Nonnegotiables vs. Opportunities to Save Money in the Garden

When you’re creating your garden design plan, setting a realistic budget early on is helpful to keep yourself growing at a comfortable pace. There are a lot of nonnegotiables on the gardener’s budget list when planning ahead to grow a healthy and thriving garden. For example, quality soil mix and accessible irrigation are where you do not want to skimp.

What you choose for your foundational structure, however, can be an opportunity to save dollars for other “get growing” wish list purchases. 

Think Outside of the Box

I’ve always been a fan of reduce, reuse, and recycle. Or upcycle and repurpose. The key is to think creatively and design intentionally. As they say, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I have a lot of treasures in my garden!

Last summer, I put my Gardenary Consultant training into action by planting up a number of raised beds in our blank canvas of a backyard (see below). I was in between full-time jobs, plus it was a “stay at home” summer again. I knew I had to use what I had available to me first, before I went shopping for building supplies for this preliminary set of raised beds.

I viewed it as a summer to experiment. I knew it was perfectly okay to build some of my beds in a temporary style while I learned how to manage growing a successful edible garden. It was this spirit that helped me to think outside of the garden box.

Why Use Raised Beds?

I live in New England, in a small suburb just north of Boston in Zone 6, and having raised beds really helped to extend my growing season.

They also kept my plants safe from little feet. Duck feet to be exact. We have free-range Pekin ducks who like to patter about the yard, looking for muddy patches and bugs, and sometimes they will also eat some of my favorite blossoms (they really like chives!) Raising garden beds off the ground kept my tender plants safe from their adorable webbed feet and their cute (but hungry) beaks.

How My Garden Grew

Below is a list of raised beds that I tended last summer—some into early winter—following Nicole’s Gardenary method for container gardening and raised bed building.

Galvanized tubs

Galvanized tubs make great beds for growing salad gardens, herbs, and edible flowers. The metal sides heat up quickly, which helps the soil to warm up early in the season and stay warm late into the fall.

I had a pair of these tubs set on the pea stone gravel patio-like space behind our garage next to our barn. For years, they held chives that came up early each spring with no extra care needed (a super easy perennial herb for the beginner gardener!).

After bringing ducks home as family pets, I realized the tubs might do better up on the deck and out of their reach. I did a Gardenary upgrade to these tubs before moving them up to the deck, freshening up the soil mix after drilling more drainage holes into the bottom of each tub. (I only had a couple of holes on the sides of the tubs, which really didn’t provide enough drainage for the size of the tub.)

After drilling half a dozen new holes on the bottom of each tub, black weed barrier cloth was layered on the bottom and up the sides to prevent the newly added soil from spilling out of the holes and onto the deck during watering or after a heavy rain.

The chives have done really well in the tubs on the deck, getting lots of direct sunlight throughout the day while staying safe from ducks foraging for a snack. They are also close to the house, which makes snipping some fresh greens to sprinkle on top of our meals really convenient. If you don’t have galvanized tubs hanging around your house, they are easy to find at tractor/farm supply stores and even some home goods-type stores.

Just don’t forget to add drainage holes so that your plant roots aren’t sitting in water that has no place to drain out.

Galvanized steel fire ring used as a planter

One of my favorite new beds last summer was created out of what was intended to be a fire pit ring that I bought at Tractor Supply for about $60.

This 3-foot-wide-by-12-inch-tall galvanized metal ring was placed as a raised level on an existing garden bed. I filled it with a nutrient-rich soil mix to plant edible flower seeds from a mixed blend seed packet. For the entire summer, I had a wide variety of edible flowers, radishes, herbs, and salad greens growing in this “bowl”-style planter.

The only drawback was not always knowing what was coming up since I sprinkled in a mix of seeds instead of intentionally sowing the seeds of specific plants. I was quite surprised when my dad (who is an experienced gardener) pulled a fully grown radish out of the bed!

Large rocks as bed borders

One of my raised beds was created out of large fieldstones that were found on our property. This was a big project a couple years ago, and it took some machinery to move them. But they were essentially free to use with the exception of the time it took to move them using a borrowed piece of equipment.

This rustic-looking raised garden bed, next to an old foundation wall, was a good partially shady spot for growing cool crops like kale, arugula, and tall, feathery dill.  

Metal edging 

My current build-it-yourself raised bed project this year involves a little bit more of my gardening budget because I bought multiple units of steel raised bed kits from Edge Right to create a pathway-lined border garden to support tall arched trellis units found in the Gardenary shop.

These Cor-Ten steel metal garden bed kits are a DIY project that should be installed into cleared ground with a small sledge hammer and block of wood. I lined the bottom of mine with cardboard to prevent weeds or grass from growing up through the new soil mix.

Beds can be small to large, so your budget can determine size. It does take a bit of time to level them properly and some strength to hammer the steel teeth deep into the ground, but I’m looking forward to these beds gaining an aged patina that allows my garden greens to pop! 

Trash to treasure

Last summer, my brother called me saying he had “a ton of bricks” that he wanted to get rid of after changing his existing walkway over to another landscaping material. I was more than happy to take them!

It took many trips in my minivan to collect enough to edge our backyard fire pit (another Covid-related project), and then there was still more bricks left, which he was kind enough to pack up and bring my way. With so many bricks on my hands, I started to dry stack them in various spots in the yard. Two beds were made along the edge of a small garden area that I had previously spent a good amount of time clearing specifically for raised beds.

The first raised bed in this garden area was created out of an old cabinet that had wonky doors and had been relegated to the garage. Instead of tossing it (or burning it in the fire pit), I decided it would make a really good raised bed, being just the right depth and having divided areas to contain different plants.

I removed the ill-fitting doors and painted the sides, top, and a few inches of the interior with black exterior paint. Then, I drilled some drainage holes in the bottom before setting it on weed barrier cloth and surrounding it with a bed of ¾ in. pea stone gravel.

This trash-to-treasure raised bed was used for growing a variety of cut flowers last summer. I also used it this winter to house milk jugs and other containers that were set up for cold weather seed sowing.

A divided piece of furniture like this could also be a good way to plant different lettuce crops that could use a bit of separating so that you know which leaf is which.

Next winter, I might try using it as a cold frame by attaching a hinged window to the top of it to extend the growing of salad greens even further.

Toy box to window-box-style raised bed

Another piece of inside furniture that I put outside last summer was a wooden toy storage box that had been outgrown many years ago. I painted this one with the same black paint I used on the old cabinet.

Once painted, I set it up beside the house with a husband-made vertical trellis (he soldered the copper pipe, and I added the chicken wire) that I used to support sweet peas in front of our living room window.

The scent of sweet peas wafting into the house when the window is open on a hot summer day is so nice! Indeterminate tomatoes or small cucumbers could also do well in this window planter-box-style raised bed.

Additional Budget-Friendly Raised Bed Materials Worth Trying …

Raised beds made of pallets

There are so many creative ways to repurpose wooden pallets for use in the garden! Standing them up vertically and stapling landscape fabric on the back, sides, and bottom before adding the Gardenary recommended soil mix, will provide a window-box-like growing environment for your more shallow-rooted salad greens, herbs, and even edible flowers.

Use pallets “as is” for a rustic look or give them a fresh coat of exterior paint to add a bit more personality to your garden. Black or iron ore colored paint will make your leafy green plants stand out, but any color of the rainbow—cheerful and bright or sophisticated and subdued—can work, depending on the mood you want to set for your outdoor space. Check out how others have used pallets to create DIY raised bed gardens by searching "pallet planter" on Google images or Pinterest. 

Raised beds made of cinder blocks or concrete blocks

Cinder blocks and concrete blocks are very inexpensive (typically $2 to $3 a piece at home improvement centers), and they make it really easy to build the outline of a raised garden bed.

You can even create a flower-filled border by filling the holes of the 8-inch-high cinder blocks with pest-deflecting flowers like marigolds or trailing nasturtiums or borage to soften the edges. These flowers are also edible, which is a real bonus! 

Raised beds made with plant grow bags

Cloth or felt growing containers or garden bags are another relatively inexpensive raised bed option, especially suitable for the gardener who likes to move plants around, as they are lightweight and typically have handles. They can be reused from season to season and there are a lot to choose from on Amazon.

Build your own wooden raised bed

Learn how to build your own easy and affordable 4 ft. x 4 ft. x 1 ft. raised bed for around $100 by following Nicole’s instructions below.

Shop Online for Even More Raised Beds on a Budget Options

The following places have some durable and food-safe options:

• Vego Garden
• Tractor Supply
• Birdie's Garden Products
• Northern Tool
• Wayfair

And don’t forget to keep an eye open for neighborhood curb alerts or online freecycle community groups to discover trash-to-treasure raised bed options to take home and put to good use in your growing garden.

Where have you discovered interesting materials for your raised beds? Share your bed building tips in the Gardenary Facebook group! 

Meet Yvonne Blacker of Contain Your Joy

Yvonne grew up gardening in her grandparents' large kitchen garden and her mom's cottage garden, which overflowed with a wide variety of cheerful flowers and sprawling perennials. Watching her role models find so much pleasure working with nature—feeding their family with the summer harvests and filling vases on the kitchen table with beautiful cut flowers—taught her to appreciate time well spent in the garden.

Now that she has made gardening her business, she loves growing in decidedly creative ways and finding joy in the process, whether she's designing a robust cut-and-come-again salad garden or planning a woodland perennial border.

Follow Contain Your Joy on Instagram to see what Yvonne's repurposing and turning into treasure in her garden next.

(Photos for this article supplied by Yvonne.)