Gardening can be seen as a huge part of the nomadic lifestyle and although we’re pulling through the economic crisis, it definitely wouldn’t hurt to save a bit of money with the holiday season approaching. Luckily, unlike raising your own cow, getting your dinner from the garden is pretty cost-effective and there are plenty of ways to operate on a student budget without losing quality or quantity.

1. Love Thy Neighbour

With gardening’s popularity on the rise, it’s pretty likely that your neighbour or someone living in close proximity will also want to give home-growing a go. Use this to your advantage! At the start of each growing season, have a little chat about what you plan to grow and you could find that they are already growing the carrots you wanted, while you have a whole patch of onions ready. Trading produce over your garden fence is a great way to get free food while learning how to grow new things and if you live directly next-door to one another, you could attract some beautiful animals to your garden without even trying.

Also, use local agencies like Craigslist and Freecycle to find people looking to offload extra plants out of the goodness in their heart. More often than not, the only money that will leave your wallet is for travel to pick up your new strawberry bush.

2. Buy The Best, Forget The Rest

At this point of the year, you can pick up some great bargains on gardening tools. However, consider that they’ll go through a lot more physical wear and tear than your average discount kettle, it’s probably best to fork out for the ore durable tools, even if they’re a bit more costly. The day your shovel starts competing with McDonalds arches is the day you’ll curse low-low prices.

3. One Man’s Trash…

Although I probably harp on about it pretty regularly, starting your own compost heap really can help in the long run. If you were to count up the amount of banana skins, apple cores and lemon rinds that you’ve lost along the way, you’d be surprised at how much free compost you could have for your garden. Not only will you save money by not having to buy premium compost, you’ll gain extra plants to easily add yield volume by using some of that compost in compost tea.

4. I Love A Rainy Night

It’s hard to notice it because it’s always there, but the water you use to keep your plants fed can start to add up over the summer and considering how ubiquitous water is during spring, it would be a waste to not take advantage. This is one of the easier tips to put in to practice and all you’ll need is a container with a lid. Set it down out of the shade and enjoy your free food as the heavens open up. Once the rain is done, cover it up with a lid to stop the sun from trying to steal some of it back and mosquitoes from finding a command centre to launch their attack from.

5. Don’t Forget The Seeds, Man!

As simple as it sounds, just pottering around your garden and collecting the seeds will not only save you money the following year, it will also save you the time and effort of worrying about your seeds not germinating since you know that they are genetically sound and will produce great plants. Also, don’t neglect your local farms and woodlands. Collect up seeds from the fruit and flowers of your local plants to squirrel away and you’ll have an enviable collection in no time!