This is Cut Off the Spigot where I take a look category by category to find where else to shop beyond Target, Amazon, Walmart, other big corporations and private equity firms.
Recommended places to shop:
Gardener’s Supply Company (gardeners.com) – 100% Employee owned!
Ace Hardware (acehardware.com)
Do it Best/Tru Value (doitbest.com)
If you’re looking for free/low cost options, check out Facebook Marketplace, local Buy Nothing groups, and thrift stores.
Reddit and TikTok also have a ton of tips for free gardening resources using stuff around your house.
All sources and links are on my Substack (cutoffthespigot.substack.com).
#gardening #gardeningsupplies #gardeningpots #gardeningcontainers #seedstarterkits #seedstarters #soil #fertilizer #gardeningpestcontrol #plantcare #plants #gardenproject #landscaping
We have our next category up, gardening supplies. This is Cut Off the Spigot, where I take a look at other places to shop beyond Amazon, Walmart, or Target, private equity firms, and big corporations. I’m an avid gardener, as you can see some of my work. So, I know firsthand that things can get expensive really quickly. So, before I get into alternatives of where to shop, I highly encourage you to look on Reddit or Tik Tok, which are great resources for free gardening tips or like gardening hacks. Use stuff that you already have around the house. I also highly recommend buy Nothing groups. Um, this is a really easy way to get like pots and things like that, which can add up really quickly. So, check out your local Buy Nothing group uh to see if they have anything that you could use. Okay, so you’ve done all that, but you still need to buy some stuff. I’m excited to say that we have two really great options this time for this category. The first option is gardeners.com or garden supply company. They are based out of Vermont and have a few stores in the New England area, but the very exciting thing about them is that they are 100% employeeowned, which is my personal gold star. I had to get a spray for white flies uh recently and I just ordered from them. It came super fast. It was great. So, highly highly recommend these guys. And the second great option is Ace Hardware. So, Ace Hardware is actually a retailer co-op, which basically means that the store owners also own Ace Hardware versus Ace Hardware owning the stores and franchising them. Some Ace Hardware stores are also employeeowned. So, shout out to a few cool hardware stores in DC, which is where I used to go. I’ve been shopping at Ace for years. I highly, highly recommend. Their employees are always super helpful in store, and they do have online options as well. True Value or Do It Best. So, True Value used to be like Ace Hardware where it was a retailer co-op, but it was bought out by private equity in 2018. To no one’s surprise, they then went bankrupt last year and Do It Best bought them out. So, they’re still working through that bankruptcy, but Do It Best is a retailer co-op similar to Ace Hardware. So, this is another option if you’re looking to avoid big box stores. So, very exciting that there are actually good options within the gardening supply space. And if you like stuff like this, follow me uh to get more.
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