10 Budget Friendly Garden Secrets, Hacks And Upgrades

Creating a garden oasis is easier and less expensive than you can imagine. Follow along and you can change an average yard into a place of relaxation without breaking the bank.

✅Check This Out:
Dollar Tree #1 Garden Hack | A Whole New Way Of Gardening (Strawberry Tower): https://youtu.be/p7hKYlEcWdM
10 Best Dollar Tree Gardening Hacks: https://youtu.be/OCiZ60wg2no
How To Make Premium Potting Soil || DIY Recipe: https://youtu.be/2KGQVghcVDY
How To Make COMPOST From Kitchen Waste: https://youtu.be/xZa_2s5GOF0
Fastest Way To Make Garden Gold | $25 DIY Vermicomposting System: https://youtu.be/VlSYBT6vWpo
Natural Weed Killer That Works Better Than Round Up: https://youtu.be/tZlnSWjNt0o
Raised Vegetable Garden Beds: https://youtu.be/6mY6ryVwNok
How To Build A Japanese Bamboo Fountain: https://youtu.be/bFumq2ylGDw

✅Products:
Westinghouse 6 Pack 100 Lumen Low Voltage LED Pathway Light Landscape Lights: https://amzn.to/4ar4B6l
DEWENWILS 60W 120V AC to 12V DC Outdoor Low Voltage Transformer with Timer : https://amzn.to/3VOPI9C

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#gardenhacks #yarddesignsecrets #gardenoasis

hey guys as you can see I’ve cleaned out the greenhouse completely because our daytime temperatures are exceeding 6570 which puts 20 more degrees in the greenhouse so I’m making sure that everything’s out of the greenhouse before it gets dehydrated but today’s episode is about 10 budget friendly ways to upgrade your garden through different methods and ways to make your garden really Shine without putting a lot of money into those things so I’m going to go throughout my garden and show you 10 things I can think of that you can add to your garden that will make a huge difference over time so let’s get outside of the greenhouse and I’ll show each one of those 10 hacks along the way so guys laying a gravel path is one of the easiest ways to really improve your garden it will last for decades if you maintain it and make sure you keep weeds out of it but this is number 57 gravel and it’s one reason I like to use this in my gravel paths these paths are not only for walking but I’ll also drive my riding mower on it which in a pvel path that can be a problem because it pushes it out so I’ll show you a PE gravel path close to my zen garden but as far as wide paths where you’re going to be using mowing equipment lawnmowers and have a lot of foot traffic you probably want to go with something this is called again number 57 I believe it’s crushed granite but it’s just number 57 gravel I have it throughout my entire Garden another thing that’s really important to remember is that if you have live on a hilly side or have a lot of rain in your area sometimes even this number 57 can be washed out so it’s a good idea to put metal edging you can also o use plastic edging it may not last as long but the lifespan of this metal edging this for instance is probably well over 15 years has been here and as long as I keep the weeds out of it and don’t allow weeds to grow in my path it looks just like this year after year you can see there’s some Dead Leaves where I’ve sprayed it with vinegar and it’s really done a great job I have a video about treating your weeds with the vinegar solution I’ll link that video above so let me show you real quick the PE gravel path and why I think it sounds great when you walk on it but as far as longevity is a little bit harder to maintain so let’s go to the Zen gard and I’ll show you the second type of path you can create outside of this number 57 path now guys this is a gravel path made with PE gravel and you can buy this at the big box stores but it’s a lot better if you buy it in a large bulk quantity and have it delivered because if you’re buying it per bag it can get really expensive especially if you’re creating a long path but these paths are better for low volume traffic because it does tend to move and it’s a little bit harder to walk on especially if you put this in deeply for instance I have a zen garden behind the camera and I I had to put stepping stones in that because it’s a little bit harder to Traverse across that so if you’re using PE gravel remember you want to use that for low volume areas and possibly have something like this grass planted on each side of it so it’ll keep it from washing out I don’t have any metal edging on this but the grass kind of holds it in place and heavy rains and storms and things like that so this is a secondary item and the great another great thing about this is when you’re walking on it it makes that great crunching sound that I love to hear when I’m walking through the garden so as I mentioned before if you’re doing a lot of this pig gravel you’re going to need Stepping Stones because it is hard to walk on and especially if it’s deep you might twist an ankle or if you have Mobility problem so just remember the number 57 is going to be better for just your average walking path you could go with a very finely crushed granite but the problem with that is when you come in with your leaf blower or a heavy rain comes through that can get washed out really easy so the number 57 is my favorite but PE gravel as far as the way it appears especially in this zen garden I think it looks better but the number 57 is much more manageable if you have a lot of trees in your area and you have a lot of leaf blowing you do in the fall so I would say this is great for its appearance number 57 works better so let’s head out to the next area and I’ll show you the next item I’m going to talk about improving your overall Garden aesthetic so a fire pit is the second thing that I think really makes a difference in your yard because you can enjoy it on those cool evenings in the fall or in the springtime when the weather is still quite chilly at the night in the night time but this fire pit I’ve oversized it because I have such a large piece of property I have to dispose of a lot of wood products limbs trees and I don’t want it to end up in a landfill so I burn it I use the ashes sometimes I don’t use the ashes if I’m using treated lumber like there’s a couple of pieces of treated lumber I move it over to the side once it’s burned and I only use ash from natural tree limbs but anyways this is oversized so one thing that I’ve used in the past I’ve had the metal uh fire pits I’ve had the chimneas and their lifespan was very limited the metal ones eventually rusted out the heat got to them and they eventually just completely failed the chimia hardly lasted more than three years because of the I guess it was ceramic or whatever it’s made from it did not fair weather fare well in cold weather so it’s one of those things if you have those type you have to bring it inside and protect it when you’re not using it for something like this this has been here for 15 years and I’ve almost done nothing to it I’ve just kept it uh cleaned out and I and it also doubles like I said is my ash creation pit so it gets rid of a lot of yard waste it provides a place to entertaining in the cooler months and it’s just one of those things I like having around so a fire pit would be number two in the ways budget friendly ways to create in your yard now my favorite type of garden is the Japanese garden and you can add a lot of tranquility and a meditation to your area to your yard by doing some Japanese things and I’ll go over a few things that I think really make a Japanese garden one is this dry stream bed and it’s really simple to do you can have some of these larger type of rocks delivered I put in some number 57 in the path and planted a Japanese maple it’s a great place just to enjoy it on my little bridge over here I can sit and just kind of contemplate it and also this is not only a dry stream bed I have a little water reservoir behind me and a it pumps up a little bit higher and it can run water but 99.9% of the time I don’t use this as a wet stream it’s always been a dry stream most of the time because the pump sometimes this just too much cost to involved in running it so if I was going to make this over I probably wouldn’t even worry about the pump system and the water Reservoir I would just make it as a dry stream bit so that’s one of the ways a Japanese kind of inspired look can help you guard let’s move on to the next thing so I’d say that this is probably one of my favorite features in the Japanese garden because it’s it is really a lot simpler to put together this is basically just a large flower pot from Lowe’s and the bamboo was actually collected from a neighbor’s house and so I put in a small pump there’s a res water large water reservoir and get that out large water reservoir under underneath and it’s actually not one of the expensive ones this is a drainage thing and if you want to see exactly how to build this I’ll put a link up above how to build your own bamboo fountain there’s two types of Japanese Fountain one is a deer Chaser and one is this one right here and I have totally forgotten the name of this particular variety but I just call it my bamboo fountain and I think it looks great and it adds just a little bit of sound to the garden and it’s just great to look at and in the winter time I cut it off drain the water out and then the next spring I start it up again also another way to save money on it is put a small timer on the pump which the pump doesn’t use a lot of power it uses very little but you can have it cut off at night after Sunset and then cut it back on early in the morning and that timer save me a few pennies a day so anyways this is one of my favorite features to my Japanese garden is the bamboo fountain so if you’re thinking about creating your own zen garden and putting in a lot of gravel you don’t have to make it near this big you can make it just 6 feet by 6 feet and have a small smaller sized Rock now a lot of people ask me about the boulders when they see these in videos and they think how the heck do you get these huge Boulders in your garden well these are easily movable they’re not real they’re plastic they’re actually made to hide things like utility uh pieces in your yard or some type of septic system but they’re not heavy at all they’re basically just made out of plastic the same thing that a trash can is made out of this heavy duty plastic these are easily over 12 13 years old and they look exactly like the did they they did when they arrived I purchased these from Home Depot and had them delivered to my house and they were all wrapped up in plastic and they were just stacked on top of each other so it’s really one of those things that really add a wow factor to your garden but they’re not as expensive as you’d think they were if you had a boulder this side brought in it would take a crane three or four really large guys to move it and the boulder itself would be expensive so purchasing one of these is a fraction of the cost of having large Boulders put in and you don’t have to have them this size you can have them maybe just a foot tall if you want a smaller size Boulder if you don’t want to go to the trouble of buying these but I think these do add a lot more interest to the Garden when people take a glance at the Zen Garden they just are amazed by the large Boulders so one of the best ways to save money for your garden is to buy a lot of your plants at the end of the season and store them in a small Greenhouse my Greenhouse is quite large but you can buy a smaller Greenhouse even the kind that are just portable green houses and store them next to a brick wall where it will retain a little bit of heat put a small heater in it or make your own heater I’ve got some videos I can link up above about making your own Greenhouse heaters but buying plants at the end of the season you can sometimes get 50 75% off and even more the later you go into the year where the big box stores have the Christmas stuff coming in and they want to eliminate all that stuff they have in their Garden Center so heading to the garden center in the fall is the one of the best ways to save money in your garden especially on Plants so just remember you can get some great deals there now planting herbs is one of the greatest things you can do for your Garden because it’s a plant once in Harvest for everything this lemon balm has came back year after year or these Pilla leaves that we’ve planted in pots it spreads so quickly and puts out seeds so quickly we have to keep it in a pot and we have to maintain the area around the gravel because the Pilla leaves will pop up you probably have never heard of Pilla leaves unless you like tempura and sometimes you can find it fried with tempura at Japanese restaurants but planting different varieties of herbs especially Italian herbs if you like Italian food can be one of those money money saving things you can do because it comes back year after year and such as this this started in a very small pot in the lemon balm just keeps expanding year after year and comes back it requires very little maintenance as well and it adds a lot of interest to the vegetable garden now another great way to save money in your garden is by searching flea markets Facebook marketplaces uh yard sales things like that to find vintage furniture sometimes these chairs ader deck chairs can be very expensive new but you you can find one that’s in great shape that’s been stored maybe in someone’s basement or garage for quite a while you can add some extra stain to it and add a lot of life to it and the cost on it is only a fraction of what you’re going to pay new so I would always recommend hunting those places down and taking a look see if you can find a vintage piece of furniture new this chair new would probably been four or five times what I actually paid for it and it’s over I would say about 15 to 20 years old and it’s still in great shape I just take it in in the end of the season store it let it dry out make sure it doesn’t have any rod on it and protect it carefully with good stain each about every three to four years now one of my favorite things to do in my front air entry area is to add potted plants and my favorite potted plant of all is the hosta they come in a lot of varieties of green some white some have white around the edges some of them have almost a yellow but they really add a lot of interest and they’re not expensive you can buy one in a small pot and it will get slowly better each year the one you see on your right was purchased in a gallon siiz pot and in less than a decade it is 10 times the size it was when it was new so I’ll show you a couple more hostas I have in my front entryway but it’s really one of those things hostas and ferns especially if you have a little bit of shaded area like I do in your front entry it really makes for an interesting thing to do to that area is to add potted plants if you have a sunny area obviously you’re going to want to make sure you get something that can tolerate a lot of sun these are also micro irrigation water so I don’t have to worry quite so much about keeping them watered but like I said they’re in the shade so they’re not going to dry out quite as fast as if they were in full sun now here’s some more of the hostas I spoke about and also if you have enough room around your front entry you can add a couple of chairs and a little seating area like this so it’s just a relaxing area to come to and if it’s in a little bit of a secluded area like I have it’s a great place to sit and relax now another thing you can do to your yard is reducing your lawn size this lawn at one time was double the size it is now but I’ve brought it in quite a bit smaller and I’ve added a lot of shrubs aelas different types of perennials around the border of it and also put up metal edging to keep it confined in this one area so reducing your lawn size is another way it’ll save you money on putting out fertilizer time on having to cut your grass and just an overall better look to have your lawn framed like this one where you just only see a small bit of grass but you have beautiful types of aelia shrubs flowering bushes trees surrounding it it really makes a huge difference in everyone’s yard now when it comes to lighting your Pathways your deck things like that less is definitely more because these lights now with the LEDs put out so much more light than solar and some of the incandescent bulbs that used to be with low voltage system these LEDs put out huge amounts of light I actually had to take some of the yellow plastic you see around this particular light to cut down on the light they put out so this westing house system I think it contained 10 bulbs and a Transformer I’ll put a link to it in the description if I can find it on Amazon it’s been so long ago that I bought it I can’t even remember where I bought it at but the LEDs also will last quite a bit longer these are over 10 years old I’ve never had to replace one of these and they all work perfectly and as well as the timer the Transformer I guess you could call it the Transformer saves me money because it only cuts on at dark and it cuts off about five or six hours later so remember when it comes to lighting you just want a very minimal amount where you can see where you’re going at night but your eyes will adjust very quickly once you make it out into your garden after Sunset now I hesitate to show you my koi pond because it’s in desperate need of a water change actually Coy don’t mind the green water they actually prefer it because it provides them a little protection from predators but this is another water feature that’s so important in your yard one that makes noise that runs from the time you come out into the garden till you go to bed having a Koi pond or a small water feature and this one is small it’s only about 10t by about 6t but it makes a huge difference in the garden it’s really enjoyable and the koi sometimes I’ve heard can live to over a hundred years old so if you do get koi make sure you have plan B if you decide to release them back into the wild or if you plan on donating them to a zoo or a park make sure that they allow those type of things because koi can be invasive in some areas so just remember koi are long-term pet much longer than what you would consider with a dog or a cat but they’re really enjoyable to watch unfortunately the water’s too dark to see him swimming around today but remember a water feature is another can be a really inexpensive way to make a huge difference in your garden a budget friendly way now my last tip involves statuary you can get concrete statues now fairly cheap in most places especially if you go out into the countryside where I buy these they’re at half the rate you’d find in the more urban or Suburban areas in my city so going out and looking for statuary at a discount is a great way to make an interesting difference in your garden whether you want an Asian style statuary or something a little bit more contemporary it’s a really good way to make a difference in your garden overall this one it looks very large but this is only about a foot and a half tall so guys the last thing I wanted to talk about somebody had asked me about my strawberry tower that I put together from Dollar Tree and it as you can see here it is producing strawberries and it’s doing quite well if you want to take a look at that video I’ll put a link to it up above and you can see how to create this and it’s really an inexpensive way to do it and it’ll make a huge difference in your garden it really adds an interesting aspect to your vegetable garden so guys thanks so much for watching I’m going to be creating a lot more videos because we’re getting started into the season of gardening and I’ll be doing a lot to the vegetable garden it has a massive amount of work that needs to be done on it having some wood root problems with my raised bed so I’m going to be replacing those if you’d like to see a video on exactly how to do that I’ll link that up above so guys I really appreciate you watching and have a great day