I put together a thread on money saving tips a while back here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I've already made a lot of cuts to my budget. But the economy keeps crashing.
So it's time for more cost saving tips. A big way to save on costs, as well as help the environment, is to garden. If you don't have a lot of room in your yard to garden, you can garden in pots on a patio or balcony. Here are some interesting container options.
Bush Pumpkin (I want to try this!): http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Cucumbers: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Sprouts: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Eggplant: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Herbs on a Windowsill: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Tomatoes: http://www.tomatogrowers.com/...
Bell Pepper: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/...
Green Beans: http://www.seedsofchange.com/...
Dry Beans: http://www.seedsofchange.com/...
Broccoli: http://www.seedsofchange.com/...
Carrots: http://www.seedsofchange.com/...
Peas: http://www.seedsofchange.com/...
Melons: (Minnesota Midget) http://www.victoryseeds.com/...
You can grow lettuce in just about anything. I have soil in a plastic bag that is currently growing lettuce downstairs. Similar for radishes and other small items. If you only have a little money, buy a packet of lettuce seeds, watch for end of season sales on potting soil that you can add your own compost to, and grow it on a sunny windowsill. Lettuce doesn't require a lot of light, so you can easily grow it on your sunny windowsill.
To save money, you can be creative in the containers you use. You can use a plastic lined box, a plastic lined laundry basket, old jugs and cartons, baskets, or just about any container as long as you allow for drainage.
For soil you can make your own compost. http://www.compostguide.com/
You don't have to make huge quantities of compost at a time. You can start out with smaller amounts. Making compost has the added advantage of recycling household waste.
You can even grow small fruit trees in containers, like these:
http://www.starkbros.com/...
http://www.starkbros.com/...
http://www.starkbros.com/...
http://www.starkbros.com/...
http://www.starkbros.com/...
Or you can use a dwarf tree and trim it into espalier, or keep it smaller to suit the container you're using.
Even if you only have a little bit of room, you can grow a lot of things that can help your food budget, add healthier locally grown produce to your diet, and help the environment by keeping transportation costs down. With the economy going the way it is, who knows how many farmers will still be in business a couple years from now...
If you're disabled like me and have a hard time doing all the work for gardening, and you have some cash to spare (or can jump the hoops to save it), you can spend the money for a convenient gardening appliance:
http://www.aerogrow.com/...
I bought a couple of these (don't ask how I scrimped to come up with the money - hello, two meal days!) so I could have lettuce during the winter for salads. I have PTSD, so going to a crowded grocery store is a major ordeal - and having fresh produce growing at home is a stress reducing pleasure. These are very convenient with almost no work or time required, and even those like me who have a "black" thumb can grow edible produce. Since I have a hard time digging, lifting, weeding, and a lot of the other gardening tasks, buying an aerogarden was a good investment for fresh, chemical and e-coli free produce. They do take pains to make sure everything is "green" and organic. It doesn't save money, but it does grow fresh produce with little effort. It's a nice addition to whatever I can manage to grow with containers or in the garden with little required from me. It's also nice for people who live in apartments and have no balcony or other place with sunlight to grow produce. To save money, the more enterprising among you can set up a better hydroponics system for less money. If you're going to buy an aerogarden, hunt the web for good deals for everything. The deals are not easy to find, but they are out there.
You can also grow citrus in containers. Probably the easiest are the Meyeri Lemon, Bearss Lime, and Mandarin Orange.
http://www.onegreenworld.com//index....
What you can grow at home is pretty much limited only by your imagination and the effort you're able to put into it. I find fruit trees the easiest to grow outdoors, although this would vary by area depending on local conditions, the kinds of pests in your area, and the amount of light in your yard.
There are tons of references on the web to help you build your gardening skills:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/...
http://www.organicgardening.com/
The thing I've had the hardest time with is the Ph of the soil around here, and the profound effect it has on the growth of plants. Check your soil and amend it to get it in the right Ph range for great gardening. I've learned a lot, and I'm still learning.
There are also lots of sites on the web that have money saving tips:
http://ths.gardenweb.com/...
http://frugalliving.about.com/
To add some incentive to your gardening and encourage you to add a little green around your home, here's some bad news on the environment:
HELENA, Mont. — On the side of a mountain on the outskirts of Montana’s capital city, loggers are racing against a beetle grub the size of a grain of rice.
Anne Sherwood for The New York Times
From New Mexico to British Columbia, the region’s signature pine forests are succumbing to a huge infestation of mountain pine beetles that are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse.
"We’re seeing exponential growth of the infestation," said Clint Kyhl, director of a Forest Service incident management team in Laramie, Wyo., that was set up to deal with the threat of fire from dead forests. Increased construction of homes in forest areas over the last 20 years makes the problem worse.
In Wyoming and Colorado in 2006 there were a million acres of dead trees. Last year it was 1.5 million. This year it is expected to total over two million. In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, the problem is most severe. It is the largest known insect infestation in the history of North America, officials said. British Columbia has lost 33 million acres of lodgepole pine forest, and a freak wind event last year blew mountain pine beetles, a species of bark beetle, over the Continental Divide to Alberta. Experts fear that the beetles could travel all the way to the Great Lakes.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I don't know how bad the economic hit will be from losing all these old growth trees, but we already know how bad it is for the environment...
Please feel free to add your own money saving and gardening tips.