How Much Did I ACTUALLY Spend Building My DREAM GARDEN?

In this video, I share how much money I actually spent building my dream garden. Building a garden can be expensive if you go about it the wrong way, but if you do it the right way, it can be very affordable! I share how much it cost to build my garden, and I give you money saving tips I learned from mistakes I made along the way.

See How I Built My Garden From Start To Finish: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIHMf0bVzDMprnX-CazSKZL6&si=X4Mh8NyFavgMIH_M

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Raised Bed Gardening Cost
1:47 My Garden Size
2:41 Phase I: My First Raised Bed Garden
4:57 Phase II: Raised Bed Garden Expansion
7:09 Phase III: Trellises, Weed Barrier, Irrigation
8:59 Total Raised Bed Garden Cost
10:20 Building A Garden In 2024
12:57 How To Save Money Building A Garden
15:37 Gardening As An Investment
19:40 Adventures With Dale

I use the following products* to grow vegetables in my vegetable garden:
Jobe’s Organic Vegetable Fertilizer (4lbs): https://amzn.to/45YHmh2
Jobe’s Fruit & Nut Fertilizer (4lbs): https://amzn.to/3sI3OwW
Alaska Fish Fertilizer: https://amzn.to/3XP5EHU
Burpee Bone Meal (3lb): https://amzn.to/48bcBGw
Jobe’s Bone Meal (4lb): https://amzn.to/3uC5klp
True Organic Blood Meal (3lb): https://amzn.to/49IkFk3
Espoma Plant Tone (36lbs): https://amzn.to/3Zgk98f
Jack’s All Purpose 20-20-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3MQ4I2A
Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3KyPTzg
Jack’s / JR Peters All Purpose 20-20-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/44DUV58
Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/45FIuXh
Grow More All Purpose 20-20-20 (25 lb): https://amzn.to/44pSQK2
Full Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

If you have any questions about how to build a vegetable garden for less money, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

***********************************
VISIT MY AMAZON STOREFRONT FOR PRODUCTS I USE MOST OFTEN IN MY GARDEN*
https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

***********************************
VISIT MY MERCHANDISE STORE
https://shop.spreadshirt.com/themillennialgardener

***********************************
SUPPORT MY SECOND CHANNEL!
https://www.youtube.com/c/2MinuteGardenTips

***********************************
EQUIPMENT I MOST OFTEN USE IN MY GARDEN*:

Miracle-Gro Soluble All Purpose Plant Food https://amzn.to/3qNPkXk
Miracle-Gro Soluble Bloom Booster Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GKYG0j
Miracle-Gro Soluble Tomato Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GDgJ8n
Jack’s Fertilizer, 20-20-20, 25 lb. https://amzn.to/3CW6xCK

Southern Ag Liquid Copper Fungicide https://amzn.to/2HTCKRd
Southern Ag Natural Pyrethrin Concentrate https://amzn.to/2UHSNGE
Monterey Organic Spinosad Concentrate https://amzn.to/3qOU8f5
Safer Brand Caterpillar Killer (BT Concentrate) https://amzn.to/2SMXL8D

Cordless ULV Fogger Machine https://amzn.to/36e96Sl
Weed Barrier with UV Resistance https://amzn.to/3yp3MaJ
Organza Bags (Fig-size) https://amzn.to/3AyaMUz
Organza Bags (Tomato-size) https://amzn.to/36fy4Re

Injection Molded Nursery Pots https://amzn.to/3AucVAB
Heavy Duty Plant Grow Bags https://amzn.to/2UqvsgC
6.5 Inch Hand Pruner Pruning Shears https://amzn.to/3jHI1yL
Japanese Pruning Saw with Blade https://amzn.to/3wjpw6o

Double Tomato Hooks with Twine https://amzn.to/3Awptr9
String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
Nylon Mason Line, 500FT https://amzn.to/3wd9cEo
Expandable Vinyl Garden Tape https://amzn.to/3jL7JCI

***********************************
SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow Me on TWITTER (@NCGardening) https://twitter.com/NCGardening
Follow Me on INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/millennialgardener_nc/

***********************************
ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

***********************************
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegarden #savemoney

What’s growing on gardeners it’s Tuesday February 20th here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina and on today’s video I’m going to share with you all exactly how much money I spent building my garden how much you could expect if you’re going to build your own garden in

2024 and I’m going to give you moneys saving tips along the way things that I learned when I was building my garden that I wish I didn’t spend money on to save you some money if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications

And check out our Amazon store and spread shop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated over the last year or two so many of you have told me how much you want to start a vegetable

Garden but you’ve expressed to me with all the recent price hikes in inflation it’s just too expensive to have your own vegetable garden and look I understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now and things are a lot more expensive than they were just a mere 2

Years or so ago so what I did was I went through all of my old receipts and I collected all of my old data and I crunched the numbers how much it cost me to build my whole vegetable garden and how much it would cost me to build

Basically the same thing again if I were to do that today and I’m here to tell you you may be surprised how affordable it could be if you do things the right way so I’m going to share all of these tips with you and you can start to build

Your very own affordable vegetable garden I’m going to break this video into two segments the first segment is going to tell you exactly how much money I spent building my vegetable Garden after that I’ll tell you how much you can expect to pay in 2024 for a similar layout because obviously my Garden’s

Several years old so it was a little bit cheaper to build back then and I’ll also tell you some things that I did that I think are probably a waste of money that I wouldn’t do again to save you some cash in the long run first things first

Yard size many of you think that I have a very large yard but in fact it’s actually a really standard residential plot it’s only a little bit larger than a quarter of an acre it’s 3 acres it’s just the wide angle lens makes everything look bigger than it really is

So this is a standard Suburban plot in an HOA I have a homeowners association it’s just a generic neighborhood second thing many of you think that I have a large vegetable garden again it’s not it’s just camera tricks the whole vegetable garden is 35 ft by 35 ft or

1225 ft that only equates to 0281 acres when you do the math and because it’s a raised vegetable garden roughly a third of that space is lost to the Rose so when you’re talking about actual physical growing space my whole vegetable garden is only 02 Acres that’s

Really it I moved into my house in September of 2018 and when I moved in this was just a clearcut property with really nothing in the backyard on basically Carolina beach sand so I had to start my garden completely from scratch and I hit the ground running

Immediately now I did not simply build this this entire Garden as you see it right away it would have cost me too much money and it would have been way too much work so I built it out in phases over years so the first thing I

Did was I went out and I purchased Lumber and I just built eight basic raised beds that were all 4 ft wide by 10 ft long all of those raised beds were made out of 2×8 pressure treated lumber and in order to buy all of that Lumber it cost me

$21.68 I went to the store and I picked up myself in a pickup truck I did not pay a delivery fee now when I built all of those raised beds and assembled them and put them into place I had to fill those raised beds it would have been way

Too much money to buy bagged soil so what I did was I looked up a local landscaping place that delivered a big triaxle dump truck load full of homemade turkey compost and it cost me $450 for an entire dump truck full of compost it was 10 cubic yards and then I

Hand trucked all of that compost using a wheelbarrow and I filled up all of my raised beds now I overestimated I got way more than I needed and I wound up spreading a lot of that compost around my fruit tree areas that I would later expand around the perimeter of my yard

With lots of fruit trees so I did not use all of that compost in order to fill the raised beds but I will Factor it into the cost nonetheless so my first year cost to have those eight large raised beds cost me $661 68 now if you look back at old

Pictures in my garden you’ll see that I did have a very basic fence around my garden but I didn’t spend any money on that because I actually had old tsts and fencing left over from a trellis I built when I was renting so I just repurposed

Old supplies obviously if you had to buy those from scratch you’d have to spend a little bit more money but you probably have some basic things lying around your yard that you could repurpose like I did after that first year gardening I really wanted to expand my garden and truly

Have the garden of my dreams so over the winter of 2019 to 2020 I had a massive Garden Expansion Project and that is when I put the perimeter beds all around my garden and I added things like trellising and real fencing and an actual gate to keep all of the mammal

Critters out now this is where I spent the bulk of my money on that year I bought all of the lumber that I needed for the perimeter beds as well as some additional beds to expand the center of my garden now all of that was made out of 2×8 pressure treated lumber of

Various lengths and I spent $ 7579 and I had that delivered to my front yard from a local Big Box store so I paid the $50 delivery fee or whatever it was to have that Lumber delivered then I got another triaxle dumpl load of 10 cubic yards of the same soil from the

Same people that cost me $500 which I then manually hand truck to all of the beds with a wheelbarrow yet again so that was my really big Expansion Project and to do all of that it cost me $1,257 19 when you add all of the soil

And all of the lumber together now in my massive Garden Expansion Project I did not just build raised beds I also went way Overkill and I bought these 4×4 by 10t long posts that I have every 8 ft roughly in my garden because I wanted to have both a trellis system and fencing

To keep all of the critters out and this time I bought real fencing so all of the 4ot welded wire fence that I put around the perimeter of my yard cost me at the time $16.74 so when you factor in all of the raised beds that I built over the course

Of 2 years all of the fencing around my yard and garden and the 4×4 posts as well as the concrete foundations that they are all embedded in I spent a grand total of $2,256 all in to build my entire Garden as you see it now that first year I

Built my garden I was fighting weeds like crazy all in the aisles of my raised bed so I decided to spring for weed barrier and I lined all the rows of my garden with weed barrier I also put a trellis system around my entire Garden

For me to grow my cucumbers my melons my IND perent tomatoes around so it cost me $742 for all of the weed barrier to line the aisles of my garden and another $41.93 and $44.79 for all of the cables and turnbuckles to apply tension to all of

The lines to have my trellis system so once year 20121 rolled around I realized that my garden was pretty much self-sufficient I had great fencing I had great trellising I was able to eliminate most of the weeds but I still had one thing growing on that was

Driving me nuts I was spending so much time irrigating my garden so I bought a bunch of rain barrels and I installed drip irrigation to every single one of my beds so the rain barrels that I purchased cost me $156.6 then I bought a whole bunch of Mainline tubing fittings and connectors

And I ran drip irrigation from my rain barrels and my it up against the house to every single one of these raised beds in my entire garden and I kind of underestimated how much stuff I needed so I had to make two orders one order was $266 57 the next one with additional

Parts to complete the design was $11.12 so that means my entire irrigation cost for all of the beds to the spet to my rain barrels and the rain barrels themselves cost me $524 38 cents so to build my entire Garden Soup To Nuts including all of the

Lumber all of the compost all of the fencing all of the irrigation including my rain barrel system and all of the trellising cables that you see going around the entire Garden came in at a grand total of $2,710 73 that is how much money I spent basically to the penny building my

Entire garden now at this point many of you may be saying thanks you confirmed it for me I can’t afford to build a vegetable garden I don’t have $2,700 just lying around under my couch cushions well neither did I that’s why I spent three entire years building this

Garden there was no way I could afford to build everything I wanted all at once and I didn’t have the manpower to do it I did all of this by myself nobody helped me turn a single screw cut a single board remove a single grain of

Dirt I did all of this 100% on my own but I paced myself I did it as I could afford it and I did it as I had the time because to build all of this in a single season it would have killed me physically and financially but when you

Space it out over 3 years doing it at your leisure as a weekend warrior spending a Saturday here or there it’s not that bad and it’s not that expensive in fact you may be shocked to know how affordable it will be to get started with a vegetable garden now what I did

Was I took my old receipts that showed what I paid for in Lumber costs and I compared them to today’s prices if I were to buy that exact same lumber from Lowe’s which is where I bought my lumber initially it all came from Lowe’s Home Improvement so if you just want to start

Off with a basic vegetable garden and you want to build yourself 4 4T x 10 ft raised beds well that would mean that you need 4 2×8 that are 8 ft long and 8 2x8s that are 10 ft long uh the old prices were $74 4 and 951 each today

They are 958 and $198 each so buying the stuff back in 2019 it would have cost $15.84 today it’s $134 2016 for a 26.8% increase now that’s a significant increase for only 5 years but when you get right down to it that’s not that bad

To be able to start with four very large raised beds for 134 bucks that’s not expensive at all the most expensive part of this is going to be filling the raised beds with soil now if you were to go and just buy bags of soil from a big

Box door it would absolutely kill your wallet but if you actually call up a local landscaping place and you get truckloads of some kind of garden soil delivered it’s actually pretty affordable so a 4T X 10t raised bed that’s made out of 2x8s is going to be

About .9 cubic yards of soil required to fill each one so if you have four raised beds you’ll need about 3.6 cubic yards of soil let’s just round up the four just to make sure that you have enough well that’s roughly half a dump truck load I was paying around $500 for an

Entire 10 cubic yard dump truck if you’re only getting four cubic yards you’ll probably pay half that maybe even less so if you’re looking at about $250 for soil $135 for the wood you should be able to build yourself a pretty good siiz raised bed garden with four large

Raised beds for only about $400 or so so for about $400 you can easily get started with a pretty good siiz raised bed Gard most people starting out with four 4T X 10ft raised beds are going to have plenty of room to get started in the beginning and then every single year

You can just add what you want as the money becomes available or even if you have spare money every 6 months or every 4 months whatever just build it out as you have the funds available now I want to give you you some moneysaving tips

For those of you that know me well by now you know that I am an electrical engineer as an engineer I have a habit of over engineering and overdesigning everything it’s just kind of what we’re taught to do so as a result there was lots of stuff that I spent money on that

If I could do it all over again I probably wouldn’t do it again because it is in fact Overkill now before I do that let’s just break it down to the raw stuff that we need to Garden we’re going to exclude the drip irrigation we’re going to excl ude the weed barrier we’re

Just going to break it down to the raised beds the compost that’s used to fill the beds and the fencing because that’s really all that we need to make a garden work my lumber compost and fencing cost alone was $2,025 61 that’s what it cost to build

My entire Garden in its raw form without any of the added accessories if we assume that 26.8% increase across the board that we found for lumber 2019 costs versus 2024 costs the 2024 cost to build my garden is $2,567 61 one of the things that I did

When I originally built my garden was I bought 4×4 by 10t posts because I really wanted to have a trellis and I wanted to make sure that they’d never go anywhere so I embedded them about 3 ft deep into the ground and then filled all of those

Holes with concrete so I spent hundreds of dollars on concrete if I could do this all over again honestly I wouldn’t have even bothered it was hundreds of dollars of unnecessary cost and a ton of Labor carrying around all those huge sacks of concrete mixing them in a giant

Tote and backfilling all of the holes if I could do it all over again I would just stick these posts into the ground with a post hole digger and just back fill with the native soil and you know what when they eventually rot I’ll be able to remove them more easily they’re

They’re going to be really hard to pull out with all of that concrete so I don’t think that you need to spend the hundreds of dollarss in concrete that I spent so you can take that right off the top I also think that many of you will

Not need the 10-ft posts most of you are probably going to wind up using 6ft posts or 8ft posts these are really Overkill if you want to have a very large tall trellis like I did but this isn’t necessarily the only way to do it you could get smaller posts and you

Could stick some kind of like an EMT conduit and strap it to it and run a trellis that way or use some other cheaper methods I don’t know if I would go with this tall a post again so by forgoing the concrete you can emit hundreds of dollars of cost and dozens

Of hours of Labor and that’s really the biggest piece of advice that I could give you when it comes to building out your garden try and keep it simple and do it in steps don’t try to do it all at once you also can’t look at gardening as

Spending money it’s more like investing money it’s like making a contribution into your 401k or your pension it’s money out of your paycheck right now but will pay dividends over the long term you are not going to make back costs the first year but around year three year 4

Year five things get easier and easier and more self-sufficient you’ll find yourself spending less and less money on things and I’ll tell you right now I really don’t even buy produce anymore aside from carrots and celery which I just can’t grow all year round here it

Gets too hot in the summer so over time I have been able to save quite a bit of money directly into my groceries because I pretty much grow all of my own groceries for the most part and besides we don’t just Garden for the direct cost savings it’s the indirect cost savings

That are incalculable when it comes to Growing your own food it teaches you to eat seasonally which is a revelation it is amazing when you start eating things in season how your taste buds will change and you’ll recognize patterns of eating and you’ll wind up thinking I actually like different foods when it’s

Cold out than when it’s warm out you will also get IM measurably better quality produce out of your garden than you will at grocery stores you will find that things that you buy in the store it’s SW it’s tasteless it’s flavorless all the quality of food that you will

Eat from here on out will improve and you just can’t put a dollar sign on that the other benefit is think about how much additional exercise you will be getting think of all of the additional sunshine and UV rays that you will get how much healthier you will become when

You start exercising more getting more fresh air getting more Sunshine eating more seasonally eating less processed foods from the grocery store yeah you may spend a couple hundred dollars building your garden but you may save thousands tens of thousands of dollars in future healthare costs and how can

You put a price tag on feeling better there is no better blessing in life than not being in pain and feeling good and I have to tell you uh I’m going on 40 years old and I probably don’t quite look that that old and a lot of that is

Because of how much time I spend in the garden I get so much Sunshine so much fresh air so much exercise it’s really probably one of the reasons why I look a little young for my age and that right there is how much money I spent building my vegetable garden with some helpful

Tips and tricks along the way how you can save money and parse it out over a long period of time to build it as affordably as possible now I didn’t include every single little thing that I have in my vegetable garden like the different covers and shade cloth and PVC

Hoops over my raised beds all of those things are little accessories that I’ve added over the years because I found for a very small investment I get huge returns by keeping pests out of my garden by keeping the frost off by keeping the sun off and having my plants

Be more productive and increase my growing season so the more food I can get out of my garden the less money I have to spend at the grocery store so that’s why I do it but those things aren’t really relevant to the cost of building a garden itself those are

Things that you can determine if you want to do down the road to save you some time so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you’re

Notified when I release more videos like these if you have any questions about how I built my garden or if you’re curious about any of the things that I use in real life in my garden I have all of those things linked Down Below in the video description of my Amazon

Storefront link so expand the video description click on the Amazon link you’ll see everything I use in real life and while you’re there check out my spread shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all

Of you again on the next video all right Dale it is the 15th of the month and you know what that means it is heartworm prevention day it is very important that every single pup out there get their heartworm preventative every single month because all you need

To do to get a heartworm which can be fatal is to get bitten by a single mosquito and the mosquitoes are going to start coming out soon in fact when we get little warm spells sometimes they still come out right now during the winter so here is your monthly heartworm

Preventative good boy and just like that Dale is good for another month really recommend these heartworm preventatives heartworms are so dangerous they damage the heart for months and months and months even if you’re able to cure them and then dogs can’t play because their heart’s under too much stress it’s

Really a terrible thing so we want to make sure that Dale is as protected as possible we don’t want them getting any fart worms right no fart worms