Ten thrifty garden tips

Want to add to your garden without purging your purse? You’ve come to the right place!

1 Make your own seed pots. Newspaper, a glass and some string is all you need to make a whole batch of seed pots for your nursery. They’ll decompose in the ground, too, so when you transfer your littl’uns outside you won’t need to disturb the roots.

2 Propagation and patience. I saw a spider plant priced up at £4 today. £4! Spider plants can be so easily propagated if you have a friend or family member with a spawning plant. Cut off a young plant from the main, and place in a glass of water. Leave to root, which normally takes around a fortnight, and transfer to a pot of compost. Before you buy more plants, think about what you could do with your existing ones. You could even do a swap with someone – giving away a lavender (Lavandula spica) cutting for your neighbour’s jade (Crassula ovata) cutting, for example.

3 Eggshell goodness. Pass on that pricey feed and add some crushed eggshells to soil for a nutrient boost. They’re a good source of calcium, and are particularly useful for fast-growing plants. Wash and finely crush the eggshells before mixing them into the soil.

4 Veggie goodness. When you’re gorging yourself at the Sunday roast, think about your plant folk. Put aside the water you’ve cooked your veg in, allow it to cool, and water your plants with it for a kick of goodness.

5 Trellis? Ain’t nobody got time to buy that! Planting a climber and planning on buying trellis? Learn a new skill and save money at the same time, by making your own trellis or supporting frame. All you need is string and bamboo canes, and a little ingenuity. Position your canes in the design you would like – for instance, in a V shape with bars, or a # shape. Then tie the string around each joint by running above and below each cane, and knot every several wraps, to ensure a tight hold.

6 Love your charity shops. I’ve bought most my pots and glass containers from charity shops – and at no more than £3 each. My best buy was perhaps a cut glass bowl for £1, which is now home to my succulent display. If you’re looking for a larger container for an indoor plant, you can find a wicker basket or small bin (the kind you’d put in a bedroom or office) in a charity shop and adapt it. Line the bin or basket with a black bin bag (double-layer if not very thick), shovel gravel into the bottom to allow for drainage (three inches should do it…) and fill with compost and the plant of your choice.

7 Linger, then meander a little, too. Keep an eye on the plant sections in supermarkets and non-specialist shops for reduced products. Retailers don’t water the plants once they’re on the shop floor, and are forced to reduce their price when they show the effects of the negligence. It means you can find some bargains, although they’ll need a little extra watering and attention for the first week or so.

8 Size isn’t everything. Garden centres up the price for plants as they get bigger, unsurprisingly. So you might find a small thyme (Thymus vulgaris) for £3, while a more mature plant is £7. The resolution is clear: spend within your means. Although a larger plant may give you instant gratification, a smaller one can be much more satisfying to train and watch grow.

9 Tap into local resources. Local coffee shops often give away their used coffee grounds, which can then be used to invigorate your soil. A valuable source of nitrogen, as well as magnesium, calcium and potassium, the grounds can be added to the soil in the same way as eggshells – mixed in with, or added on top of, soil. Pebbles from the local beach can be used in trays to increase humidity for potted plants (by placing them in a tray, filling with water, and placing the potted plant on top).

10 Just ask. Need some storage for your tools or pots? Ask at the local supermarket to have a couple of the cardboard boxes they receive vegetables in. They’re attractive, free and practical – how great is that?! Wondering whether your local café throw away their eggshells and coffee grounds? You know what to do.

Clear it! Clear it all!

When we moved into our house in September, the back garden was very overgrown. Common ivy (Hedera helix) and brambles clung to the surrounding walls, while other weeds and thorns had spread over the patio and flower bed. It looked even more unloved because previous tenants had somehow left broken plastic furniture, saws, ladders, rusty garden tools, and even a barbeque, strewn amongst the wilderness – floating on a sea of greenery. On the whole, the poor thing looked in dire need of attention.

I was fairly brutal in the clearing.

If I could do it again, I would have been less aggressive when cutting back the ivy, as the back wall now looks a bit bare. Keep in mind when clearing a garden of your own, that you still want the garden to look established – all the best things get better with age – and a bit of ivy on a wall can create just that effect.

I had to cut back the sage (Salvia officinalis) because it had been forced under the thorns to sprawl outwards, and also had brown spots on many of its leaves. It now looks a bit rough, but as I’ve said in an earlier blog, a little time and care should slowly get it back to a healthier state. Sage is generally quite hardy, and it has come through the winter well – with a beautiful silver touch in its leaves, might I add – but can struggle when neglected for too long, which seems to have been the case for mine. I might get a younger plant to put nearby, if only to draw some attention from the current sage’s woody branches that had once been hidden by the spotted leaves (now removed to prevent further contamination).

The way I go on about all these ill plants, my garden sounds like a care home for neglected flora, but I do have some rather lovely specimens. The rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), in particular, is my pride and joy in the garden.

I use often use rosemary in my cooking, so was very pleased to find a healthy plant under the tail-ends of brambles – closest to the kitchen. There’ll be a recipe for rosemary and garlic pasta coming soon, too.

Grab some tips for your garden clearing project here.

Keep sweet,

Lara x

Taming your unruly garden

I recently spokeabout my garden’s upheaval when we first moved in, and here are some tips if you’ve got an unruly garden that you’d like to see a little tidier:

Plan ahead. Have a look at the surfaces in your garden: do you have any flower beds? Is there a lot of patio or concrete? Once you know the layout and composition, you can start thinking about what you’ll be planting once it’s cleared. At the same time as doing this, see if there are any existing plants beneath the chaos that you would like to keep.

Suit up. There is nothing that can slow you down quite like getting thorns stuck in your hands or ankles. I went into my garden thinking myself quite the fashionista, in my ankle grazers and t-shirt, only to retreat back into the house after five minutes because my ankles had (you guessed it) taken quite a battering. Be practical and wear long trousers and gardening gloves – it may sound obvious, but pricks can easily be underestimated.

Tool up. Double-check you have everything you’ll need before you start. This’ll allow you to spend your time weeding/digging/clearing, and not searching for the secateurs that ‘you know you saw last week’, while calling out all manner of blasphemous and ‘blue’ words. You don’t need to be made up like Schwarzenegger, either. I cleared our garden with nothing more than a good pair of gardening gloves, secateurs and a small hand shovel. Just be careful when dealing with the larger of garden nuisances. This is great because it means not having to spend a fortune on unnecessary equipment.

Think in stages. Clear the weeds. Prepare the soil. Plant your lovelies. This way, you’ll know exactly where you are in the rejuvenation process and will be able to get it done much faster – you can power through each part, as opposed to taking time to swap between duties every so often.

Look! Remember to stop every so often and have a look at what you’ve done so far. It can be an incredible motivator and you’ll be surprised at how much you can get done within a short period of time.

Think green. It can be tempting to get rid of weeds by spraying weed killer all over the shop, but do resist. Their use can be harmful to the other critters that call your garden home. Pull them up from the roots and mulch flower beds to hold back comebacks.

And finally the practicalities… When cutting down brambles and thorns, if you cut them into sections (working from the tip to the root) it’ll mean they’re much easier to sweep or rake up. 

Hip to be hot? I don’t think so.

In the past two weeks I have had to say au revoir to my basil seedlings, ornamental cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and daffodils (Narcissus ‘Hawera’). Why? Because of a poorly positioned radiator and ill-advised plant placement. It has engrained in me a lifelong lesson, though: it’s all about location, location, location.

When deciding on plants, whether they'll be ending up indoors or outside, you need to think about the environment they’re going into, and what suits where best.

My desk is right in front of my radiator because it’s also in front of the window (I know, top-notch efficiency planning there), so the plants can receive enough light. It was fine in summer, but as we have been plunged into the bitter cold, the radiator has been turned on full-blast. Silly me, I didn’t realise how it would affect the lovelies – which have dried out and buckled under the intense heat, despite efforts to bring them back. They certainly weren’t helped by an impromptu weekend away (to Swansea, so not quite an exotic holiday).

My succulents, however, have loved the dry, hot environment. My heather (Calluna vulgaris) seems to have survived. Though it appeared a little dry at first, it has now perked up after more frequent watering.

Find out about positioning plants here.

Let me introduce myself...

Hello! My Name’s Lara and I’m addicted to green…living. Well, plant life, that's for sure.

This is the start of a blog about gardening (shock horror) that will look at how you can create a garden from a concrete pit, turn a desk into a little natural escape, and other bits and bobs that include recipes and pictures of my cat…

It’s been around two years since I moved out of my parents’ house, and when I was suddenly faced with a dull, beige and magnolia bedroom and kitchen to lighten up – and some absolutely horrendous curtains to distract myself from (who would have ever thought of putting red, blue and green wavy stripes with orange blotches?).

Enter the plants.

I can’t get over how many plants I managed to accumulate and squeeze into my small flat last year. Windowsills were filled with hyacinths, daffodils, amaryllis, cactus, lavender and rosemary, as well as vases of cut flowers bought as a treat.

I was incredibly lucky because the flat received a lot of sunlight, particularly in the kitchen. It was so sunny, in fact, that it taught me one of my first lessons: there’s such a thing as too much sunlight. Or direct sunlight, to be more accurate perhaps. The poor forsythia I was attempting to root was scorched after being left in the bright sun over the weekend. I came back to three, very dry sticks plunged into very dry soil.

My tip? Treat your plants like people. Give them shelter from too much direct sunlight so they don’t get ‘sunburnt’ and keep them from going thirsty by watering them (little and often is usually best, as you don’t want the soil to shrink or become water-logged). For succulents and cacti, though, you can let the soil get quite dry before watering. They thrive in dry, warm environments and tolerate a lot of neglect, so will survive being forgotten over a hot weekend.

When it comes to winter and you need to keep indoor little’uns warm, cut off the top of a water bottle and use it as a cloche to keep the plant safe from frost. Just be sure to allow some airflow by removing the cap. Bark and mulch can be used outside. I have used bin bags in the past when protecting young cabbages from snow (the seasons decided they didn’t want to work like normal, and we had snow in spring), but removed them again when it was safe. Be sure to allow airflow and water to the plant when covering outdoor plants.

I was initially put off gardening by the cost. I didn’t want to end up spending a fortune (which, frankly, I didn’t have) on a pretty flowerbed or windowbox. But it doesn’t have to be expensive at all.

The first cactus I bought, a Christmas cactus (Zygocactus trunatus), has just finished its second flowering season and seems to be in a happy state. It’s a great example of how gardening – or just adding a few little plants around home – doesn’t need to be expensive. He (yes, he) was a bargain buy from Lidl, costing no more than £2.50 I think, but he’s survived thus far. If you’re willing to put in the little effort, you can raise a healthy plant without throwing money at everything.

Another great tip for making the pennies go further is to look at the reduced sections in garden centres or supermarket plant shelves. Supermarkets and other non-specialist shops, in particular, rarely water the plants once they’re on the shop floor. As a result, you can find the thirsty plants much cheaper once they lose their zest. These chaps and chapettes take a little more attention, as you slowly re-invigorate them with watering and feeding, but they can usually end up doing quite well.

My potted rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) was reduced in Tesco, to about £1.50 I think, and it’s now doing very well in a sunny spot on the windowsill in my parents’ kitchen. The rosemary was interesting, actually, because it was left in a back garden for weeks before I was able to take it to my flat. It meant it wasn’t in great shape, but with a little careful pruning and TLC it has become a nice grower – bearing in mind that rosemary is a slow grower.

Hopefully see you again sometime!

Lara,

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