This is the twelfth edition of our weekly series on food budgeting. Last week there were so many comments about bees that I wanted to return to that subject, as well as offer some more gardening tips to help stretch your food budget.

Late September is the perfect time to get your winter vegetables planted, and as we head into early October, you really need to get things in the ground right away if you plan to have a harvest before the danger of frost in November. I’ve been enjoying the book All New Square Food Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. It’s about the square foot gardening method, but there are also lots of helpful tips that would apply to container gardening as well. Some of you may already know a lot about gardening, but many newcomers are turning to backyard gardens as a way of stretching their food budgets. The gardening class I attended two weeks ago was packed with people like me, looking to find tips for making sure their investment in the backyard paid off. I thought I’d share the most useful tips from both the book and my classes.

The first thing you want to think about is seeds. Planting from seeds is always cheaper than buying established plants from a nursery. A packet of seeds is usually $1-$2, and there are usually 100-1000 seeds in a package. However, an established plant can range anywhere from $2-$6 per plant. That’s not a very cost effective way of stretching your food dollar! Always read the package of seeds, though, to find out when the seeds were packed. You may find that purchasing from a catalog seed company versus a nursery means that you get fresher seeds. And fresher seeds mean higher germination rates.

Bartholomew suggests that you should ignore the instructions on the seed package that tell you to plant the seeds 1″ apart. Plant the seeds as far apart as they will need to be when the plant matures. This saves the time and effort of thinning the seedlings. Plus, you use fewer seeds this way. However, if you don’t have the patience to get a ruler out and plant each seed individually (some of those seeds can be tiny!), then here’s a trick I learned from my class. Take an old salt shaker and put a little bit of sand and your seeds inside. Make sure you poke bigger holes in the lid with an old nail or something. Then just sprinkle the seeds over the soil, and cover them with a thin layer of soil. You will need to thin the seedlings with this method, but don’t toss those little sprouts into the compost heap! Use them as microgreens on a salad or as a garnish on an omelet. You’d pay big money for microgreens in a fancy restaurant. So why not have 4-star dining at home? You paid for the seeds, so get your money’s worth! The best part is that microgreens are packed full of protein because they contain all the nutrients that came from the seed. They’re ideal for vegetarians or anyone looking to reduce their meat consumption.

The next thing you want to think about is mulch. Dead leaves, fallen pine needles, and other yard waste makes the perfect (and free) mulch. I live in an apartment, so I don’t have a lot of yard trimmings readily available. But I do have a shredder in the office and lots of paper to be recycled. Most newspapers and other printed items use a soy-based ink, so using shredded paper is completely nontoxic. Not sure if your paper uses an organic ink? Just put some water on the paper and if the ink runs, it’s safe. You can also supplement your compost pile with shredded paper. So stop throwing those weekly junk mail ads and the Wallstreet Journal in the recycling bin and put it directy to work in your garden. Mulching will help reduce your water consumption and limit the amount of time you spend weeding. And who doesn’t want that?

Speaking of water, there are many things you can do to reduce your water consumption in the garden. This is really important if you live in a desert climate like I do, but you also need to consider the added utility costs of watering a garden. Try gray water harvesting to recycle water from your house. We keep a 5 gallon bucket in the kitchen sink, as well as a little water pale in the bathroom to catch wasted water. If you’re rinsing veggies or just rinsing off your hands, all that water is perfectly safe to use in the garden and you’re just letting it run down the drain. You’d be amazed how much water you could save by harvesting your gray water. If you use dioxin free soaps, you can use dish water and laundry or bath water to water trees, shrubs, and grass. But you really don’t want to use this on your veggies, especially not root vegetables, because the soap will build up in the plants. It’s not toxic, but who wants a tomato that tastes like dish soap?

Finally, let’s talk about the birds and the bees. Not those birds and bees, the ones in your garden! Last week I mentioned that bees are dying off at alarming rates, and many of you left comments offering various explanations for the trend. I thought it was such an important topic that I wanted to revisit that discussion this week. You might have noticed that the price of honey has gone up dramatically in the past few years, and that’s because fewer bees means less honey. But that’s not the only reason you should care about these little guys. Bees pollinate the flowers that produce the fruits of vegetable plants like squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and the like. If bees are conspicuously absent in your yard, you will need to pollinate by hand, either using a Q-tip or a fine paintbrush to transfer the pollen from male to female flowers.

Many beekeepers around the world believe that the bees are disappearing due to Colony Collapse Disorder. Essentially, bees are getting infected with a virus that is killing them. Many people believe that agricultural pesticides are a part of the equation, but there isn’t any conclusive evidence about this yet.

So what can you do to help the bees? Plant flowers and flowering shrubs that attract bees. And as our reader Lyn pointed out last week, you should definitely prioritize plants that are native to your region to help the bees establish a home. Use a hanging feeder to supplement the flowers’ nectar with a mixture of 30% sugar and 70% water. The double bonus here is that if you use a humming bird feeder, you’ll also attract humming birds to your yard, another vital pollinator on the verge of disappearing. The final important step is to refrain from using insecticides of pesticides, because these toxins are killing bees and polluting our groundwater.

You don’t have to have a lot of space to plant a garden. Bartholomew’s gardening methods can be easily adapted for a patio or for window boxes. In fact, you only need 20% of the space that traditional line planting requires in order to utilize the square foot gardening method. So whether you plant veggies for this Fall or you want to wait until next Spring, give gardening a try. It’s a great stress reliever, and it’s something you can enjoy together as a family.

If you’ve got additional gardening tips you’d like to share, I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment with your suggestions. Next week we’ll be discussing cooperatively run grocery stores, as well as community supported agriculture.

Photo credit: stock.xchng.