Simple ways to save money while you garden
If you’ve been gardening for years, there’s a good chance you’ve heard this advice: put a layer of gravel or small rocks at the bottom of your flowerpots before adding soil. The idea sounds perfectly reasonable because rocks should help excess water drain away from plant roots, right? Unfortunately, gardening experts say this popular practice…
Walk into almost any garden center, and you’ll find shelves packed with products promising bigger tomatoes, healthier flowers, greener lawns, and fewer pests. There are specialty fertilizers, soil boosters, plant vitamins, and expensive treatments that make it seem like successful gardening requires a shopping cart full of supplies. But here’s something experienced gardeners eventually discover:…
You’ve probably seen the recipe circulating online: Mix vinegar, salt, and dish soap in a spray bottle, apply it to stubborn weeds, and watch them disappear. It sounds like the perfect solution for gardeners who want to save money and avoid expensive commercial weed killers. But what if that inexpensive homemade mixture is actually creating…
Your houseplants have spent the summer thriving on the patio, growing lush leaves and enjoying the warm sunshine. Now that nighttime temperatures are dropping, you’re ready to bring them indoors before the first frost. You carry your favorite plants into the living room, arrange them beside your other greenery, and congratulate yourself on saving them…
Free plants are one of the best perks of having gardening neighbors. Someone divides their hostas, thins out an overcrowded flower bed, or offers you a few extra perennials, and suddenly you’ve saved $50 or more at the garden center. But that generous gift could come with something you definitely didn’t bargain for: an invasive…
You spend an entire weekend improving your yard, planting shrubs, installing new garden beds, and finally tackling that landscaping project you’ve been putting off for years. Everything looks fantastic until your neighbor knocks on the door with a complaint. Apparently, your new privacy hedge is crossing their property line, your sprinkler is soaking their patio,…
Imagine spending an entire spring transforming your front lawn into a productive vegetable garden, complete with raised beds, tomato plants, and fresh herbs. Your neighbors compliment the landscaping, your grocery bills start shrinking, and you’re finally making use of a sunny spot that once required constant mowing. Then a letter arrives from your city or…
You spend hundreds of dollars on a beautiful ornamental tree, carefully plant it in your yard, and surround it with fresh mulch to give your landscaping a polished appearance. Everything looks perfect, especially that neat mound of dark mulch rising around the trunk. But what if the very thing you did to protect your investment…
Most gardeners celebrate finding earthworms in their soil because they’re supposed to be a sign of a healthy, thriving garden. But what if some of those worms were actually making your soil worse? An invasive group of earthworms spreading across the United States is causing concern among researchers, gardeners, and conservationists because of its ability…