Stretch Your Garden Dollar: Garden Fence and Row Markers

This morning I saw that I now have 30 followers (not including email subscriptions!)!! Thank you all! I can't tell you how exciting it is that over 30 people are interested in what I have to share. :-)

The big project I worked on last week was getting my veggie garden finished. It's been a lot of work, but I'm so happy with how it turned out and can't wait for things to start growing!


Here's what we started with a little while ago. We've been working on it on and off for what seems like months (in between cold weekends :-)).

We have to put a fence around it for a couple of reasons. I don't really want the dog in there, and a certain little boy likes to ride his bike all the time and would no doubt trample any plants. They'd have no chance! :-) Last year, we just threw one together with stuff we had.


It worked but it wasn't super pretty and definitely wasn't the look we were going for in our backyard. This year we decided to spend a little money and build a nicer looking fence, but my hubby had an idea to save us a little. We bought the most inexpensive fence pickets at Home Depot and cut them in half. Then, since they were shaped at the top, we put any shaped ends upside down, so all the tops would match.

You have to look very carefully to see the upside down ones. If you decide to try this, make sure you measure well when cutting them in half. It was a little difficult to get them lined up evenly at first.

Now the garden is all cleaned up and seeds are planted.

Since we used wood we already had for the posts and "beams" of the fence, it only cost us about $40.00! 

The fence works great to keep out certain little bicyclists (yes, he's missing a shoe...boys:-)).

But it opens easily to let them in too...on foot that is. :-)

Oh, and here's one other money saving trick. While I was planting the seeds, I wanted to mark the rows, but didn't really have wooden steaks or string.What to do? Improvise that's what! See those rows?

I used wooden skewers (like for kabobs) and ribbon you would use for balloons. I've been keeping an eye on them to make sure the birds aren't messing with them (I didn't want them to get caught in it or something), but they are holding up just fine! I'm not sure if this would be less expensive than buying string but certainly saves money if you already have this type of ribbon and skewers.

I can't wait to show you sprouts when they start coming up. It should be soon for some of the plants!

I'm sorry to say the most of the seeds I started inside didn't make it. I just started them too soon and they ran out of room before it was warm enough to plant them in the ground. :-( This is my 3rd year planting a garden and only my 2nd trying to start my seeds inside, so I'm learning! This year was better than last year, though, because I still have one plant alive! Last year was a total bust. 

I'm having a blast at these lovely linking parties.