Gardening advice is full of promises that you can stop buying supplies and simply use whatever is already sitting around the house. Sometimes that’s excellent advice: fallen leaves really can replace purchased organic matter, cardboard can help create a new bed, and saved containers can eliminate the need for some new pots. Other free garden hacks are less impressive once you factor in the extra supplies, labor, limited usefulness, or risk of harming plants. Instead of assuming “free” automatically means frugal, we compared 10 popular strategies with the garden products or services they’re supposed to replace. The results show that some habits can produce meaningful savings year after year, while others are probably not worth reorganizing your gardening routine around.
