the hundreds of dollars!

But you can save some money with a DIY setup that works just as well. What you’ll need:

A cheap shelving unit which you may already have or pick one up at a garage sale for a few bucks.
A few cheap lights. These could be desk lamps, small fluorescent fixtures or simple bulb holders. Add some LED bulbs that will last almost forever. They don’t need to be special grow light bulbs.
A timer to control how long the lights stay on. Doesn’t need to be fancy; one of the analog ones you set by turning a dial work just as well as a digital one.

Places to Grow

Do the prices of containers for growing vegetables shock you? Here are some ideas for free containers you can use to grow vegetables in.

Remember drainage: if the container doesn’t already have a hole, you will need to drill some in the bottom or at the very bottom of the sides.

Use Buckets For Growing

You can get 5 gallon (18l) buckets from a bakery or restaurant for free – just ask them. These are food grade and just need a good cleaning. They even come with handles and the lid can double as a shallow tray.

You could always paint the outside if you want it to look a bit nicer.

Use Free Grow Bags

How many of us have too many of those recycled plastic woven shopping bags that we may have received for free when buying $100 worth of groceries?

These can be used for growing too! Even the smaller sizes could be used for growing a head or two of lettuce or some herbs.

Build A Strawberry Crate Tower

Have you seen the prices for terracotta strawberry planters or urns? Expensive!

Instead you can build a strawberry crate tower from inexpensive “milk” crates you can find in department stores or home centres. Even better if you can find them on special. All you need to add is a roll of landscape cloth and a drilled out PVC pipe (mine is a remnant from a plumbing job).

Use Free Or Cheap Raised Bed Materials

While I’m not a big fan of pallet wood, in a pinch if that is all you can afford (pallets usually are free) you can build a raised bed or planter out of a pallet.

Or you may be able to get some cheap seconds at the lumberyard to build your beds with.

Or some frugal gardeners will use logs from felled trees to border their raised beds.

Plant Supports

Use Free Material for Staking Up Plants

Got long prunings from your fruit trees? You can use these for staking up peas or beans.

Switching out your curtain rods or towel bars? You could use the old ones to tie up tomatoes.

Or if you have an overhead structure, just tie a string to it and let your vining plants climb up the string.

Use Household Items For Plant Ties

No need to buy the expensive plant ties at the nursery or garden centre. They may look cute (we have some that are flexible frogs) but are pricy if you need a lot of them.

Keep your twist ties from bags of food. These can be used as plant ties to keep plants from flopping over.

String or yard works as well. Or fine wire like what you’d find in an old broken telephone or network cable.

Some people even use old pantyhose cut in strips – the advantage is that they are stretchy so will stretch as the plant grows.

Build Your Soil And Feed Your Plants

Make your own compost…

Bagged compost is very expensive!

Instead make your own. It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as my three-bin cedar compost. You just need a small 3×3 area and some cheap chicken wire or deer fencing and a few stakes (see above for free sources).

Pound the stakes into the ground, wrap the chicken wire or net around the stakes and secure with some string. Fill it with spent plant material, leaves, manure (see below for free sources), etc.

Obviously this saves you money of not having to buy bagged compost. But it also helps as you don’t have to pay to get rid of the waste (even if you have free municipal drop-off locations you still need to drive there which costs money).

…and compost tea

Once you have your own compost, you can also make your own compost tea. Grab one of those meshed bags that onions usually come in, fill it with compost, tie it off and soak it in a bucket of water for a few days.

Dilute this mixture (10:1 is what is usually recommended) with water and use it to fertilize your plants.