plantyhamchuk:Instead of shaming people with a picture of An Unattainable Garden Of The Wealthy Land
plantyhamchuk:Instead of shaming people with a picture of An Unattainable Garden Of The Wealthy Landed Gentry and blaming people for their health problems, let’s help everyone get access to resources and knowledge. Gardens aren’t actually healthcare. If they were, I wouldn’t suffer from #)$ing chronic problems with my immune system, GERD, and other things.Note: I’m in the USA - these are USA-based sources. Apologies to anyone outside of the US - you might try contacting your nearest Botanical Garden or local garden clubs for info on how to find these things.Information: Extension Service - a taxpayer funded project with Land Grant Universities designed to help people become more self-sufficient. You have a state and county Extension Service. At the state level they do research to learn about what grows best in your area, at the county level they will answer any questions you may have regarding growing and help you get high quality soil tests. Sometimes they offer affordable classes on things like gardening, food preservation, soil science, keeping chickens, etc. Don’t hesitate to contact them!!! Not only are they more than happy to help, their funding is dependent on how much people use them - b/c that’s how our government decides to funds things. Use it lose it (and seriously we don’t want to lose the Extension Service).Free Seeds: wintersown, livemonarch, EdHumeseeds, seedlibraries.org. There’s probably more, these are just the ones I know of. You can also hang out on gardening forums and find generous gardeners willing to share, look for the seed swap section. Blogs and seed companies also do various promotional things involving a free seed packet, so just keep your eyes open.Soil: this is the trickiest part. Your county MAY offer free compost, it may not. You can contact your County Extension Service and ask them if they know of any free compost or soil around. Craigslist is usually just unwanted fill dirt, although you might be able to get some mulch. Really good soil is actually something that one must make. A cheapie route is the cheapest bag of pine bark you can find at the garden center + home compost OR a bag of mushroom compost + fertilizer of your choice. Or the simpler route is some bags of Miracle-Gro organic.Compost: biodiverseed has covered this pretty extensively, check out her archives for tons of ideas and suggestions.Containers: have fun with this, almost anything can be a container if you can poke holes in it. You might be able to get food grade containers from restaurants for free or a cheap price. If you’re growing something to eat you’ll want food grade, but if you’re growing pretty flowers to attract pollinators to your veggies, then your container options are a lot more flexible. -- source link
#frugal#frugal gardening