Cheap as Dirt: Gardening for Less

A lot of us enjoy gardening every now and then. Everyone wants to have a lawn that looks nice, but doing so can sometimes be a bit expensive. After buying annuals, fertilizer, and doing all of the work, it can be quite costly in both time and money. Here are some tips to make gardening much easier on your back and your wallet.

Plant Bulbs - Bulb-based flowers take next to no maintenance and over time they'll even multiply for you. They'll bloom early in the season and look nice for much longer than annuals. Having beautiful flowers such as crocuses, tulips and daffodils in your garden at the beginning of the season will make it much easier to avoid the temptation to by annual flowers.

Watch Out For Plants That Spread - Unless you have a ridiculous amount of ground that you need to cover, watch out for plants that tend to spread very easily. If you're not careful, they could easily take over your entire yard. These types of flowers include mint, hostas, ivy, irises, bamboo and more. If they spread once in your yard, they'll be almost impossible to get rid of.

Think Perennial - Perennial plans cost a bit more than annual plants do, but fortunately you only have to plan them once. They keep coming back year after year after year. You don't have to plant a whole new batch of them each spring and pay for the privilege of doing so.

Flowering Bushes - You'll make a lot better use of your money by planting small flower bushes, as opposed to smaller plants. They'll cover a lot more ground, take a lot less work to keep up, and still look very nice. They might cost a bit more, but over time you'll save a lot of money.

Plant What You Love - If there's a type of flower that you can't get enough of, for my fiancé its daisies, try to plan them in your own yard. You'll want to make sure that the plants you want to grow can be grown in your region of the country, but definitely do it if you can. It'll be much cheaper to grow the flowers yourself than to go out and buy those flowers on a regular basis.