The Scavengers whom I wrote about yesterday appear to be gardening partly organically, but not completely. At our house, we stick with the organic stuff, which is cheap or free:

• We grab our neighbors’ straw bales after Halloween (every year they buy one or three to decorate their porch, then put them out with the trash) and work them into our clay soil to break it up.
• We have two compost bins going to break down our garden waste, veggie scraps, shredded paper and beer-brewing detritus. During the winter, we usually use just one bin. In the spring, we stop adding to that bin, to allow older compost to finish breaking down without being interrupted by new additions. The other is where we put the new stuff.  In early summer, we’ll put the old compost on the garden and switch the “new” contents to the “old” bin and begin again.
• We grab bags of used coffee grounds at Starbucks to sprinkle directly on the garden or, if Schnauzer Cheap is looking like he’s just going to eat the espresso disks (and who needs a hypercaffeinated, black-bearded terrier?), we mix the grounds into our compost.
• We have gone to local horse farms to pick up composted manure. Trust me, they have more poo than they can shake a stick at, and if you will take it away, they will bless you for it. Find them on craigslist. We were in a rush, so we purchased a set of lidded bins that we could fill and carry without spills inside our car. If the manure is well composted (aged and perhaps mixed with straw), you can dump it straight onto the garden. If it’s fresher (i.e., smells like poo instead of dirt/nothing), be careful or you could burn your plants.
• We use natural bug management as much as possible: Dishes of beer to attract/drown slugs, being kind and gentle to spiders and wasps (last summer, we would see a cabbage moth fly into our garden, followed almost immediately by a moth-hunting wasp; the moths were gobbled up with no time to lay eggs that would become worms), using diatomaceous earth to eliminate soft-bellied pests, picking off large bugs ourselves, and luring in ladybugs to eat aphids (on this count we were unsuccessful last year, but we didn’t buy a big pack and set them free at the right time).
• Mr. Cheap’s secret weapon is fish emulsion, which is fertilizer made from rotted fish. And yes, it smells like it, and yes, it can also drive dogs batty. He sprays plants with diluted fish emulsion once a month or so for extra leafiness and production.

What are your secrets to a cheap organic garden?

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Comments ( 4 )

We live in Boulder, so we have city composting now, w/ both yard waste and kitchen waste (no bones, no poultry skin, etc.) picked up curbside every 2 wks. We have one modest compost bin that I’ve been semi-neglecting since the city started its program. Coffee grounds righ onto the soil? What’s the benefit? We just put coffee grounds, unbleached paper filter and all, in w/ the compost.

Claire Walter added these pithy words on May 08 09 at 4:23 pm

Companion planting! I’m planting herbs and lavendar around my other plants to deter pests. The lavendar planted under my crabapple tree has deter Japanses Beattles so far so good. My neighbors can’t say the same.

Condo Blues added these pithy words on May 09 09 at 10:16 am

Mulch, mulch, and more mulch. We use discarded straw bales too, and put a 3-4″ layer around all of our plants (the little neighbor girl says, “why are they growing hay?”) At the end of the season, we rake it all into a pile and use it again in the spring. We grow a lot of garlic, and each fall keep aside enough cloves to plant in October, so rarely buy new planting stock. We’re growing potatoes in scavenged trash cans this year…we’ll see at harvest how that went!

Margaret added these pithy words on May 12 09 at 3:58 pm

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