Planting Savings

Sometimes living on a strict budget can be fun. Seeing how far a dollar can stretch, watching the numbers tick down at the checkout lane as the gal scans your coupons, reusing an old object and turning it into something new…

And this weekend Gavin and I decided we could create a fun project, and save money all at the same time.

Last spring, we didn’t move into our new home until May, so it was too late to start planting anything with seeds and we ended up buying tons of plants & veggies that had already sprouted…adding up to quite a bit of cash. This year we decided to start everything from scratch.

We went out and bought a mini green house kit and seeds. Not only vegetable seeds but flower seeds as well, I am tired of spending $20 a plant for flowers in the spring! These seeds were only 50 cents a bag, so I am crossing my fingers that we get a good result and save $100 on flowers alone.

The first step was to poke at the dirt…this step wasn’t in the list of instructions but Gavin decided it was necessary

 

Then we slowly added water, and waited for each packet to expand.

We then planted all sorts of vegetable seeds and flower seeds into each container, and labeled them with my ghetto homemade labels (I ‘laminated’ them with packing tape, haha).

 

Then on went the top, and we placed them above the kitchen cabinets to sit (away from the sun) for a couple of days.

 we had to go back to the store and get more seeds to fill it up!

This morning I checked on them, just 2 1/2 days later and some of the flowers and veggies have already begun to sprout, hooray! 

I can’t wait for Gavin to watch this process along with me, for us to transfer them outside, and to pick the vegetables together this summer. Not only will this project saves us tons of cash this summer, but it will be a fantastic learning experience for Gavin as well! And I’ve heard that if the kiddos get to pick the veggies themselves that they are more apt to eat them…even better!

Right now these greenhouses are on sale at Menards, two for five bucks…we might head over to get some and plant more flower seeds since everything seems to be turning out so well!