You can easily sink money into the yard. We listed some tips that will help you create a beautiful garden on a small budget.
An affordable garden is the dream of many, although planting and maintaining the yard can easily drain the wallet.
On average, Finnish households purchase garden products for 351 euros per year, Horticulture Association tells.
If the gardening hobby is just beginning and there is a lot to acquire, euros can easily be spent even more than this.
You can have a beautiful and nice yard without spending money on it. We listed eight tips that will help you create a thriving garden on a small budget.
1. Find out and plan
You will avoid wrong purchases and unnecessary spending of money when you find out which plant is suitable for the conditions of your flower bed.
For example, a plant that thrives in the shade will not bloom in the sun, and vice versa. The quality of the soil also affects it.
2. Ask your neighbors for seedlings
Feel free to ask if a neighbor, friend or relative has perennials or useful plants to share. Sharing is good for old traditions, so you both benefit.
3. Buy plants when they are on sale
If you leave your plant purchases until autumn, you can take advantage of discount sales at garden stores. Some of the stores already have discount sales in the summer.
The selection is not as comprehensive as at the beginning of the garden season in the spring, so you may have to be flexible in choosing plants.
4. Invest in sustainable plants
Compared to many highly cultivated perennials, traditional perennials or Maatiaisperennas are easy to care for, resistant to both weather conditions and pests, and often need less fertilizer than cultivated varieties. Being winter hardy, they persistently emerge from the ground every year.
You should choose a simple variety of tulips, such as a Darwin tulip or a botanical variety, if you want to ensure flowering next year as well. Multiplied varieties bloom more uncertainly than simple ones in the following years. Cut the seed pods when the petals fall and let the leaves and stems wilt in peace.
5. Think about whether you need special mulch
The selections of garden stores include garden soil, summer flower soil, perennial soil, seedling soil, cultivation soil, tomato soil…
Ordinary garden soil can be quite enough. If, for example, the hydrangea is not going to be stored over the winter, it will do well in something other than the hydrangea soil specifically intended for it.
You save on costs when you buy a larger quantity of mulch at once instead of individual bags. By composting garden waste, mulch is created from your own back.
6. Get used pots and garden supplies
Pots are expensive new, but you can find them inexpensively used, for example, at recycling centers.
Online flea markets, such as Tori, also sell garden accessories at low prices, from watering cans to wheelbarrows.
7. Grow from seed
Especially if you collect the seeds from your own plants in autumn or get permission to collect seeds from the plants of a friend or relative, you will save a lot of money.
Seed bags sold in stores are cheaper than pre-grown seedlings. Several seedlings can be grown from a seed bag.
If growing from seeds seems too challenging, get ready-made seedlings in small sizes, because larger ones cost more than small ones.
8. Try winterizing summer flowers
Some of the summer flowers can bloom from one summer to the next, as long as they are moved indoors well before the first night frosts. This way you don’t have to buy new flowers in the spring.
For example, you can try to winterize geraniums, blood drops, marguerites and dahlias.
Also used as sources: Anna.fi.
Source: kotiliesi.fi
