Cheap/free redneck gardening

I saw another post called "gardening on the cheap" which was actually just about one specific method for making row covers. It got me excited to talk about cheap gardening though so here I am with my own post, detailing my own system for it. Please note that I'm calling MYSELF a redneck for doing this and not insulting anyone, it's not a derogatory word in my opinion.

Consider this like a book without all the pictures and fluff. Follow this and you'll get loads of vegetables without doing what so many gardeners I've met do and spending more in time and money than you really get back in vegetables.

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Cardboard box raised beds- I remember searching this up on the internet before I ever actually did it and finding nothing, so maybe I'm just the first person cheap/tacky enough to do it, haha. It works great. All you do is cut the tops and bottom flaps off of cardboard boxes, stick em on the ground and fill with soil. Lasts two or three years just about, but even if you had to replace them twice a year it wouldn't matter, would it? The things are everywhere.

Not everything has to be in raised beds but it sure helps in some spots and with some vegetables. It also makes weeding about ten times easier. And it doesn't require a rototiller or otherwise, since a foot tall box full of dirt with something growing in it will stifle the grass just fine as long as you cut it short first.

To get soil you can obviously dig it up from somewhere else, or, if that's not an option for you, you can buy some of that 99 cents a bag "topsoil" and mix in some compost. Or if you're really desperate just some good soil. Just make sure to mulch it plenty.

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Grass mulch- you want long, full length grass for this (without seed heads on it) not mowed stuff. This is your main source of fertilizer right here. You can get a sickle off Amazon for about ten bucks which makes it easy to collect heaps in no time. Kitchen shears work fine as well though. Place around and under your plants, replacing as the old stuff breaks down to keep a 3-4 inch mat at all times.

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Leaf mold-  basically you put a bunch of fall leaves in a bag, step on it some to break them up, then you dump them in a pile, and eventually it makes good compost. Put it somewhere sheltered and keep it moist to keep it from blowing away in the wind. You want to put a roof over this or any other compost pile, otherwise you end up growing giant dandelions around it, which are tasty but not what we want here. Turn occasionally, maybe twice a week but you don't need to stress about it.

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Pee- pee is your nitrogen source for this style of gardening. What you want to do is, collect your pee (morning pee is the best and most important) in.a gallon milk jug, then fill it the rest of the way up with water. If your water is chlorinated then fill a bowl, swish your hands around in it for a minute or two, then pour it into the jug. If peeing in a jug is too gross for you, then you can always make a pile of wood shavings and pee on it to make compost. Remember to put the diluted pee AROUND your plants, not on them.

Supposedly a single human's pee is enough to fertilize 1/10th of an acre. Which is more than it sounds like. If you've only got your own pee, I think that combined with the grass mulch and leaf mold you can still fertilize any reasonably sized garden. The stuff below is fun and helpful but not really necessary if you're not gardening on a large scale.

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Anaerobic sod compost- this takes a long time and is a good bit of work but you get a surprisingly good result from it. After the second, aerobic composting it's almost like you used manure, somehow. Magic, science, who knows.

Cut up some sod from somewhere you don't want it. Could be the garden area, or an area that's too shady to garden. Don't worry, it will regrow in a year or so. All you have to do is, put the cut sod in some heavy duty plastic bags and let it break down for a year or more. Make absolutely sure there are no openings. You might want to double bag it and tie the ends with string. A bucket or drum with a lid might also work well.

Let it break down anaerobically for a year or more. When you open the bags it will be one of the worst things you've ever smelled. Mix it with fall leaves, straw or other brown material to form a regular compost pile. I'd say about 75% that and 25% the sod stuff. Then let that compost until it's homogenous and smells normal, turning daily. It's a hassle but a free way to get amazing compost.

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Kitchen scraps pit corn field- I'm not so big on compost piles involving more than two or three ingredients, they take too long to break down and it just complicates things. Here is my alternative for what to do with scraps. This is best prepared over the winter/holiday season (when you're creating 5x as many scraps as usual) and planted in the spring. For the rest of the year, idk. In an ideal world we'd all have a pig we fed our scraps to most of the year and then slaughtered in early winter.

Dig a pit about two feet deep. Length and width will depend on how many scraps you'll have and how much corn you want to plant, and how much help you think the soil will need to produce a good crop. Layer each round of scraps one on top of the other with a bit of soil in-between to help deter pests. If you've got some rotten wood, I'd throw that in there too. If you're really weird you might poop in it a bit. Or put some trapped mice or rats in it. Make sure the top layer of soil is extra thick. When you're done it should be flat or slightly mounded. Plant corn and watch it take off.

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Roadkill compost pile- I've never actually done this one, but man do I want to. I included it because it seems so rednecky and it's definitely free. Basically you drag some fresh roadkill home, place it on a bed of wood chips, then cover it in more wood chips. In six weeks it's supposed to be compost, without turning. I heard that some farmers do this to dead cows, so I'm pretty sure it'd work on a deer too, don't know about raccoons or possums though. Probably if you had a few of them. If you had a snake or a rat or something you might just bury it. If you live somewhere with feral hogs you're allowed to shoot as you please, well there ya go.

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Getting seeds- a few ideas. 1. Buy food from a farmers market and save the seeds. Ask for heirloom varieties. This should work well with squashes, melons, etc. 2. Buy them on sale in the late fall. 3. Bum them off your gardening neighbors. 4. Buy stuff from the store and plant it. Dried beans and popcorn will grow. So will organic potatoes. I grew Okinawan sweet potatoes I found in a health food store once.  5. Obvious but, save your own after your first harvest.

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The best free trellis, stake, tomato cage, low tunnels, etc. material- bamboo! Bamboo is like PVC pipe you can grow. Or gather from somewhere else. Real old time southern rednecks call it cane-pole and look at you real funny if you call it bamboo lol. Some species can be grown just by sticking a green shoot into the ground but with most you'll have to take root cuttings. I recommend growing a small patch of whatever kind grows near you for easy access.

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Well there's all of my cheap gardening knowledge, or at least all I could think of today. Thanks for reading!

Great topic!  Here are some of mine:

If you can't grow bamboo in your climate, grow the really tall sunflowers instead.  Cut them off in the fall and keep them somewhere out of the elements and they make nice bamboo replacements for a year or two.  I use them for pole beans.

Lay out garden beds and never walk in them.  Then you don't need to till and your soil stays soft and fluffy.

Save your seeds.  A puny seed packet of beans is a joke once you've saved a pint of your own seed.

Pallets can make good fencing.

If you mow up your leaves in the fall, collect them and layer them on your garden beds in the fall.  The grass helps the leaves stay put if it's breezy.  They'll still be protecting the soil in the spring.  I have snow holding them down all winter so this may or may not work for you.

If you have a chicken run where the chickens hang out in the winter, collect those leaves that the townspeople put in bags for you.  I put about 100 bags of leaves in the run and by late winter they start composting and they're good compost by June.

Great tips. I like the bamboo idea, wonder if there are non-invasive varieties? I know bamboo is a big big problem in some areas (hard to remove and starts lifting the foundations around homes etc...) but if there is plenty of space it probably isn't.

One thought on pee as fertilizer-- within about 12 hours it turns into ammonia and becomes disgusting so use it fresh instead of storing it in containers (easy for men to directly sprinkle it around outside if they have larger plants that can handle the nitrogen dose). It also contains a fair amount of salt so if it is overused in the same area (outdoor container plants for instance) salt can build up in the soil.

Your own salts will only become an issue if you have an extremely salty diet and if you fertilise the same spot all the time.

I like to place some kind of carbon medium, whatever I'm using as mulch, mounded up in the middle of a bunch of plants I wish to fertilise. I then pee on that mound of carbon (usually wood chips or moulded leaf litter), and as that mound settles over time, I add more mulch. The infiltration into the soil is slowed, and the soil life assimilates it. I like the idea of having about four spots like this, like at the corners of the property or garden patch.

Another approach that has always made sense to me is that of guys who walk their dogs along the property line and join them in marking territory in situations where deterring predators or pest animals from the garden is necessary. I could deal with a food hedgerow that is fertilised daily with diluted pee, that also happens to warn off anything that considers humans dangerous enough to avoid.

Because we have a house rabbit, and a Flemish Giant at that, I do a daily scoop of her wadded paper litter, and that goes right into the compost bucket. I am careful to inoculate it with mouldy leaf matter from outside, or some bit of healthy soil, so that the composting starts happening soonest. I have on occasion used my compost bucket with rabbit litter to pee in when I want to kickstart composting in the early spring.

I love the box raised bed idea. I wonder if an appropriately prepared and inoculated setup would have mycelia forming networks that also keep the structure together.

Oh, and for the beneficial effects I have noticed in my garden, I think maybe mushroom slurries should go on the redneck gardening list. Just get some clearance oyster mushrooms, blend them up in water, and then inoculate your mulch and wood chip piles and carbon-rich soils.

One thing that I just remembered that is really useful and cheap: the redneck pH test. Make a soil slurry in a jar. If you add baking soda or any other base and it fizzes, your soil is acidic. If you add lemon juice or any other acid and it fizzes, your soil is alkaline.

And another take on roadkill reuse: the carcass hanging in the upside-down bucket method for feeding poultry (only works with roadkill small enough to hang in your coop/run and be contained by a container).

Just take a bucket of appropriate size for the roadkill you will be using. A leaky one will be fine, as the next step is to put a hole in the centre of the bottom and pass a strong rope through it. Tie a knot so the bucket doesn't slip off, leaving some loose rope to either attach a hook for hanging or to tie onto the roadkill. Find some roadkill and attach it to the rope so that it hangs under the bucket, and then take the hanging upside-down roadkill bucket contraption and hang it above where your chooks will see anything fall and snap it up.

While I would like fresh roadkill for this application and would also prefer to introduce Black Soldier Fly Larvae myself, so I know what the chooks will be eating, I know that in most cases, you can just hang the carcass under the bucket and decompositional insects will find it, lay eggs, and when their offspring hatch, they will gorge themselves on the rotting meat before dropping to the ground to feed the chooks.

I love this idea, both in this thread and the one that spawned it. Keep up the good thinking!

-CK

Oh yeah I'm a fan of free and cheap. That cardboard box idea could have a great application in potato towers since you rip it apart at harvest time. Cardboard does have formaldehyde and other chemicals in it to prevent decomposition so just be aware of that.

I collect used paper coffee cups - the biggest size, and use them for planting tree seeds in. They have a thin plastic coating on the inside so they tend to last at least one year before they split and fall apart.

All my garden debris that I don't use for mulching (for whatever reason), I throw into a trench and it piles up. The next spring, I throw seed potatoes in the pile and harvest potatoes in the fall as I harvest the composted debris.

I'm always building stuff like growing frames out of used pellets that I deconstruct. The wood isn't treated, and it rots quickly so you have to be replacing it often, but it's free.

Chris Kott wrote:
Another approach that has always made sense to me is that of guys who walk their dogs along the property line and join them in marking territory in situations where deterring predators or pest animals from the garden is necessary.

Yeah I think that is mostly myth. In nature predators only inhabit areas where the prey/game live, they always inhabit the same territories. Territory marking is to notify/warn competing members of the same species.

The deer have no problem coming right up to our yard fence and munching away at whatever appeals to them despite the fence is often peed on by 6 dogs. They KNOW the dogs can't leave the 4' fenced area so they aren't the slightest bit worried.

We may not see them very often but there is no doubt they watch/study us,  know what our habits are and carefully assess the threat level.

Are they starving? I suppose if there are wild blackberries and raspberries growing in the field across the way, scent deterrents might work better than if you're the only show in town.

Of course, if those smart hoof rats associate the canine urine smell with the terror of the chase and the untimely death of one of their tasty friends, I am sure they would at least be more cautious, whatever the circumstance.

Also, if there are motion-sensitive elements that only activate when they breach the perimeter, that could be enough to make them doubt their surveillance.

-CK

Make a two feet thick pile of used chicken straw. Go to the cow watering hole & gather 1/2 shovel of decomposed cow pie & 1/2 shovel of soil from underneath the cow pie. Fill a 5 gallon bucket or wheelbarrow with that mix. Dump mixture on top of the straw pile. Plant. Quick & easy redneck garden that produces well. I have an acre or two of zone 2 & 3 area that has many large divots. This is how I'm leveling the divots as well as starting new gardens there. One day at a time, one bucket at a time.

I'm considering using that technique to grow 1/4 acre or more of watermelon & 1/4 acre of Seminole pumpkins for market next year. Would strengthen that with log & stick wattle borders. It's on a hill so don't want it floating away. A few well placed rocks & logs can direct water flow to the desired locations. The logs are given mushroom slurries to start getting them broken down for future hugelkulturs. Especially effective in a guerilla gardening situation. It works but requires patience.

Seminole pumpkins ... the original redneck way ... grow them right up dead trees with low branches. Vertical redneck gardening at it's finest!

Chris Kott wrote:
Also, if there are motion-sensitive elements that only activate when they breach the perimeter, that could be enough to make them doubt their surveillance.

-CK

One easy/cheap motion sensor that I keep on hand (for teotwawki not for deer, though it would work in either case) is a fishing line tripwire alarm.

Run the fishing line along the perimeter and attach it either to mousetraps or the cheap dollar store magnetic window alarms. When the line is tripped the window alarm goes off (and you have to turn it off) or it trips the mousetrap which fires off a strip of ring caps (for kids pop guns). Either way it makes a big noise and no power is required plus the supplies are less than $10.

I just fenced my garden area in and that keeps them out, it is small and isn't tempting enough to bother entering the fenceline.

Oh yeah, I've just remembered a great redneck pest deterrent trick for small mammals and birds! They make these owl calls which are really for turkey hunting. The idea is that it scares turkeys out of their hiding spots so you can shoot them. Therefore they are designed to sound like the biggest, scariest owl possible. If you take one out at dusk when lots of things are whistling and chirping and blow on it you will see the effect. Dead silence. You might combine it with one of those owl statues but honestly I think it does most of the work on it's own. Just take it out and blow on it a bit in the early morning and at dusk.

I only know the word teotwawki as an acronym for The End Of The World As We Know It.  What does it mean in this context?

Tom Kozak wrote:I only know the word teotwawki as an acronym for The End Of The World As We Know It.  What does it mean in this context?

That's what it means.  It seems to me that Lucrecia is just saying that the trip wires work for humans as well as deer.

River cane/Bamboo is native to a lot of the US. It doesn’t spread much here in MO. It might farther south. There are other clumping bamboos that should be OK too.

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:Great tips. I like the bamboo idea, wonder if there are non-invasive varieties? I know bamboo is a big big problem in some areas (hard to remove and starts lifting the foundations around homes etc...) but if there is plenty of space it probably isn't.

Two basic varieties; running and clumping.  DO NOT PICK RUNNING BAMBOO.  

Shop for clumping ones, the are varieties for most zones.  (2  and up I believe).

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:

Chris Kott wrote:
Also, if there are motion-sensitive elements that only activate when they breach the perimeter, that could be enough to make them doubt their surveillance.

-CK

One easy/cheap motion sensor that I keep on hand (for teotwawki not for deer, though it would work in either case) is a fishing line tripwire alarm.

Run the fishing line along the perimeter and attach it either to mousetraps or the cheap dollar store magnetic window alarms. When the line is tripped the window alarm goes off (and you have to turn it off) or it trips the mousetrap which fires off a strip of ring caps (for kids pop guns). Either way it makes a big noise and no power is required plus the supplies are less than $10.

I just fenced my garden area in and that keeps them out, it is small and isn't tempting enough to bother entering the fenceline.

I watched a YouTube video on fencing to keep critters out.  The guy went through many ways we try.  Then the conclusion was Mindie, the dog.  No fencing needed.  Luckily I have the neighbors dogs (the bright side) crapping and peeing on my yard (Coco and ~Muehe.  So I have to see in next year if this works.

Mike Barkley wrote: I have an acre or two of zone 2 & 3 area that has many large divots. This is how I'm leveling the divots as well as starting new gardens there. One day at a time, one bucket at a time.

Doing the same two buckets at a time.  I have a ton of low spots around the property doing the same.  Started by putting wood chips in the low points.  I am out of wood mulch now, but more will come eventually for free.  The tractor did a number on my lawn with its tires.  Dragging trees to back of property, especially the black walnut trees (extreme back).  I have to look out for juglone effects the next ~5 years, had/have black walnut surround my house on 3 sides!  I saw two types of mushrooms come up on wood mulch but I trampled them.

Always still finding 'crap' left behind.  I was using my fork to loosen soil, for rain we are getting now.  Today found a couple rocks, and a brick today buried.  So took all three and moved them.  I'm standing on the fork and sometimes I wonder what is in the soil.  I think what I found today (a theory) is this material was put down for supporting a boat in yard.  I haven't found two other locations yet...

That half circle of rocks on right in first photo is a camp fire location.  That's where I placed what I found today, hope the half inch rain will wash dirt off rocks, etc.

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:

Chris Kott wrote:
Another approach that has always made sense to me is that of guys who walk their dogs along the property line and join them in marking territory in situations where deterring predators or pest animals from the garden is necessary.

so they aren't the slightest bit worried.

We may not see them very often but there is no doubt they watch/study us,  know what our habits are and carefully assess the threat level.

Freakin deer are smart one deterrent doesn't often work the next year, the motion detected sprinklers are good? in warm seasons.

What about some deer hunting?

I think you're spot on Lana. Harvesting a deer may be exactly what's needed. If they're anything like rabbits you won't see another one for awhile. Also, in a weird way it kind of makes your garden a meat producing one.

I got this idea from this forum, but couldn't track it down, so whomever owned this idea first - let me know! It's been awesome and I want to give credit where it's due!

Speaking from the NW so adjust times accordingly.

Find wood (non pressure treated) and build a box over ground you want to cultivate in the years ahead. I make mine 8 - 12 inches high and whatever shape fits the area I want to cultivate. Whack the grass (if there is any) down to the nubs. Cover with 2-3 layers of newspaper or cardboard. I like the newspaper. Put some spent animal bedding (rabbit poo is best, chicken and duck in a pinch) in the very bottom - just to get the worms working. Add another layer of newspapers.

Layer leaf litter, compost, garden slash, straw, small fir boughs (less than 1/2 inch thick) - about halfway up. Throw in some potatoes. Cover them up with compost, soil, cut grass, leaf litter, etc. Make sure they are good and covered. Mound the bed so it looks like a freshly filled grave.*

Sit back and wait.

Harvest potatoes when they are ready, and then the next spring, move the box to another location that you want to have cultivated in the future. Creates a nice soft compost bed in it's wake while also throwing some food at you. Win Win.




*Jeez - morbid much?

I have yet to see deer but know they are out there.  Month ago I saw a rabbit at corner of property, before a brush hog went through 2 times.

I see my neighbor's dogs in my yard more often.  Sniffing around, crapping and peeing.

I read once something about how a region in Thailand once had a huge problem with grasshoppers on their fields (I think it was corn). They tried all sort of things to get rid of the plague, nothing really worked. In the end, the government actually proposed that the locals start harvesting and eating the bugs. But this was not traditionally a bug eating region, so it did take some effort, but in the end it worked out: providing protein and getting rid of excess bugs. And these grubs now sell so well, with a high price, that the locals now grow the crops just to harvest the grubs, because it is so much more profitable...

Lana Weldon wrote:I read once something about how a region in Thailand once had a huge problem with grasshoppers on their fields (I think it was corn). They tried all sort of things to get rid of the plague, nothing really worked. In the end, the government actually proposed that the locals start harvesting and eating the bugs. But this was not traditionally a bug eating region, so it did take some effort, but in the end it worked out: providing protein and getting rid of excess bugs.

Bugs roasted around the world are a delicious food to billions.  God bless the starving.  Glad they did not use pesticide.

And the funny thing was that they used corn growing as primarily a food crop for the grasshoppers, (and not for themselves anymore), because grasshoppers would fetch a much higher price.