REVEALED: 4 - The Real Truth

You’re Mulching Too Deep — And It Could Slowly Kill Your Trees

That perfectly shaped mountain of mulch around your tree might make the yard look professionally landscaped, but it could be doing more harm than good. Mulch is genuinely beneficial when used correctly because it conserves soil moisture, moderates temperature, suppresses weeds, and protects trees from lawn equipment. The problem starts…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 25

We Regrew Lettuce From the Stump — Did It Produce Enough to Be Worth It?

You’ve probably seen the kitchen hack: instead of throwing away the bottom of a head of romaine lettuce, put it in water and supposedly grow yourself more lettuce for free. It sounds almost too good to be true, especially when the original lettuce has already been eaten and the stump…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 25

7 Vegetables You Can Still Plant in Fall for One More Cheap Harvest

The tomato plants may be fading and the summer squash may have stopped producing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your vegetable garden is finished for the year. Fall is an opportunity to squeeze another round of food from soil, containers, and garden beds you’ve already paid to prepare. Many cool-season…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 25

Before You Buy Compost, Look at What’s Going in Your Trash

A bag of compost at the garden center looks like a gardening product, while the coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, cardboard, and fallen leaves leaving your house look like trash. Put those materials together correctly, however, and you have many of the ingredients needed to make homemade compost without repeatedly buying…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 24

Raking Every Leaf Out of Your Garden? You May Be Throwing Away Free Mulch

Every fall, homeowners rake up something valuable, stuff it into bags, haul it to the curb—and then head to the garden center a few months later to buy mulch. Fallen leaves aren’t just seasonal debris; they’re a source of free leaf mulch that can protect soil, suppress weeds, conserve moisture,…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 24

8 Kitchen Scraps That Actually Belong in the Compost — And 5 That Don’t

Open the average kitchen trash can and you may find the beginnings of next year’s garden soil hiding among the garbage. Fruit peels, vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds, eggshells, and several other everyday scraps are perfectly suited to backyard composting, where microorganisms eventually transform them into a useful soil amendment. The…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 24

5 Places to Find Free Plants Without Stealing Cuttings From Someone’s Yard

Anyone who has priced perennials, vegetable starts, or houseplants lately knows how quickly a few small pots can wreck a gardening budget. That makes it tempting to snip an interesting branch hanging over a sidewalk or quietly pocket a succulent leaf at the garden center, but someone else’s plant isn’t…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 23

Stop Buying Mulch — 5 Free Materials You May Already Have

Mulch is one of those garden purchases that doesn’t seem expensive until you calculate how many bags it takes to cover an entire landscape. A 3-inch layer across a 100-square-foot bed requires roughly 25 cubic feet of material, so even modest gardens can consume plenty of bagged mulch. Yet free…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 23

We Priced 10 “Free” Garden Hacks — Here’s Which Ones Actually Save Money

Gardening advice is full of promises that you can stop buying supplies and simply use whatever is already sitting around the house. Sometimes that’s excellent advice: fallen leaves really can replace purchased organic matter, cardboard can help create a new bed, and saved containers can eliminate the need for some…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 23

What Happens If You Bury Kitchen Scraps Directly in the Garden?

If maintaining a compost pile sounds like one garden chore too many, you may have wondered why you can’t simply bury your vegetable peels and coffee grounds directly in the soil. It turns out you can—gardeners sometimes call the technique trench composting, in-place composting, or compost pockets. Instead of decomposing…

Frugal Gardening · Sep 23