Just because you’re using a huge container or raised garden bed to plant crops doesn’t mean you have to spend lots of money to fill it with compost and soil. A gardening expert has a way to deliver the same results without forking over a ton of cash.
The scoop
Joe Clark (@JoesGarden) shared the tip with his 1.6 million TikTok followers.
Clark explained that the hack is a great way to harness the benefits of large containers and raised beds without draining your bank account.
He noted in the caption that a raised bed the size of the one in the video could set you back 200 British pounds (around $267) to fill completely with high-quality compost. Instead of spending all that money, gardeners can utilize the ancient method of hugelkultur.
It’s easy and uses cheaper components to fill much of the space in containers and garden beds. To start, Joe advises lining the bottom with cardboard as a weed-blocking layer — just make sure there’s no tape left attached to it.
Next, a mixture of organic materials, such as twigs and logs, goes in, with straw topping the layer. From there, you can add your compost and soil. With less space to fill, you can save lots of money along the way.
“I’ve been using it for years, and it has worked very well for me,” Joe noted in the caption.
How it’s helping
One positive of the hack is saving major money on growing your own food and cultivating your own garden. The method is also beneficial to the local ecosystem, as plants support pollinators that are crucial to maintaining the human food supply.
Ultimately, this hack makes growing your own fruits and vegetables — and tapping into gardening’s positive effects on mental and physical health — more attainable.
That can allow gardeners to access tastier, healthier produce while reducing the demand for store-bought goods that lose nutrients during transportation.
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What everyone’s saying
Commenters were big fans of the hack, though some struggled to think of where to get the right organic material for the layers.
A user questioned those commenters: “Do yall just like not have trees and forests?”
That provoked a back-and-forth, with users suggesting that if they were industrious, they could find fallen sticks and logs in their surrounding environments. Meanwhile, a more fortunate gardener had no trouble with their setup.
“I just started gardening and realized that the pile of dried limbs I didn’t want to pay to get picked up last year, is in fact a pile of treasure,” they wrote.
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