Gardening is a great way to make sure your family has the best food available for the the least cost. Gardening can be very expensive but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve listed below some of our favorite resources to help you get the most out of your garden for the least amount of money.
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The Gardening Notebook is the ultimate gardening tool. With over 120 printable pages, you’ll find all that you need to create a custom gardening notebook. This one of our ebooks and it’s exactly what we use to keep track of our garden plans and layout from year to year, the varieties that did well and those that didn’t, projects that we are working on and their costs and growing tips for all the fruits and vegetables we grow. If I could only own one gardening tool, this would be it.
Seeds and Plants
Seeds for Generations is a small family owned seed company. The only sell non-GMO heirloom seeds. Seeds that you can pass on for generations.
Books
There are lots of great gardening book out there. I’ve listed a few of my favorites here. The thing about keeping a gardening notebook is that you don’t have to own a lot of books. Check them out from the library and take notes.
The All You Can Eat Vegetable Garden by Cam Mathers – If I lost all my books, this would be the first one I’d replace
Grow Fruit by Alan Buckingham – This would be the second one I’d replace ;-). You can read my full review here.
Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman – It’s pretty easy to garden year round where we live but I know it takes more effort in other climates. This book is full of great tips and ideas to garden year round no matter what your climate is like.
Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail – if you live in an apartment, this is the book you need
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is probably the original small space gardener but even if you have lots a room this is a good read with information that you can glean.
Growing Tasty Tropical Fruits by Laurelynn and Byron Martin – the authors are co-owners of Logee’s Tropical Plants in Connecticut. If you don’t live in a tropical location but want to grow some tropical plants this book will inspire you. You can read my full review here.
The Home Orchard by Cem Akin– this is a great overview of how to plant and manage a home orchard. It does not have much information about specific fruit trees. You can read my full review here.
Born Again Dirt by Noah Sanders – this book written from a Biblical worldview of farming…very thought provoking.
If you are gardening in Texas any book by Howard Garrett will be of great help.
The Art of Gardening by Susan Vinskofski is my second favorite gardening ebook (right after The Gardening Notebook). Not only is there tons of information in it for soil building and growing a garden it is absolutely beautiful. You can read my full review here.
Tools
This soil block builder is my favorite toy for the garden. So, it’s really not a toy but it’s so fun to use I hate calling it a tool. I can start about 250 seeds in just couple of hours using this thing and I don’t have to worry about buying peat pot or plastic posts which have to be stored. I’ve used this for 4 years and I still love it. To see how to use it you can read this tutorial.
These coiled rope harvest baskets make harvesting really easy. We use the big one to run out to the garden and pick just what’s needed for dinner that evening and we use the small one to gather eggs. We also use them when we’re harvesting larger quantities of various things to keep them separate – basil goes in one basket, green beans in another and tomatoes in my big wicker basket. You can find a variety of baskets in our Etsy shop. (psst…when you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll get a discount code for our Etsy shop, along with other cool free stuff. Just use the form below to subscribe.)
I love these gardening aprons by Reformation Acres on Etsy. They have full aprons like this one and half aprons. They also have kitchen aprons for adults and children.