ADN Budget Gardening Part I

Budget Gardening Part I

By Bev Eckman-Onyskow
For the Daily News
     The economy has affected everyone‘s pocketbook, and few things ever go down in price. What‘s a gardener to do?
     I checked with garden aficionados from Michigan to Albuquerque to Otero County for answers. While the climate zones are different for all three, the basic concepts hold true.
     When I visited Michigan over the holidays, my sister-in-law, Lou Ann Eckman, told me she had to either become what she termed “a budget gardener," or give it up.
     Meet Lou and her family. Both she and her husband David, my brother, lost their jobs when the company they worked for moved out of Michigan. Both found new jobs, at less than half what they were earning before they were laid off. “I have to budget everything, including gardening,” she said.
     Michigan, according to one New York Times report, has “one of the worst economic pictures in the nation.”
     Lou has been gardening since childhood. “My first garden didn’t do well, I had carrots the size of a string bean, and tomatoes the size of cherry tomatoes--but they weren’t cherry tomatoes,” she recalled, adding to her thoughts in a recent telephone interview.
     “I learned a lot from my grandparents, who had a farm. We benefited from the bounty of the earth, and I helped pick and learned to can. I saw how vegetables really grow, instead of just getting them off shelves at the grocery store.
     “I fell in love with it, and gardening is my passion and my joy.”
     She is a certified Master Gardener after taking the course through Michigan State University Extension. Dave and Lou have 10 acres near Fostoria, in mid-northeast Mich.
     The exigencies of their situation over the last few years meant gardening not just for attractive landscaping, but also primarily to produce food for their table, and to do that as inexpensively as possible.
     Lou has three plots, each 30 by 70 feet, which she plants in vegetables. “I grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, cabbage, cucumbers, root vegetables, different varieties of green beans, pumpkins and greens. The only perennials are asparagus and rhubarb.” And she cans everything can-able.
     She said she learned to make her own medium, “mixing my own soup for my pots. I mix topsoil, which is cheaper than potting soil, perlite (which helps aerate soil) and peat. I do half and half with the old soil. But I don’t waste the old potting soil; I put it in my flowerbeds or in the compost pile.

COMPOST IS KEY
     “If you’ve never composted before, start now, it‘s better because you’re adding back to the soil. I’m fortunate to live in the woods and get the materials and do the work myself,” Lou said. “I have a compost bin made out of pallets, which some companies throw away. The frame is metal and we‘ve added chicken wire to hold in the leaves and grass.   You can add screening for shade. Digging a hole in the middle and piling the material around in a circle helps with moisture, which you do need.”
     Grass clippings, pruned material, small twigs, leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells, straw and lettuce and other vegetables that wilted in the refrigerator, as well as soil from old pots can go on the compost pile, but no dairy or meat. Layers of leaves between the vegetable scraps can dissuade varmints, she said. “Paper will compost, but you have to shred it first. Even palm leaves will eventually compost.
     “I’ve never been big on using synthetic fertilizer and I’m less so now. But if I do use it, whatever the directions say, I halve that, and maybe use it a couple times during the season, like when I’m first planting, or during droughts or in the fall to keep the plants going.”

KEEP RECORDS AND RACKS
     Start out your gardening this year with a resolve to make notes. “I keep a garden journal or a garden calendar, so I know what worked for me. I can go back many years to see what worked and what failed, and that saves money, it‘s helped me out a lot,” Lou said.
     She starts her seeds in boxes in a south or an east window. “That’s another frugal gardening scenario.
     “A lot of grocery stores have display racks, metal or plastic or sometimes wood, and when their finished with them, they throw them out in the Dumpster. Salvage them. Racks can go by the windows intact to hold trays for starting seeds.
     “Or they can be used outside for vines. I’ve used them as fences for sweet peas and cucumbers. I have one that is so attractive I use it in a corner of the flower garden, up against the house, for pots. Or square them up and use them instead of buying tomato cages. That’s a no-cost.”

READ ON THE CHEAP
     Garden magazines “come out at this time of year, every gardener loves to read about gardening,” Lou said. “I can’t afford to buy five or six or ten magazines, even though they are so attractive. When gardeners are waiting for winter to get over with, they want to read about gardening. I decided to resist buying and go to the library and check out books about gardening instead.
     “I don’t pay for magazines and books anymore, I go to the library, or I read them online. I still find old magazines at garage sales, and there might be something in them you’ve never read.”
     She admitted she did “succumb to a $9 magazine, but it was about chickens. We have five laying hens, and we average one egg a day from each chicken.” They also heat their large home with an exterior wood-burning stove, which heats water and pumps it into the lines in the house.
     Lou was propagating impatiens when I was there. “I’ve kept this one for six years to propagate,“ she said. She took a cutting, “about four inches and I let it dry out a couple of hours. Then I put it in sand, because soil rots it. I cover it with one of the Ziploc Baggies that I save, to give it a greenhouse effect, and water it very lightly. I‘ve had failures, but I‘ve learned from reading on the Internet, and from other Master Gardeners.” She’s used the same technique with Wandering Jew plants, which eventually end up outside in the garden.

     All of this takes time and work instead of money,” Lou said.
     She’s not alone. Spurred by our discussion, I found “Gardening on a Budget,” by Kathy Cranage, in the December 2008 Albuquerque Area Extension Master Gardener News.
     I also queried the members of the Otero County Master Gardener Association for ideas on budget gardening. Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap. So I’ve gone through these sources and sorted them out by category.