Our Top Money Saving Gardening Tips
Gardening can be an expensive hobby, especially if you regularly purchase non-hardy plants at the height of their flowering season for a spot of instant colour. However, there are a few simple things you can do to ensure your garden looks great throughout the year without spending a fortune.

Create a Compost Bin
Making your own compost is easier than you think and is a great way to recycle cardboard, grass cuttings and vegetable peelings. As a general rule, you should make sure your compost making materials are a mix of 50% nitrogen and 50% carbon. Nitrogen rich materials come from grass cuttings and other green garden waste such as weeds or plant cuttings. Whereas carbon rich materials include woody stems of plants and trees and cardboard. You need to ensure your compost bin has a good mix of both materials to ensure that it will probably break down and turn into compost rather than turn into a slightly sludgy mess!
It can take several months for your waste materials to turn into compost, but if you start now then you should have a good supply by the autumn. You can then use your homemade compost for mulching and protecting your plants throughout the colder months.

Save and Reuse Plastic Plant Pots
Be honest - after planting your new garden centre purchases, what do you do with the pots? Keep them in your garden shed to be reused; pop them in your recycling bin or just throw them in with your general waste?
If you just throw them in the bin, then now is the time to stop! Many plastic pots from plant nurseries and garden centres are made of quite robust materials and are perfect for growing your own seedlings in. Make sure you properly wash the pots out first with hot water and washing up liquid or a specialist cleaner to ensure there is no bacteria. Once clean and dry, you can then refill with your choice of potting compost and use them to plant your own seeds. As well as preventing the pots from going into landfill, by choosing to buy packets of seeds over plants, you will also be saving yourself lots of money!

Buy Your Summer Plants in Spring
Visiting a garden centre at the height of summer can be a dangerous business for some people - especially if you are easily seduced by large plants in flower! Unsurprisingly, these larger plants in flower are expensive because the garden centre or nursery has put a lot of time and effort into making them look good. However, instead of buying these plants in summer, we suggest visiting the garden centre in spring when the same plants will be smaller and roughly 50% of the price! Planting them in your garden in spring will also give the plants time to get established before the warmer weather arrives in June and July.

Read Plant Labels
Another great way to save money on plants is to choose perennial plants (which will flower year after year) as opposed to annuals (which flower once and then usually die back with the first frosts). Most plant labels should say whether a plant is an annual or perennial as well as stating whether they are hardy (and can therefore survive a British winter) and where you should plant them. Getting to know and understand plant labels is a great way to ensure you are buying the right plants for your garden. If the plant label doesn’t contain this information, then the garden centre should be able to advise you or, a quick internet search will tell you everything you need to know.

Recycle You Compost Bags
Compost purchased from the garden centre generally comes in thick (and often black) plastic bags which can be hard to recycle. Whilst many supermarkets and even garden centres now offer plastic recycling schemes, there is another option for the bags. Compost bags make great liners for hanging baskets and are obviously a much cheaper alternative than buying coir hanging basket liners. Simply snip the bag open; cut to the required size and place in your hanging basket. Don’t forget to punch a few holes in the bottom and sides for drainage! After filling with compost and putting in your trailing plants, no one will be able to see the plastic - especially once the plants start to flower and cover the basket.

Buy Your Plant Feeds in Bulk
Plant feeds, insect sprays and slug defence products can be an expensive outlay, especially in your first year of gardening. One way to save money is to either buy the largest box or bottle you can afford or, to take advantage of bulk buying discounts. Here at myproductstore, we have a couple of money saving offers which we know you will love this gardening season! All of our products on our website are included in our tiered pricing system: you can purchase one product at full price; buy two of the same product to save 10% or buy three of the same product and save a fantastic 25%.
Our planet friendly ecofective range can also be purchased as “bundle packages” to help save you even more money. Buy any ready to use spray from the range and receive a refill for half price. Or, buy two ready to use sprays and receive a refill for free. As well as saving you money, our refills will also help you to cut down on your plastic waste as they enable you to reuse your existing spray bottle multiple times.

Enjoy Your Garden this Spring

We hope you have found our money saving tips useful and would love to know if you have any other top tips for gardening on a budget. If you follow us on social media, then why not tag us in your posts or stories so that we can share them with others?
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Happy Gardening from the myproductstore team.