Growing Vegetables For Beginners On A Budget

Growing our own vegetables can be a great way to enjoy healthy frugal food.

But starting a vegetable garden can easily become a budget blowing hobby of ever more expensive mistakes!

So I have for you here must know tips - I learned the hard way - on how to grow vegetables on a budget for beginners.

These simple tips will help you get your vegetable garden started fast without wasting money on all the stuff - however lovely - that you just don't need.

Contents

1. Grow Vegetables In Buckets
2. Recycle Seed Trays
3. Start Planting In March & April
4. Buy Cheap Plastic Sheeting
5. Make Easy DIY Plant Cloche
6. Plant Quick Growing Vegetables
7. Share Good Quality Seed Packets
8. Sow Seeds Little & Often
9. Regrow Vegetables From Scraps
10. Swap Plants
11. Love Your Soil
12. Start Composting
13. Blag Garden Poles
14. Get Some Butterfly Nets
15. Control Pests Naturally

Grow Vegetables In Buckets

Pinterest is full of gorgeous pictures of vegetable garden layouts with fancy raised beds and trellises. Ignore them.

You don't want to spend money on any of these until you've grown stuff in your garden for a good few years and understand how it works.

Start growing your vegetables instead in basic buckets or grow bags that you can easily pick up second hand for free, upcycle or buy very cheaply.

The big advantage of buckets for beginners is the flexibility to move plants around for optimum light and heat as we learn what spots in our garden different vegetables like best.

Top 10 Bucket Gardening Tips

Use these 10 top bucket garden tips to get your veggies off to a great start :

1. Scrub pots with hot soapy water
2. Make drainage holes if none
3. Raise buckets on e.g. old bricks to improve drainage and ventilation
4. Use 5 gallon buckets for big plants e.g. tomatoes, zucchini
5. Pick shallower pots for shallow rooted greens e.g. lettuce
6. Fill buckets with best quality soil you can (more on this later)
7. Do NOT let buckets dry out
8. Do NOT over water buckets
9. Move buckets around during season for optimum heat & light
10. Rotate for even growth.

Recycle Simple DIY Seed Trays

It is a good idea to start bigger plants like peas & zucchini in seed trays indoors so you can get them going early when it is still too cold outside.

But you don't need to buy seed trays.

Simply recycle your own DIY seed trays from any of these you have handy :

• Yoghurt pots
• Dip tubs
• Egg boxes
• Egg shells
• Toilet rolls
• Newspaper
• K-cups
• Juice cartons
• Soda bottles
• Water bottles
• Ice cream tubs.

Poke drainage holes in the bottom if needed and stand them on an old tray or plastic box lid to collect the water.

Start Planting In March & April

You can grow all sorts of vegetables all year round but the best planting time is early spring in March and April.

If you get going early you will have plenty of time to grow vegetables from seed which is obviously much cheaper than buying seedlings and small plants.

You will also have time to learn from your mistakes so if some vegetables get eaten by slugs or dug up by cats you'll be able to sow more seeds.

The best vegetable seeds to start sowing in early spring include :

1. Lambs Lettuce
2. Peas
3. Turnips
4. Spring Greens
5. Carrots
6. Radishes
7. Spinach
8. Swiss Chard
9. Tomatoes (Inside)
10. Zucchini (Inside)

Buy Cheap Plastic Sheets

The only disadvantage to starting vegetables in early spring is that the weather can take a turn for the worse and your plants may need protection from storms, frost or snow.

Pinterest is again full of gorgeous green houses and cold frames and the like but don't spend money on them.

Cheap plastic sheeting from hardware stores or garden centres can be used instead for super flexible plant protection. You can easily rig up a :

• Lean to against a fence
• Greenhouse tent with an old A-frame clothes drier
• Protective tipi with bean poles
• A frame from old pallets
• Covered plant frame from beans poles stuck in your big pots.

Make Easy DIY Plant Cloche

You can also protect young plants from frost with DIY cloche made from e.g. :

• Milk jugs
• Soda bottles
• Plastic tubs
• Glass jars
• Plastic cups
• Plastic bowls

These DIY cloche can also protect individual plants like peas that are vulnerable when young to slugs and snails and also sometimes mice.

Milk jugs and soda bottles are great as you can take lids off in the day for air then pop on at night to keep cold out. Cut bottles down as plants grow to leave protective collars around stems.

Plant Quick Growing Vegetables

You need quick easy wins when you start a vegetable garden so plant some of these quick growing vegetables that can be on your table in 3-8 weeks :

1. Radishes
2. Spinach
3. Arugula / Rocket / Rucola
4. Kale
5. Salad Leaf Mixes
6. Little Gem Lettuce
7. Oak Leaf Lettuce
8. Baby Carrots
9. Turnip Greens
10. Mustard Greens
11. Bok Choy
12. Swiss Chard
13. Rainbow Chard

A rapid harvest is great motivation as we patiently wait for slow growing plants like tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes etc to be ready but also speeds up our learning cycle.

Learning quickly from our mistakes in the garden really cuts down on waste!

Share Good Quality Seed Packets

Packets of seeds aren't super pricey but the more expensive brands can be more reliable for beginners. You can save money on seeds as a beginner by splitting packets of good quality seeds with family, friends and neighbours as you typically won't need all the seeds when you are getting started.

Sow Your Seeds Little & Often

Sowing seeds little and often from March through to May is the best way to get a season long bumper harvest.

It also gives you back up and that back up is key to successful vegetable growing as all gardeners - even experts - lose some young plants every year.

Grow Vegetables From Scraps

We can grow vegetables very quickly and cheaply by re-growing them from kitchen scraps rather than seeds.

You can grow lots of vegetables from scraps but I think the best for quick money-saving harvests are :

• Collard greens (spring greens)
• Spinach
• Chard
• Kale.

I grew a small bed of collards from scraps last year and as they are cut-and-come-again vegetables, just 5 or 6 plants kept us going all summer.

Grow Cut & Come Vegetables

Growing cut-and-come-again vegetables is a great money-saver for new gardeners as once your plants are established they will feed you repeatedly. You just cut the leaves you need and let them grow back.

They are also a space-saving way to grow vegetables in a tiny garden.

Some of the best cut-and-come-again vegetables for beginners are :

1. Spinach
2. Romaine Lettuce
3. Butter Lettuce
4. Iceberg Lettuce
5. Sorrel
6. Kale
7. Chard
8. Radicchio
9. Corn Salad / Lamb's Lettuce
10. Spring Greens / Collard Greens

These all do well but perpetual spinach is the most reliable for growing back over and over throughout the season.

Swap Plants

By early summer you will often end up with more small plants than you need of certain vegetables e.g. zucchini. Swap surplus with neighbours.

Try if you can to trade surplus for some of the fragrant herbs that make great pest repellent companion plants e.g. :

• Chives
• Marigolds
• Thyme
• Mint
• Parsley

Or plants you can't sow yourself that need starting in a greenhouse e.g. :

• Aubergines
• Cucumbers
• Bell Peppers
• Chilli Peppers

Love Your Soil

The thing most worth spending money on in your vegetable garden is soil!

Great soil will :

1. Increase germination rates
2. Grow bigger, stronger plants
3. Feed nutrient rich vegetables
4. Protect plants from disease.

So don't just buy the cheapest potting soil from your local garden centre. Do your homework and look out for independent organic farms to buy from.

In the UK I have bought from Dalefoot Composts with magical results!!

If you grow vegetables in buckets or pots you typically want to mix :

• ⅓ potting soil
• ⅓ compost or well rotted manure
• ⅓ perlite or vermiculite.

Start Composting

Composting will help keep your soil nutrient rich and healthy.

The quickest way to start composting as a beginner gardener is to use a wormery. They take up little space and will give you both liquid feed and compost in your first season.

You can pick up a wormery for under $100 but you can easily make your own wormery with just :

1. 3 stackable tubs
2. Plastic faucet / tap
3. Wormery worms bought online.

Blag Bean Poles

Bean poles are essential tools in a vegetable garden. They are very useful for building DIY plant protection tunnels and you will need them to support :

• Peas
• Beans
• Tomatoes
• PLUS any fruit canes like raspberries you grow.

So pick up any bean poles or other strong sticks you can blag cheaply or for free. Don't wait until tall plants are tumbling over to get hold of some!

Start collecting small bits of string, elastic bands, wire etc you can use as free plant ties with your poles.

Get Some Butterfly Nets

Your carefully tended vegetables will need protection from all sorts of different garden visitors :

• Butterflies & moths
• Slugs & snails
• Aphids
• Cats
• Dogs
• Foxes
• Squirrels
• Birds
• Chickens
• Small children
• And more!!!

Butterfly nets are the cheapest and most flexible way to protect vegetables.

You can easily buy enough for a small vegetable garden for under $10. The fine 0.04 mesh costs a bit more than traditional butterfly nets but will keep aphids of your leafy greens.

Control Pests Naturally

One of your biggest challenges as a new vegetable gardener will be pests.

The answer is NOT to throw loads of money at wildlife toxic pest control products but to focus instead on natural pest control tricks for controlling the 3 biggest pests.

1. Slugs & snails
2. Cabbage white butterflies
3. Aphids e.g. white fly, black fly.

Slugs & Snails

I have a big guide to getting rid of slugs & snails but the best simple tips are :

1. Regularly check behind pots & other key hiding places
2. Go out at dusk and collect up slugs & snails as they come out to eat
3. Go out after rain and get rid of slugs who have come out to play
4. Create DIY slug traps.

Cabbage White Butterflies

The caterpillars of the two cabbage white butterflies can massacre all your leafy green vegetables.

Protect leafy greens with cheap butterfly netting and remove these two caterpillars on your vegetables at the first sight of any tell tale holes :

Aphids

Aphids can be big pests on leafy greens, zucchini, beans and more. The most important pest control tip for beginners is NOT to ignore them.

They will multiply fast.

At the first sight of clusters of small white or black flies on your vegetables :

1. Spray well downwards with water to wash aphids off leaves
2. Add a drop of dish soap to spray bottle of water and spray centre of plants where aphids are gathering
3. Cut away any leaves or flowers with large numbers of aphids and submerge cuttings in a bucket of soapy water.

And there you go, 15 must know tips that will help you grow vegetables successfully as a beginner on a budget.

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