Stumble It!One of the points of having a vegetable garden is to save on food cost. If you end up spending $200 on seed and plants, you're going to have a hard time getting all of that back, although the produce you grow will be fresher and safer than store bought.
Here is how we planted our vegetable garden on about $20.
Seeds From The Pantry and from "Seed Saving".
For our green beans we planted pinto beans from the pantry. A dry bag of beans which we had on hand anyway cost about a dollar.
Next for potatoes we planted the "eyes" from both red "new potatoes" we had on hand and regular baking potatoes. We use a set of old tires, four to six high, surrounded by a decorative bamboo shade screen.
For red peppers we planted red pepper seed from the spice cabinet and also corriander seed for fresh cilantro which also came from the spice cabinet.
In some cases seeds like these may have been heat treated to kill pathogens and will not germinate. You just have to experiment.
In other cases the seeds come from plants that are so hybridized that they will revert back to a form of the plant that does not grow well. Seeds from hybrid plants will often not grow the same plant as the one they came from unlike herloom seeds, which always produce a seed that is an exact copy of the plant it came from.
Seed Saving
For more information on heriloom seeds try Seedsavers.org
We planted sweet corn, lettuce, spinach, cucumber and watermelon, plus dill, basil, oregano, sweet peas using seed saving from organic heirloom plants from last fall.
Some of our seeds came from seed saving. We practice seed saving in the fall, from heirloom varieties of plants that produce seeds that will grow the same exact plant when planted. Many hybrid varieties will not and saving seeds from these is hit and miss. We did grow some very nice tomatoes from seeds obtained from organic cherry tomatoes we purchased in the store although we don't know what variety they were.
Garden Greens, Poor Man's Food
Garden greens, like mustard greens and collard greens provide the bulk of garden vegetables on southern tables during the late fall and early winter.
The best producing plants in fall in our garden where the greens. We had two rows of mustard greens and two rows of collard greens. These are super hardy and where we live in the south they survive even a good cold snap. Mustard greens will survive a light freeze. If a hard one is coming you can cover the rows with plastic sheeting, propped up over the plants with small stakes.
Free Fertilizer
We used the compost from our compost bin and some extra manure from a neighbors horse farm so we did not have to buy any fertilizer.
If there is a dairy, horse farm, etc, in your area just stop in and ask the farmer if he has a pile of old manure. You do not want fresh manure since it will burn the plants. Manure needs to be at least six months old and composted or it will kill your young plants.
You can also make "compost tea" which is liquid fertilizer made from copost or manure. Simply add compost to a five gallon bucket and strain out the solids and spray on the garden. This is a good way of getting nitrogen to plants on a regular basis and getting your growth rate up. Spray compost tea at the base of plants once a week and you will see amazing results.
Get Your Back Into It
It can definitely save a lot of labor to use a gas powered garden tiller but they are expensive, break down, and take up space in the garage. If you can borrow one, or go in in a partnership with a neighbor or family member this might be an option but nothing is cheaper than a grubbing hoe, spade and rake for breaking up the soil. Just think of it as good exercise. Always keep your back straight, bend at the knees and you can prevent an injury.
In these tough economic times subsistence gardening is making a comeback. For more on how to survive off of your garden try the book "Gardening When It Counts".
