Spring is here, the weekends are getting longer, it’s an opportunity to garden. How to garden without spending too much?
Spring invites us to go out and take care of our plantations. Even if you don’t have a big garden, just a balcony, or even to flower your interior. But gardening can be expensive. Advice from Fanny Guinochet.
franceinfo: Can gardening represent a small budget?
Fanny Guinochet: Already to have plants, you can connect on exchange sites, there are more and more of them, which offer swaps of cuttings, seeds. It’s plant fair season, so go ahead. Also think, on occasion, of sites for the general public like le bon coin, we often see sales of cheaper plants, especially on the occasion of moving etc. Spring is the time. It will be cheaper than going to a nursery or the big stores.
Then for fertilizers, there are natural solutions, obviously by making your compost. There are many tutorials on the internet that will guide you. Also remember to save water by collecting rainwater. Same for flower pots, if you are DIY, consider using wooden pallets. To make some, old saucepans, teapots, can be used as pots.
With the municipality, the department, are there also possibilities?
Communities are increasingly organizing donations of plants to their inhabitants, when they change their plantations, their gardens. Find out directly at the town hall, or on the Internet, because it is quite common for them to sell off plants, but also equipment, such as benches, bins, etc. They put them up for auction, look at sites like web auctions.
And there are also cheaper solutions for tools ?
To mow your plot, rather than buying a mower that you will use only a few times a year, and which will then clutter you up, consider renting it instead. Department stores are doing it more and more, Leroy Merlin, Castorama.
But there are also sites, sometimes platforms between individuals, which allow you to rent inexpensive tools, for a few hours, for the day. Bricolib.net, kiwiiz, or even allo neighbors. By the way, it can also be a way to make ends meet, if you are the owner of the equipment, and you make it available for a few tens of euros.