Thrifty Gardening: Free seeds and fertiliser

Continuing with the sustainable and thrifty living concept, I've set myself a challenge to establish a garden at our new place without spending any money if possible.

We brought with us our collection of seeds and tools, so that's our starting point. The things we had to leave behind included our fertilisers and pots.

So I've been looking out for possible freecycling options to replenish our stocks. I saw an ad on Gumtree from someone giving away a box of fertiliser and assorted seeds. I replied and on Monday popped into town on my way back from a meeting to pick it up. Talk about a good haul of freebies! I'm so glad I brought my fold-up trolley otherwise I would have really been stuffed trying to get it home on the tram.

Check this out:

The fertiliser etc.. includes:

• Richgro Premium complete fertiliser plus 5kg bag
• Naked Farmer Organic Soil Activator sample pack
• Hortico All purpose compound fertiliser 500g tub (open)
• Brunnings Tomato & Vegetable Starter fertiliser 1kg tub
• Jiffy small peat pellets 12
• Water storage crystals 250g far (1/2 full)
• Miracle Gro Seafeed 3 in 1 250ml
• Charlie Carp 500ml
• Yates Thrive Shake 'n' Feed 700g (1/2 full)
• Garden ties 15
• Brunnings Rose Planting Mix coir block (open)
  
• Seasol 20ml sachet
• Eco-cweed 5g sachet
• Rainsaver crystals 10g sachet
• Searles Penetraide re-wetting granules 2 x 40g sachets
• Searles Flourish soluble plant food 3 x 20g sachets

The assorted seeds includes:

• Cucumber Lebanese (open)
• Snapdragon
• Tomato Roma (open)
• Dwarf snapbean (open)
• Sunflower
• Pak Choi (open)
• Broccoli Royal Dame (open)
• Beetroot Perfect (open)
• Spinach Emerald Star (open)
• Squash Gem
• Lucerne (open)
• Eggplant Listada di Gandia
• Peanut Virginia
• Okra x 2 (open)
• Miscellaneous bag that appears to have a mix of coriander, pumpkin and possibly spring onion)

Not bad for free, eh?

Can't wait to plant these!

Look what arrived in my seed order from Digger's club this week:

Okay, I had planned to get some beans anyway, but how could I resist a name like this? Downside is their planting time is Spring, so it could be a long wait before I get to find out what "Sex without strings" tastes like. Unless I just go ahead and plant them now, given that we tend to have mild enough weather on the coast they may just make it. Tempting.

Seeds

Part of my Diggers Club membership involves getting some free seeds (from a limited selection, but hey, they're free). My first selection of free seeds from the Christmas catalogue arrived today. I got garlic chives, pak choy, red onion, and Martino's roma tomato (a dwarf roma).

Not really the season for onion, so those will wait until next winter, however the others I'm going to plant into the propagator trays on the weekend. The pak choy should grow quickly (40 days from plant to harvest), so what I'll probably do is plant a few every couple of weeks so I'll have a steady supply.

The other propagator tray now has a few sunflowers starting to poke out. The seeds have literally rocketed out of the soil and are still unfurling. No sign of the riesenstraube tomatoes or yellow capsicum yet.

I've ordered some other seeds and things (not free) that should arrive next week. All very exciting!

Dad has also given me a lovely little book called "Nature on your Side", which was published circa the 1970s and is about companion planting and organic pest control. He already had a copy and then found another copy amongst my nanna's books. Some of the stuff is fairly common knowledge, but some of it is quite quirky. Apparently flies hate the colour blue and will never settle on it. No one knows why, but kitchens painted blue stay free of flies. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it's quirky.

I've decided I'm going to get some pyrethrum and african marigolds as my pest control companion plants (plus they're pretty, so bonus there).