Have the desire to grow a garden, but don’t have the space or a large budget? Follow along with Captain Create this Summer to learn money saving gardening tips. At the end of the harvest, we will learn to cook healthy meals with what grew!
Importance of Home Gardens
The 2023 Affordable Gardening series is coming to a close and now it’s time to recap some money saving tips! Throughout each post we learned how to germinate, plant, care for and harvest from affordable home gardens with space and budget constraints.
Why is budget gardening important? Having the knowledge and determination to grow a garden can help families across Utah increase healthy food options in their homes. It also encourages families to get outside and participate in physical activity habits by gardening.
Affordable Gardening Tips Recap
Here are all of the money saving tips from this year’s Affordable Gardening series:
- Money saving tip: Select seeds of herbs, vegetables, and fruit that you will realistically eat. For example, if you passionately hate eating broccoli, growing your own broccoli may not be the best investment in your time or money.
- Money Saving Tip: Get free seeds from local seed library programs, or harvest your own seeds from produce bought at farmers markets or grocery stores.
- Money Saving Tip: Use common household objects to plant your seeds in, such as a large storage container lid.
- Money saving tip: Use common household objects and affordable materials to reduce garden container costs.
- Money Saving Tip: Place pieces of carboard in the bottom of containers to reduce soil costs.
- Money Saving Tip: Improve the chances of higher harvest yields by planting your seedlings/starts properly.
- Money Saving Tip: Educate yourself on your plant’s watering needs to increase the chances of better yields!
- Money Saving Tip: Accurately space your plants for increased chances of bigger yields!
- Money Saving Tip: Transplant thinned seedlings to other containers with more space to increase your yeild.
- Money Saving Tip: Plant potted grocery store basil! It’s an affordable and convenient way to have a constant supply of fresh basil.
- Money Saving Tip: There are natural and homemade pesticides and fungicides. Some homemade fungicides are easy to make and very affordable. If you know that you have pest damage do some research on what affordable remedies might be available to you.
Tomato Harvest
If you planted tomatoes it’s likely that you’ve been harvesting them for the past few weeks. Congratulations if you’ve had success growing tomatoes!
Tomato plants can grow very large, sometimes taking upwards of 4 square feet in your garden. If you have a plant this large then it’s likely that you are up to your elbows in tomatoes, and may may be running out of ideas on how to use them.
This week’s recipe includes tomato, but if you would like additional tomato recipes here are a few that include tomatoes that you can try with your friends and family:
Tomatoes are part of the MyPlate vegetable group. They contain vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C which helps our bodies fight off sickness and stay healthy. To learn more about the MyPlate vegetable group visit the USDA’s MyPlate website.
Recipe
My hope is that this series helped you and your family increase healthy food options in your home, increased time outside being physically active, and increased your confidence in your ability to grow your own healthy produce.
This recipe features a quick and easy way to use tomatoes and other garden produce. I hope that you enjoy this recipe, and keep gardening!
-Captain Create
Do you wish you had help coming up with fun physical activity ideas? Learn more about our Your Choice Your Move initiative!
