Even Though We Ain't Got Money ...

So the refrain of an old Loggins & Messina song goes (later sung by Ann Murray) and it plays through my head this time of the year when I read people's internet accounts of gardening so many of which contain the old harangue of how expensive it is to have a garden. This first came starkly to my attention some years ago when a couple was visiting our small holding in late May and having reviewed the garden commented that they too one day would plant a garden .... when they could afford it!

I was taken aback. We were gardening for economy. We couldn't afford to not have a garden.

Like so many things I suppose you could spend a lot of money on a garden. You could run up a tab in gadgets and tools and such that would keep you in groceries for many a month, not counting seeds, plants, soil amendments, do-dads to keep out predators and insects, etc. But it needn't be.

The first thing people do is buy way too many seeds. The lettuce seeds you could pinch between thumb and forefinger properly germinated and transplanted will keep a big family in lettuce for four months and yet many gardeners I know confess to having bought four ounces of lettuce seed, some even a pound, more seed than 100 gardeners could use in 25 years. Today I planted about 500 feet of hard corn hills and the seed required (Bloody Butcher, by the bye) I could hold in both cupped hands.

Also gardeners seem to fall for every unlikely gadget proffered. This year I started paprika plants in an old egg carton.

Tomatoes were started in egg cartons as well and when the seedlings were about an inch high, the best ones were transplanted to discarded 4 oz. plastic drink cups with a couple of holes punched in the bottom.

Some plants, like these poblano peppers, were started in an old aluminum pie pan.

And yet on three gardening blogs I read about gardeners, after complaining about how much it cost to garden, proudly displaying the soil block makers they bought to make sure they had good seedlings to transplant. There was generally an obsession about the proper formula for potting soil. Me? I scooped up some dirt out of the garden and put in the egg cartons.

Gadgets don't make good seedlings. Understanding the growth of seedlings makes good seedlings, and you can't buy that. You see it is a mistake to grow a seedling in very rich dirt and then transplant it into poorer dirt. It will have developed a root system suited to take in readily available nutrients and when put into poorer soil, it will undergo stress. Organic gardening advocates used to call this the breakfast-lunch-dinner principle. Grow the seedling in poor or even sterile soil, it will develop a root system bent on taking in every bit of nutrient it can. Then transplant it into a larger container or holding bed that is a little richer. Finally put it out in a permanent location that is richer still, just as one would eat a light breakfast, a little more at lunch, and a big dinner.

Almost any problem in the garden can be addressed without spending any money.

Here sweet corn is being grown under 2 ltr soda jugs (Let it be known that you want soda jugs and you will soon be chin deep in them!) The corn was planted early and the jug (with the bottom cut out, and then the bottom used as a cover to germinate spinach) kept the ground warm and kept the frost off the early emerging corn. It also prevented crows from digging up the seedlings. When the weather warmed up, the lids were screwed off to allow for ventilation. The corn (now sans jugs) is 2' tall in early May with prospects of sweet corn in June.

Most long time gardeners could go on and on. It is neither necessary nor conducive to spend a lot of money on a garden. This year I spent about $15 on seeds I didn't manage to save from the previous year, that is, until I broke down and bought new seed potatoes for the main crop. I paid $20 for 100 pounds of seed potatoes, but I only do that every five or six years. It is a myth that you can't save your own potatoes and must purchase them every year.

A beginning gardener isn't going to do that well, but needn't spend terribly much more than that. In fact the first and best advice I'd give to aspiring gardeners is the less money you spend, the more likely your success.