Low-Cost Gardening Hacks

It's the perfect time of year to be getting your hands in the soil, pulling, planting, organising, planning and hopefully even a little bit of harvesting too. Gardening can quickly spiral into an expensive pass time, but it doesn't need to. We've popped a few of our fave ways to save money in the garden together, so you can plan your summer garden, without spending your summer holiday money. So what are you waiting for? Steep some home-grown chamomile into your fave tea cup, and enjoy our fave low-cost gardening hacks.

1. Compost. Create your own compost pile or bin to recycle your kitchen scraps and garden waste into nutrient rich compost. This reduces the need for commercial fertilisers and helps improve your soil quality.

2. Mulch. Applying mulch to your garden beds is fantastic for suppressing weeds, conserving moisture and regulating soil temperature. You don't need to buy packaged mulch, this can be anything from lawn clippings, straw, shredded leaves from your yard, often arborists even give away wood chips!

3. Seed save/share. After your plants produce, save seeds from your fave annual vegetables and flowers for next year garden. It takes a small amount of planning ahead, but is worth doing as it not only saves you money in the garden, but you can also selectively develop your very own heirloom crops year after year. Did you know many local libraries have seed swapping stations set up, if you don't have a gardening buddy you can swap seeds with?

4. Landscape with perennials. Plant more perennial shrubs and flowers in your garden, as they come back year after year, reducing the need to buy more plants annually.

5. Collect Rainwater. Set up a rain barrel to collect rainwater. This free source of water can be used for watering your garden, reducing your water bill.

6. Use natural pest controls. Explore natural pest control methods like companion planting, attracting beneficial insects, using coffee grinds, eggshells or homemade pest sprays to avoid the cost but also the chemicals of store-bought pesticides.

7. Regrow from kitchen scraps. This is possibly our fave hack of all, as it really makes to the most of your groceries. Whether this be herb cuttings, fruit stones, avocado pits, the sprouting potatoes at the back of your pantry or the base of your celery/leeks, there are a lot of tips out there for making the most of your kitchen scraps to regrow them into more produce.