This is a guest post from Katie at Imperfect People. She’s a blogger friend who lives a debt free life and has many great frugal ideas. Here are her thoughts on frugal gardening. You can subscribe to her RSS Feed here.

I find it amusing there are so many different ways advertisers are trying to get you to spend money to make your garden beautiful. People have been gardening for centuries without all the fuss.  Over the years in the garden I have learned a few tips on what you really do need and a lot of things you don’t.

1) You DON’T need commercial fertilizer, you DO need compost.

• Compost has all the nutrients you plants need, plus it is free!  I collect all my kitchen scraps (most anything but meat or dairy) in an empty coffee container on my countertop.  But any container will do the job.

• When it gets full, I take it outside to my compost container. A.K.A  a trash can with holes drilled in the sides and bottom. I also add a shredded newspaper about once a week.   I put the lid on and roll it around the yard a few times a week and there you have my $12 compost container that works way better than anything else I have ever tried.  Instructional video here.

2) You DON”T need landscape fabric, you DO need mulch

• Black landscape fabric is designed to go under the mulch to prevent weeds.  While it is effective, it is also aggravating and expensive. A green and free alternative is newspaper and or cardboard.
• Spread several layers (about 10) of damp newspaper, or cardboard over the surface of your garden.  This is a great chance to reuse/recycle your waste.  If you are anxious to get started and don’t have that much newspaper or cardboard on hand you can ask some friends for theirs,  or contact the local newspaper as they often have end rolls of paper without print that they discard with LOTS of paper left.  FYI cardboard from cereal and cracker boxes work great too.
• Make sure you overlap every piece because grass is RELENTLESS!   Then cover it all with mulch.  I use pine straw since I can rake it up for free but crushed leaves, bark, or cedar mulch is all great too.  When you are ready to plant just tear a hole in the paper/cardboard, and plant.  As a bonus the cardboard or newspaper will eventually breakdown making great food for earthworms!

Do you have any gardening questions?  I love to help!  I would also love to hear ways you save money in the garden.

There is something I probably haven’t shared with you much before. I am married to a man that is obsessed with growing food. Here in Florida, it’s not the easiest undertaking to plant and care for a garden full of food in the heat of summer. We have had occasional success with growing jalapeno peppers, strawberries, and green peppers in our raised beds, but by the time we are picking and eating from the garden, it feels like we put a lot of time and energy into a garden that gives us little reward. Good thing we mostly do it for the hobby part of it, to have something to do, to teach our kids about where foods come from, and to make one less trip to a store to buy fruits or veggies from a plastic container.

One thing we have had great luck with planting is fruit trees. A new part of his planting obsession, I have to be careful letting him go out anymore because he always comes home with new trees to plant. We have the usual orange, lemon, grapefruit and lime trees that we all enjoy watching bloom. Also, our yard is full of not so usual olive trees, a fig tree (that was here and huge and well established when we bought the house), some blueberries, and last weekend we added 6 kiwi trees to our yard. I can’t wait for those. Kiwis are one of my favorite fruits but I never buy them.

There is something so completely charming to me about stepping outside my house and walking to a tree to pick fruit from it and to feed my family something yummy from it. I love that my kids can go from swinging on the swings or playing soccer in the yard to stopping all of that and wanting to have a snack from our yard. And it makes my husband happy to think he’s one step closer to feeding us the day that there is no more food in the grocery store. I sort of joke, but he really does worry about such things.

Two years ago, I took the kids to a local nursery and let them each pick a tree that they wanted to bring home. They could pick anything. My daughter picked a mulberry tree and my son, who does everything she does, chose one too. We came home that day with two scrawny mulberry trees and I was told we’d get berries from them in about 7 years. Imagine my delight when it was blossoming last year and this spring we have had more mulberries than I knew what to do with. We are picking new ripe berries from the trees every day right now. While my kids love just snacking on them and throwing them into their yogurt, I had so many that I realized I’d have to start baking with them to use them up.

Last week, I was inspired by Alicia when she made a yummy looking baked treat with some that her family picked recently.

Last week, I was cleaning out my kitchen cupboards and found that I have 5 pie dishes. FIVE. I have never in my life baked a pie. Or used one of those glass pie plates. Why do I have them? Where did they come from? Probably just another example of something someone gave me and I kept because I am supposed to have pie plates. So, yesterday, I put one to use and made a mulberry cobbler.

To get started, I sent a helper outside to pick a bunch of mulberries for me

Then I gave her a bath!

Here’s what you’ll need to make one of your own:

• 2 cups mulberries
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup milk

What to do:

• Rinse the mulberries with water. You do not need to remove the stems.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In a bowl combine the mulberries with the sugar. Mix well.
• Melt the butter and pour it into a pan. Cover the bottom of the pan with the melted butter.
• In a seperate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Mix well. Add the milk to the mixture to make batter.
• Pour the batter evenly into the glass pan. The butter will come up around the edges, that’s okay.
• Spoon mulberries evenly over batter.
• Bake for 40 minutes.

I am sure this would be delicious served with vanilla ice cream. We had our servings yesterday with French Vanilla yogurt and that was quite yummy as well.

Enjoy!

I’ll start with these lovlies that surprised me with a second chance after I inadvertently killed them last year.

Happy and thriving now – yay!

Last year’s mother’s day gift was a rose bush from my husband. Swoon. I love them.

My Daughter planted the sweetest little flower garden around our mailbox recently. Hubby was kind enough to run a water line out there for easy watering and the flowers are very happy.

We have 3 raised beds for herbs and  fruits and veggies this year, and as usual mixed in some flowers with them. Everything was started from seed so we are patiently waiting for most things to grow still. Here is a random sampling.

The strawberries have been coming in for a while. The kids love to pick them so I never get a chance to get a photo before they’re gone.

This time of year, I get fistfuls of Mexican Petunias from the kids to fill my vases with. Love.

We have lots and lots of coffee trees. I love when it gets warm enough that they can go back outside. I love the dark shiny leaves.

And last but not least, one of the most recent things we’ve added to our yard is some olive trees. Here, a couple olive branches.

I hope you enjoyed the little tour and don’t mind I had to zoom way in and only do close-ups because I haven’t weeded lately.

A shot of the garden when we arrived

And the garden as of last night

As if a home garden was not enough, my parents bought a 375 acre farm nearby the cottage a couple weeks ago. That will surely be a wonderful place to watch things grow over the many years ahead.

If anyone is interested, I can take you on a virtual tour of the fabulous farm, led by my 5 year old soon.

Like these.

Two summers ago, all of us (my parents, my hubby, my brother and his wife, and my kids) built this tiered rock garden. It is  fun to get here and see how it’s doing. It’s just as beautiful as ever this year.

I love the vintage touches of these things , proving that beautiful doesn’t always mean shiny and new.

Before we arrived, my parents put in a vegetable garden. It’s really growing well and we’ve already enjoyed many salads with the lettuce and spinach.  He made raised beds and surrounded them in hay paths.

My kids are just loving climbing the hay stacks. Watching them play today brought back memories of jumping on hay stacks with my brother as a kid. Realizing that with each passing moment, my kids are creating their own memories feels wonderful and also like a heavy weight all at once. I am also reminded though, that the things my kids will remember and smile back on are simple things.

Today, Kimba is hosting a Garden Party. Head on over and see what is doing in other’s fabulous gardens.

I’m also adding this to Hooked on Fridays and A Beautiful Life Friday.

One of the things that hubby and I have been doing over the past couple of years here has been to add not only our fruit and vegetable garden but to plant trees that grow fruit. This is Florida and we have the outdoor space, so we’ve bought many many citrus trees. The first one we bought two years age has been growing really well. This year, the flowers started and now we have lemons growing. I can’t wait to get home in 6 weeks and see how they’re doing. Being able to walk outside when a recipe calls for lemon is exciting to me. I like being that little bit less dependent on a store.

Some things we are doing today to celebrate the day:

planting trees
working in the garden
making mud pies
hanging our laundry on the line
picking up trash in our neighborhood
not shopping

ideas around the blogosphere:
Celebrate Earth Day By Growing a Garden
Goodwill Earth Day Recycle Drive
54 Tips For Green Living
Earth Day Home Activities
How Can YOU Change YOUR World?

Happy Earth Day, today and every day!

What are you doing to celebrate our Earth today?

We started a lot of stuff as seeds over the winter, storing them all over inside, along window sills, on counters, and in the freezer. Slowly, we’ve moved much of it outside and a lot of it is really taking off!

A baby navel orange tree with blossoms

The blueberries aren’t ripe yet

This bed has a mish mash of stuff – strawberries, a teensy tiny baby sago palm tree, peppers, lantana, and the baby navel orange and rosemary.

We also have a variety of tomatoes and peppers, basil, a variety of baby citrus trees, artichokes, okra, beans, soybeans, spinach, peas, coffee, olive trees, a fig tree,  and lots of wildflowers.

We’re doing this as a hobby, for fun, and the food we get from it is just an added bonus.

What are you growing this year?

The days feel longer, afternoons and evenings linger on. Signs of spring are all around. Windows are open to let the fresh air in. Bike rides, picnics, picking flowers, and making fresh squeezed lemonade are added to the to do list. We’re watering plants again, watching them bloom. Enjoying the pretty.

Have signs of spring started peeking out where you live?

It was a fun year of making our home a haven for us. We have more projects on the horizon and I can’t wait to how things are looking around here next year! Thanks so much for being part of my journey here.

Rhoda at Southern Hospitality is hosting a Top 10 Before and After projects. Check it out!

Cindy at My Romantic Home is hosting a little roundup of people’s projects from 2008. Head on over and check them all out!