When others are considering growing their own food, one of the main things that they believe is stopping them is cost, but this doesn't have to be the case!
I started an edible garden from scratch, which is now productive enough for me to eat something every day, on a very limited budget - and it only grows larger and more productive every season. If you are willing to put in the work, you can do the same. Here are some of the ways in which I established my garden without massive upfront costs.
The number one way to save is through your soil. To begin with find out what soil type you have (see my Let's Talk About Soil blog post) and find plants that are well suited. In my case, living in South Western Australia means I have sandy soil with a little silt, so my main staple crop is something that thrives and my family enjoys eating - Warrigal Greens. The advantage of using natives is that they have adapted to your area over many thousands of years - meaning that they are acclimatized and require very little care, watering or soil additives. In addition many native foods are tens of times more powerful and packed with nutrients than the kind of vegetables we have become accustomed to eating out of supermarkets.
The other way to save through your soil is to build it up yourself! I have used many different methods to build up my soil, depending on what I had available to me at the time at either little to no cost. This included using material such as logs, branches, twigs, leaves, grass, palm fronds, hay, pea straw, lucerne, manures, heat treated composts...and of course my very own kitchen waste.
Which brings me to composting. If your diet consists of any whole fruits and vegetables, (which I am assuming it does, as you want to grow your own food, lol!) you will have something to compost. If you consume teas using the leaf or coffee using raw beans then you will have an accelerant. If you have a backyard with grass nitrogen is available to you, and if you have trees carbon is readily available.
Being short on space does not mean that you can't compost - all you need is an area to place a compost bin, or even a kitchen sink on which to place a bokashi container. Check out this DIY Bokashi container by One Million Women.
If you have no ingredients available to you then it's time to look to your community. Get out there and ask juice bars, cafes, farms, friends, family, neighbours, tree loppers, parks, gardeners for their waste - many have waste for free or at an affordable price, and are often more than happy for you to pick up and take their waste, especially businesses who have to pay for waste disposal or who are working at hitting recycling and sustainability targets. Offering a bin or container to pick up and drop off may help to sway the reluctant.
I also use an app called Share Waste that connects me with those in my neighbourhood who want to drop off their kitchen scraps. I simply put myself on the map, stating what I can accept and others contact me with their offerings. The waste they provide is priceless.
If raw mass material and composting is not an option then making your own mixes can also save money. Rather than buy premium potting and seed raising mix I make my own in bulk. Not only does it save a significant amount of money in the long term, but I can tweak the mixes depending on my plants needs. I will buy ingredients like compost, manure, coir, peat moss, sand and so on, according to my plant's requirements, as well as additives if need be and make my mixes, then store them in clean bins until needed. One bulk mix normally lasts around 3-6 months.
Growing from seed. Buying seed and saving seed can greatly reduce your propagation costs - down to $0. Take, for example, a packet of Pak Choi seeds, which can cost anything from $1- $4 depending where you source it. When most of the seed germinates you can end up with around 340 healthy, strong, organic plants from the whole packet. However, if you were to walk into a nursery, you will more than likely end up paying around $4 - $6 for a punnet containing only 8 seedlings. If we then eat the Pak Choi leaves by harvesting them as they grow and let them go to seed, or even let a couple of plants go to seed and eat the rest as a full harvest, we will end up with abundance of seed. Successfully saving seed every year or two can mean never having to buy seed again after the initial purchase. I have done this with the majority of the plants I grow.
When I purchase seed, I order from a seed supplier, take advantage of seed sales and I also trade with other gardeners online through seed exchange groups. It pays to build relationships with your local seed suppliers as they will have seed that is acclimatised to your area, meaning you won't have to sacrifice generations of plants to get a strong, bountiful crop, saving you time and money while you support local businesses.
Many will have neighbours and friends or know members of the wider community who have cuttings for propagation . Maybe someone you know has a massive Sweet Potato patch that you can take cuttings from, or a huge Fig or Mulberry tree that needs a good pruning - which you can then propagate. It is definitely worth asking, considering some of the prices I've seen for what is essentially just a well rooted cutting in the larger nurseries. What's a little time when you can save such a significant amount?
Look out for curbside green-waste/recycling pick up days. People often leave piles of perfectly good cuttings, bare rooted shrubs or sick trees that can be bought back to health with a little care - a feed and a re-pot. I have picked up a Pomegranate tree and a Lilly Pilly tree who just needed a bit of attention and a new home.
Curbside pick-ups are also great for gaining materials, to build up your soil.
Besides cuttings and trees, I have also scored dozens of pots, containers, some massive troughs, compost bins, shade cloth...the list goes on - all things that others no longer had a use for. Most people are fine with you reusing what was only going to go to Landfill anyway, but I'd recommend erring on the side of caution and making sure you ask out of courtesy first.
Local buy and sell pages are an obvious option for cheap seedlings and even materials like manure as are seed exchange or gardening groups. They are however, often overlooked because of their "unofficial" status. To make sure you aren't being "ripped off" in anyway, simply go and view the products you wish to purchase or deal with an actual business to play it safer. Nothing is 100% - but you can at least take steps that may help things go smoothly.
Garage Sales and local markets are another obvious choice, the great thing being that all the products you are interested in are right there in front of you.
Buying from local growers/nurseries over big nurseries is a great way to support and grow your local community as well as save money. As production costs are less for the average local nursery, the savings are often passed on to you, the buyer. Some small businesses or lone growers may even use a barter system or support the food is free movement, in which case you can swap, or receive seedlings at no monetary cost.
Grey water use and rainwater collection. I know, I know, 'Captain Obvious' here again, but, believe it or not, many have become accustomed to turning on the tap to water, rather than take the time to follow a more organic, sustainable way and slow down or capture the water that falls naturally; or even reuse water from other parts of their home. A rainwater tank is easily made from olive barrels if you can source them, or why not just put a bucket or two out?
I have been known to temporarily empty my storage containers at the last minute and madly run out into the rain!
A good downpour, even with smaller scale collection , can last weeks and any water you capture, no matter how little, translates into money saved.
Grey water from your washing machine is great if you take a few precautions - making sure that you are use a low phosphate environmentally safe washing liquid, that the clothes you wash don't contain chemicals, and using the grey water at the base of your plants, not the edible parts. The best place I have found to use grey water is on my fruit trees.
The sustainable saying "Slow it, spread it, sink it" couldn't be more important and relevant, especially in countries like ours, where the poor management of the land and it's water systems have resulted in damaged soils and droughts.
Finding ways to not have to use equipment or at least not having to purchase any - no dig methods are ideal and something I will always recommend first and foremost after my experiences using them. But if tools are an absolute must, I recommend buying second hand from garage sales first. The saying "they don't make them like they used to" is spot on. I have had to use shovels in order to move various trees and not surprisingly, the only one that has lasted is the one I bought from a garage sale - it has a heavy metal spade and a strong thick wooden handle. At this rate, it is more than likely that it will outlive me and be passed on to my children! Hiring or borrowing equipment rather than buying is the next best thing, especially where large machinery is concerned. Equipment hire companies are fairly prevalent in most areas.
When it comes to feeding your plants and saving money - liquid is the way to go. This can be homemade like a comfrey brew (I'll be covering homemade liquid fertilisers/tonics soon) or a store bought product like Powerfeed and Seasol. One bottle of concentrated liquid feed/tonic or a 60L container of home brew can last months and still provide food for your plants on a weekly or fortnightly basis, which is pretty incredible when you take into account that they also feed the soil and all the microbes in it. Real bang for your buck.
Recycling and Reusing. Many containers or materials can reused in the garden: wine or olive barrels, pallets, old A Frames from children's swing sets, washing machine drums, fridges, wooden sleepers, metal sheets, toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, bicycle wheels, cardboard boxes, newspapers...
After I joined up-cycling community pages and groups my eyes have been opened to just how much is able to be re/up-cycled. Often our imagination limits us. I have lost count of the amount of times I have found myself saying "Why didn't I think of that!" when browsing through other's recycling/up-cycling projects.
Last but not certainly not least: Wicking beds. Wicking beds save money through saving water and they also save time. As they water from the bottom up, the only effort after assembling that is required is to fill up the reservoir. Because the reservoir is covered, there is less evaporation, meaning that medium to large wicking beds using recycled materials like olive barrels and IBC containers only need to be topped up or filled once a week in warm weather. At the moment, I top up my Olive Barrel wicking beds up once every week and a half, during cold weather it was once every two weeks. The plants are thriving and as an added bonus there is a low chance of disease.