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You can absolutely start a garden with a small budget. Here’s how to build a raised bed vegetable garden with plants for less than $25.
I hear this a lot: “I want to start a vegetable garden, but I’m on a budget! Garden kits in the catalogs are $70. And that’s just for the raised bed, not the soil or plants!”
Great news: you don’t need to spend a fortune to start a vegetable garden. With a small budget–less than $25–you can build a raised bed vegetable garden WITH plants.
You’ll grow enough food to make your money back in no time. Your budget will thank you–you could even say you’re eating for dirt cheap! (wocka wocka wocka)
Are you a brand new gardener? Not sure what to plant or when to plant it? I can help.
You’ll find lots of great information in my new book, The First-Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening.
Budget Vegetable Garden Supplies
Here’s what you need to build a raised bed garden. (Prices accurate as of 4/9/14 at Home Depot. Your mileage may vary.)
If you already have fence boards, stakes, or nails, invest in a few more bags of steer manure to enrich your soil.
3, 6-foot cedar fence boards $1.50 each: $4.50
2 in. x 2 in. x 24 in. grade stake (6-pack): $5.47
1 box of 35, 2” nails: $1.30
2 bags of steer manure @ $1.37 each: $2.74
Subtotal: $14.01
Why cedar? Other fence boards are cheaper, but cedar stands up to weather and will last you for a couple of years at least. If you get cheaper fence boards you’ll need to replace them more often. Have the folks at the home store cut one board in half to make the ends of the raised bed.
You’ll need a friend to help with the assembly. Put the pieces together on a flat surface so the garden box sits flat when you’re done. Hold the fence boards together with the stake sticking up. Nail the corner securely with the stake for extra support. Lather, rinse, and repeat until all four corners are done.
Take the assembled box out to your perfect, sunny spot. Dig up the soil and mix in the steer manure. Sink the stakes into the ground and smooth out the soil. Now you’re ready to plant!
This is the fun part. Pick out seeds (or plants) to fill up your garden bed. Here are a bunch of ideas that will keep your garden budget at or below $25.
Colorful Vegetable Garden Ideas
Tricolor bush beans: $2.79
Rainbow chard: $2.79
Easter egg radish: $2.79
Tricolor zucchini mix: $2.99
Salsa Garden Ideas
4” tomato plant: $2.25 (it’s too late in the year to start from seed)
Tomato cage: $2.95
4” jalapeno pepper plant: $2.25
Cilantro: $3.79
Kids Garden Ideas
6-pack strawberries: $3.50
Three flavor melons: $2.99
Circus circus tricolor carrots: $2.99
Green Smoothie Garden Ideas
Catalina baby spinach: $2.79
Lacinato heirloom kale: $2.79
Jericho romaine lettuce: $3.79
If you want more plants but need to stay under budget, ask your gardening friends or family for extra seeds or plants. Most of us get carried away at seed-starting time and end up with more plants than space!
Are you ready to garden? What are you going to grow this year? Tell us in the comments!
Some plant photos courtesy of Renee’s Garden.
Also to save on seeds, you can replant the tops of carrots you have eaten, and the stumps of celery will regrow also. And a couple of potatoes with eyes on them can be cut up to grow potatoes, and kids love digging around in the turned over dirt to find them.
I was lucky – my neighbors have a son who is a contractor in the NorthEast. He came down when their kitchen flooded from a burst pipe and ripped out the whole thing, studs included. He reformatted the kitchen, making it larger and better organized (our homes were built in the 70’s). I got into the “trash” and came up with 4×4’s, 6×4’s, tons of other stuff. The materials would have cost me a fortune otherwise. Raised beds, Ho!! 😉
Mel Bartholomew’s Square foot gardening method works great. I only do square foot and container gardening now. He has some great suggestions for those on a tight budget. Try a 4X4 foot box (to raise it, maybe put on saw horses) with carrots, radishes, lettuce, swiss chard, herbs. a tomato plant, flowers, a vertical made with PVC or other type of piping (PVC holds up great in any weather, except hurricanes and tornadoes of course) and use string for the green beans and/or zucchini. My husband & I freeze the harvest and eat veggies right through the winter. We have also covered box with thick plastic tarp in January and were harvesting in April. Oh, I should state that we are in Vancouver, BC Canada where winters are milder. Happy gardening!
I just found that the dollar store has a lot of veggie seeds that are sold for more elsewhere for 4 for a $.
I’ve heard of people who have a great garden in bags of potting soil with drain holes on the bottom. Cut slashes or x’s go plant seeds or plants. Can cover with mulch for a better look!
If you happen to have any food assistance, aka food stamps, you can buy vegetables seeds as well as small vegetable plants with them. We plant all of our veges and lettuce to help cut food cost as well as our canning vegetables
If you drive around on trash day in early spring you will find lots of old cedar fence pickets for free. People tend to do fence rebuilds in early spring. I built one super long box container using two lengths of the pickets as well as two small square box’s to keep my herbs separate and then a moderate sized box for all my peppers. The most difficult part was moving them to your planting location…so you may want to just grab the drill and build them where you want them after cutting the wood to size.
Perfect description of what i need and what i need to do. Thank you so much for your post. Grea timing as I just came into a home depot gift card. LOVE IT.
hi, thanks for this post! i was looking for something to guide me through how to start a garden. i also found a raised bed gardening box at ALDI for $29. not too bad for people who may not want to put it all together. but this idea is much better and saves money!
love your post I just shared a post on container gardening and love what you have shared here remember those good old days when we could depend on the good earth to sustain our life
Weve used a childs plastic pool before, free off craigslist, with drainage holes drilled in. Worked fabulous
I found a kiddie pool and plan to plant in it. Happy to hear that works.
Like so many other things, marketing has invaded even the most frugal endeavors. If cash is tight you can forgo the $14.01 and just dig the area and make a ground level garden. Raised beds are awesome and very trendy (which equals money), but if you are just starting out and not sure if gardening is for you, make a ground level garden. This is how I started. Just dig down 8- 10″ (12′ for tomatoes). Also check around for the best seed prices; lots of places run sales on the seeds in hopes that you get all your gardening needs from them.
Some people would rather not dig 8-12″ in their soil. For example, my soil is very hard and rocky. That’s why we opted for the raised bed. 🙂
What about the length of the cedar boards? According to your directions, with three boards, you are going to end up with a three sided raised garden, which in the scheme of things isn’t the best utilization of the space. A square or rectangle or square would be better.
As for hard soil – it does take some work – in VA we have red clay that gets baked and you cannot grow in it, but your time and effort does count. And free, except for the mixture of the manure and soil you would need to mix with it.
The one thing we found valuable too, when we lived in a townhome was container garden.
The prices you list make me jealous. Nothing we can purchase here would ever be that cheap. A disclaimer about where you live might be nice, because people will be disappointed they can’t find cedar for 1.50 a board or manure for the price listed. And forget the plants – we pay double here, yet still in the country, in VA, in US.
She stated 3 boards: 2 boards for the long sides and the third board to be cut in half to make the short ends. It is shaped like a rectangle.
Also, those are prices for seed packets, not plants.
No, those are the prices she quoted for the boards.
I can’t trust the soil at my rental home and since I am planning to buy a house and move I didn’t want to put a lot of work into a garden for the next tenant to mow down. So I opted for Container gardening! It’s a learning process, each season I expand a little more! Last year I got lots of wonderful peppers and tomatoes! This year I plan to use some kiddie pools and expand things considerably