So, back to the topic at hand! Some of the things I do/have done to make and keep a Budget Friendly Garden:
Compost Piles for fertilizer and Compost Tea.
Rain Barrels made from plastic 55 gallon drums I salvaged.
Traded perennials with friends.
Sold extra seedlings at my farm stand.
Buy second-hand tools and decorative pots at yard sales or thrift stores. IMHO - anything can be a ‘planter’ if it has drainage. I LOVE planting in old coffee pots, colanders, pretty coffee cans, etc. I also grab cotton string, twine, anything I find in the way of gardening ‘supplies’ on the second hand market.
Save my eggshells, let them dry and crunch them up. I add a scoop to planting holes for tomatoes, zukes, cukes and peppers. No more Blossom End Rot. (Calcium!)
Chop up fallen leaves with the mower to add to compost pile or use as winter mulch.
Just about anything can be a seedling starting pot: Yogurt cups, deli containers, paper towel and TP tubes cut down.
I switched to Jiffy Pellets for seedling starts - less soil I have to buy and they work great. Starting from seed saves a lot, too. Of course, I WILL buy started plants when I just need a few of something, like ONE Jalapeno plant or Petunias for hanging baskets. I mean, I’m only human! I can’t resist the lure of a Garden Center any more than anyone else can, LOL!
Dirt! I see that the price of my favorite Miracle Grow Potting Mix is UP this year, so I will be ‘cutting it’ with dirt from right here on the farm. Luckily, Beau has a number of dirt piles around here from previous projects. Also, if you’re filling a rather large pot, through some plastic water bottles or pretty much anything from the recycle bin in the bottom to take up space. You won’t need as much potting soil in the pot and if you’re watering and fertilizing correctly, the plants won’t care. Most plants we grow in pots (aside from root crops) are rather shallow rooted, anyway.
DIY Potting Soil recipes, here: https://savvygardening.com/diy-potting-soil/
Overwinter herbs. Had GREAT luck with three Rosemary plants this past winter. Now, I won’t need to buy any Rosemary plants this year because I can pop these three back into the garden!
Are your family and friends aware of your gardening needs? Put the word out if there’s something rather pricey that you’re in need of such as a wheelbarrow or a specific tool. Maybe Dear Old Mom no longer uses her wheel barrow. Ask if you can have it or buy it from her CHEAP. Christmas or your birthday is a great time to ask for a garden-related gift. My Mom bought me a HUGE supply of Bungee Cords one Christmas! (I use them to strap together my tomato cages so they support one another.) Also, I love nothing more than a gift card to a local Garden Center. My birthday is in July, so I have gotten some amazing end-of-season prices on perennials and shrubs through the years with gift cards paying all or most of the cost.
I’m sure I’ll have other ideas to add as the week progresses! :)
https://thenutrientcompany.com/blogs/horticulture/npk-value-of-everything-organic-database
I’ve got the Attra organic potting mix pdf here; https://permasteader.com/cloud/index.php/s/FWMeE2tz2LGf6Zf
Has recipes for seed starting and potting soil mixes. Some are for making a mix way better than anything you can buy but may not save you money. Some are special purpose like soil block mixes and some are pretty basic with less than 6 ingredients. They mention how the old timers used leaf mold in lieu of peat moss before peat moss was a thing. Takes 6 months to a year to make leaf mold so start now for next year or start this Fall when you rake the lawn and use it two Springs later.
Bone meal for phosphorus can be made. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+to+Make+Bone+Meal
For Potassium
Ground charred corncobs are 0, 0. 2
Comfrey is 1.8, 0.5, 5.3
Any kind of ash is super high and fast acting and will also raise the soil pH. Doesn’t last a long time. Various rock and granite dust are high in K and very slow acting.
Nitrogen from manure and many other things. Coffee/tea grounds. Fish.
As I clear land here, I burn off the leaves and then scrape the remaining leaf mold/humus to the garden area and till it in a little. Best potatoes ever on those years. Baseball sized Yukon Gold and cleaner and more uniform in shape than anything from the store. Everything else did good those years and it made the clayey loam into loam for two years. Also made grass some up faster where I had scraped. I had noticed where I had dragged brush and it scraped leaves, leaf mold and humus off and left bare soil, I had grass come up quick so that’s when I decided to scrape the rest off with the riding mower with a grader blade.
That second recipe for potting mix is a cheap/free one though it would have no nutrients is using leaf mold instead of compost. I really need to start composting. I drove 100 miles round trip and bought some last year. With the price of fuel these days, gas would cost as much as a yard of compost.
The first recipe below would be very cheap to make with peat being 1/11th of the recipe and builder's sand is very cheap and usually sold by the yard. If you wanted a small bucket full, they'd probably charge $5 or just tell you to go grab yourself some, no charge. I also read recently that you can keep and reuse sowing/potting soil. Might need a bit of nutrients added back in. Lots of search results, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reuse+sowing%2Fpotting+soil
With fertilizer and all prices going up, the prepper in me has been looking into making my own sowing/potting mixes from whatever I can obtain free or buy cheap. No luck on my first batch but I know some compost would have cured that lack of ability to wick up the water when bottom watering. Speaking of; noticed some white fuzzy stuff on the soil mix in my seedling tray which I think means it's headed for damping off. I pulled the cover off, wiped the condensation off the inside and left it off. White fuzz went away and I'll leave it off until later on tonight. Even though I bottom watered, the nix got too wet. It was shiny. BootsrapFarmer article says to learn how to go by weight of cell tray when bottom watering for best results.