7 DIY Garden Tips Grow You a Green Thumb And Create A Beautiful Backyard On A Budget
Source: Hannah Mariah/Getty Images
You can create a bountiful garden on a slim budget with a little sweat and a few basic tools. This seven DIY (do-it-yourself) garden tips help you enhance your garden space on the cheap. If you need a little extra help springing for supplies, we invite you to play the right card with blackjack on the Ruby Fortune Online Casino and cash in on extra funds to create these fun, simple projects.
DIY Compost
Source: Instructables
Compost is an essential part of gardening. It contains essential nutrients and moisture that improves the structure and drainage of soil, enables deep roots, reduces plant disease, and prevents erosion. Place your compost in your garden while you’re still in the planning stages.
Store-bought compost is expensive, but you can easily cook up your own. Items you can easily compost include coffee grounds and filters, egg shells, vegetable and fruit scraps, paper towels, and many more. Make your composting bin using three metal poles and a plastic barrel. You place two metal poles in the ground, and the third pole goes through the barrel. All the poles are anchored so the barrel will spin above the ground, creating a “compost tea” for your soil.
Capture and Use Rainwater
Source: Great American Rain Barrel
Rainwater can serve many purposes in a garden. For accurate rainwater harvest from your roof, use this calculator. You can collect roughly 80% of the rainwater that hits your roof annually, giving you pure water for cooking and drinking, bathing, laundry, composting, and watering your gardens and houseplants.
You’ll find different methods for installing a rain barrel system at the base of your gutters. Variations of this system include using an old garbage can with a basic filter system, a blue plastic barrel with a PVC pipe for distributing, or a very basic barrel or garbage can with a simple spigot installed at the bottom.
Build a Pallet Pool
Source: Buzznick
With some wood pallets, a few tools, and some basic carpentry skills, you can construct a beautiful, rustic-looking swimming pool to complement your garden or backyard. Use heat-treated pallets only for this, not chemically-treated. You can tell if pallet wood is heat-treated because it will be imprinted with an “HT.”
Many people build up the pool walls either by creating a vertical frame around the circumference of the pool or creating a deep deck that surrounds the pool for sunbathing or lounging. The pool itself can be constructed a large tarp with a hole for the pump filter. Some also lined the wood with plastic for further sealing.
Build a Cinderblock Fire Pit
Source: Creative Cake Factory
If you want an easy, safe, and cheap fire pit, all you need to do is grab some cinderblocks and get started. Fire is a great addition to your garden area, inviting conversation, toasting marshmallows and grilling food, or creating a small burn pile.
Choose a safe place for the flames on non-flammable ground, such as bare earth or a concrete pad. Mark a circular area three to four feet in diameter, add gravel to the base, and then start stacking your cinder blocks. For a finishing touch, add cinder block top caps using masonry adhesion to make it nice and permanent.
Plastic Bottles for Vertical Planters
Source: Inhabitat
More than just destined for your recycling bin, plastic bottles have their place in your DIY garden. You can repurpose plastic bottles by turning them into vertical planters.
For an easy self-watering planter, just take a two-litre bottle and poke small holes in the upper half. Cut the bottle in half, keeping the perforated portion in the upper half. Poke a hole through the top and suspend a piece of cotton fabric. Take the top of the bottle and place it facing downwards into the bottom half. Fill the bottom with enough water to soak the fabric. Fill the top with soil, covering the fabric, making a self-watering planter.
Construct a Cheap Garden Store Shed
Source: A World of Intriguing Ideas
When you’re on a budget you can’t waste time and money with costly building expenses. A shed is essential to maintain your garden and having an efficient one that you can build quickly for free or very cheap materials is ideal.
One simple way is using a few spare pallets, a nail gun, circular saw, and ten 2x4s. Use the pallets for the floor, 2x4s for the frame, metal for roofing, and free lumber slabs for the outside walls. Other materials you can try are hay bales for insulation, metal for siding, plastic bottles in between two frames as siding and insulation, or a tarp for the walls.
Feed the Birds
Source: Bird Cages VIP
You can make a home for your garden’s birds with some simple scraps of wood, sand paper (or not, if you want to go rustic), nails, a drill, wood glue and a saw. Spice things up by adding an old license plate as a roof, a coat of paint, or little logs to create a log cabin look for your feathered friends. You can even add night lights, flowers, or varied designs to accommodate birds such as sparrows and bluebirds.