How will this difficult economic climate affect the gardening world? Strangely enough, it may have a stimulating effect! In the past, hard economic times have always prompted people to garden more.
Self-sufficiency
First, there’s the question of self-sufficiency. It’s possible that your budget is tight, or that it’s going to get too tight. So you try to spend less on luxuries and concentrate on sure values. Rather than buying all your vegetables, for example, you can grow most of them yourself. Ten dollars’ worth of seeds will yield several hundred dollars’ worth of vegetables, so the savings are real. And I know from experience that it’s possible to produce enough vegetables for a family for 6 months on a very small area, such as a balcony. And even have a surplus!
This “hard-times vegetable garden” can of course go in the back of the backyard, if you have enough space, or be integrated into the front landscaping. It’s easy to create a highly productive vegetable garden on a balcony or terrace. You can even grow vegetables, especially lettuces and other vegetables that don’t require too much sun, on a windowsill (light intensity is always lower inside a building than outside). Finally, for those who really don’t have any gardening space at all, there are community vegetable gardens all over the city just waiting for takers.
Saving on Landscaping
Self-sufficiency can also extend to landscaping. If you’re used to buying $200 worth of annuals every year, consider that you could produce them for less than $10 by sowing your own seedlings. In fact, planting season comes quickly: most plants are sown in March or April. And rather than buying new perennials for an enlarged bed, why not divide the ones you already have?
Saving with Mother Nature
As for gardening-related products, many are already available free of charge on our lawns. Instead of buying lawn fertilizer, for example, leave the clippings on the lawn, where they will decompose and feed the grasses. In the flower bed and vegetable garden, we can recycle our “waste” into compost: dead leaves, kitchen scraps, etc. Compost is an excellent substitute for fertilizers. Compost is an excellent substitute for fertilizers, as it maintains and improves the soil with organic matter and provides minerals for plants, whereas fertilizers worsen soil quality, providing only minerals.
Gardening as a Hobby
That’s the concept of thrifty gardening, but there’s more! In other times of economic crisis, people have begun to garden more as a leisure activity. Rather than paying a fortune to play golf, or having to absorb all the costs of a summer residence in a world where even camping costs an arm and a leg, many people decide to stay at home more in the summer and find something to do. Gardening again comes to the fore. It’s a pleasant, relaxing pastime that also enhances the homeowner’s environment. It’s even an investment, because a house with beautiful grounds sells for more.
So, what are you going to do to spend a pleasant summer without spending too much?
Larry Hodgson published thousands of articles and 65 books over the course of his career, in both French and English. His son, Mathieu, has made it his mission to make his father’s writings accessible to the public. This text was originally published in Le Soleil on March 1, 2009.
We still have carrots from last fall’s harvest!
Absolutely! Using heirloom varieties and saving seed for the next year, making your own compost, and landscaping with the intention of attracting pollinators makes it cheaper every year.
This is obvious. It was noticeable during the COVID Shutdown also, when no one wanted to go shopping in public.