How To Get CHEAP PLANTS For Your Garden: Don’t Get RIPPED OFF!

In this video, I share how to get cheap plants for your garden when buying transplants! The cost of vegetable transplants has skyrocketed recently, making buying plants from stores hard to afford. In this video, I share 3 tips to get cheap transplants for a fraction of the price at big box stores. Don’t get ripped off and do this, instead!

While it is always cheapest to start transplants from seed, this isn’t always feasible for everyone. Don’t let high prices at big box stores stop you from starting a vegetable garden. These tips can help you save money starting a garden at transplanting time.

I use the following products* in my vegetable garden:
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Grow More All Purpose 20-20-20 (25 lb): https://amzn.to/44pSQK2
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Save Money Buying Plants
1:47 Tip #1: Plant Nurseries
2:47 Tip #2: How to Get Free Plants
3:52 Tip #3: The Grocery Store Trick
5:35 How To Separate Seedlings
8:50 Separating Large Plant Roots
9:57 How To Fertilize Seedlings
11:34 How To Acclimate Plants To Sun
14:36 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about how to save money buying transplants, 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!

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

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String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegarden #vegetablegardening

what’s growing on gardeners it’s Tuesday April 16th and transplanting season is here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina on today’s video I’m going to share with you three ways to get the cheapest transplants possible to grow out into your garden don’t get ripped off and make sure you follow the tips in this video 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 spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome Custom Design to power and other gear your support is is greatly appreciated it’s early spring and everybody is starting to transplant their annual vegetables out into their Garden this time of year but there is a big problem the cost of transplants has skyrocketed in the last few years I was just at a local Big Box store and the cost of transplants was appalling we’re talking $5 for a single plant5 whole dollars for one little pepper plant one little tomato plant that’s crazy and even crazier if you want a larger tomato plant those cost an absolutely insane $10 do you have any idea how many tomatoes you can buy for $10 and once you factor in the costs of fertilizers soil things like insecticides or fungicides that you may need to spray you will never see a return on that investment the cheapest way to get plants for your annual vegetable garden is almost always going to be to grow them from seed but what if you don’t like growing from seed you had some of your seedlings fail you simply didn’t start enough plants or maybe something killed your seedlings out in the garden well you may have no choice but to go out and buy seedlings for transplanting into your garden if this is you I’m going to give you three tips to save you a ton of money and get cheap plants for your garden so you don’t get ripped off step number one is to buy your transplants from local nurseries and not big box stores Big Box store transplants are usually incredibly overpriced local nurseries often provide more variety selection for a fraction of the cost and you have the added benefit of supporting a local small business if you live in an urban or a suburban area this may involve taking a bit of a drive but it is often worth it because you’ll have better pricing and you’ll have many more choices if it’s a longer drive for you try to work this into your routine when you’re out running errands anyway or make a big trip where you’ll grab some fruit trees some soil amendments some tools some watering supplies whatever else you may need for the season and get all of the shopping done in one trip if the drive is long call them in advance to make sure they actually have what you’re looking for so you don’t take a long trip for nothing nurseries tend to have much more knowledgeable staff that are very willing to help you right away so take advantage of the customer service tip number two is to buy secret transplants with multiple seedlings in one when I was browsing the selection at one of my local big box stores I noticed numerous plants had double seedlings some even had triplets if you play your cards right you can get two or three seedlings for the price of one so why does this happen well when selling transplants most of the associated costs are in the potting mix and physically transporting the plants to the stores the cost of the seed itself is almost negligible therefore most commercial Growers place two to three seeds per seed cell or container to guarantee that something germinates because seeds don’t have 100% germination rates having empty seed cells will harm their business model so it is always best to plant more seeds than necessary sometimes the workers fail to thin the seedlings after germination and you can capitalize by buying these plants later in this video I will show you how to easily separate seedlings so you can get two or three plants for the price of one and my third tip is to buy plants from grocery stores did you know that most grocery stores sell live plants there is usually a selection of live herbs in the produce section it’s pretty common for grocery stores to sell large basil Rosary parsley oregano or thyme plants they may even have a selection of other things like mint often times they’re the same cost as a bunch of fresh herbs I got this giant basil plant at my grocery store for way less than the cost of a single transplant at the big box doors and it’s literally triple the size I’ve been picking off of this basil plant inside my sun room for literally 2 months and now we’re finally at the point of the Year where it is warm enough that I can plant it outside because this plant is so large I can easily chop the root ball into multiple individual plants and plant them and I will show you how to do that in the next segment oh and some grocery stores also sell Nursery transplants too in fact my local Piggly Wiggly has a big display out front full of tomato and pepper transplants at Bargain Basement prices so definitely shop around now that being said one word of caution if you do buy your plants from the grocery store be aware that they may not be acclimated to True sunlight they’re used to Growing indoors and indoor lighting so if you just plop them out into the garden they could actually get cooked by the UV lights of the real Sun so make sure you slowly acclimate those plants to real sunlight bring them out for an hour or two in the morning and the evening when the sun is really weak or bring them outside on a cloudy day when it’s fully overcast and slow acclimate them over time in about 7 Days of doing this they should be able to tolerate the true rays of the sun now I’m going to show you how to separate seedlings if you were to buy doubles or triples this can save you a ton of money and to do that I’m going to use this potting mix that I made this is just three or four parts cocoa core to one part perite and one part vermiculite it’s a nice good lomy mix perfect for potting small seedlings now a lot of people will have you do crazy things when it comes to separating seedlings like taking the root balls and soaking them in water so you drain away and wash away all of the soil and gently separate the roots and while that is the case when it comes to new transplants when it is vigorous annual vegetable seedlings like this there is no need for you to do that in fact all I’m going to do is I’m going to take a knife and I am going to separate the root masses so I’m going to take one of these inexpensive kitchen knives and I’m going to gently separate the plants right in between and then they will naturally pull apart so I have to do very little to physically separate those seedlings then I’m going to take some of the potting mix and I’m going to line the bottom of the two containers maybe only about an inch or two and I’m going to take the root ball and place that in the center of the potting mix and I’m going to take a mixture of the new and the old potting mix pull off a couple of lower leaves so you can see better and then just compress this down as best as possible put our tags back so we don’t get them confused and I know it may seem crazy to be kind of heavy-handed but I have literally never in all my years lost lost a Seedling doing it this way provided that they are large enough with the which these pepper plants clearly are so I’m going to take these and move them off to the side in the shade and then I’m going to do the same thing with these tomato plants now when you remove a container always pump the bottom a little bit because doing that you won’t accidentally rip off too much of the root ball we’re going to follow the exact same procedure we’re going to take a little bit of mix and line the bottom then we’re going to take our knife as you see right here and start a cut in between the two plants they will naturally fall apart just let gravity do the work let the roots fall in place we will place the two seedlings in each pot up against the sides for support put in fresh mix and then with our hands do our best to compact them down and really this is all takes to separate your seedlings and if you do this you will effectively get two plants for the price of one then we will retag them with the new tags so we don’t get them lost and once again we will move them off into the shade for the time being now this basil plant is a little bit different here if we actually turn it over we can see that this basil plant was sewn as two different plugs so we are not going going to fight against nature uh in fact we are going to take our scissors and we’re just going to cut it right down that natural line so there you can kind of see where the two plugs are we are going to slice this in half and pull those roots apart like a sandwich and then we’re going to see if we can further subdivide this clump of basil plants and looking at this root mass I can tell you right now you can really cut this baby down there is no reason why uh this has to be uh kept as one single plant you can break these apart and I know some of you may be yelling at the screen right now I’m being way too harsh but I’m telling you when root balls are this thick it is not that big of a deal you can cut them pretty uh pretty strongly and they will grow back on you and then right here I have some smaller containers that I already prepared with potting mix so once again we are just going to fill them all in now that all of our seedlings have been separated ated and poted up we are going to water them in and one thing I recommend you do is add a little bit of a diluted water soluble fertilizer to your watering can because that will help reduce transplant shock my favorite thing to do is to take Alaska fish fertilizer and mix it in at a rate of about 2 tablespoons per gallon and then pour it all over your transplants this will greatly help in the recovery now if you can’t use fish fertilizer because it smells too bad and you’re keeping your transplants indoors just use something like diluted quarter or half strength Miracle Grow tomato or Jack’s 202020 or something similar and I know some people don’t like to hear the phrase use Miracle Grow but the fact of the matter is if you are buying your transplants from big box stores or from nurseries they are almost certainly using nothing but Miracle Grow or some kind of brand equivalent because they can’t have their shelving areas and Green Houses stinking to the public and everything organic that’s water soluble basically smells like dead fish so the only way to have truly organic seedlings is to do it yourself unfortunately and if you can’t have the area smelling bad you have to do what you have to do so again I’m using this fish fertilizer and I going to soak everything down really well and I’m going to do this in a dirt area underneath my fruit trees because this stuff doesn’t smell too good and if I have to have it soak into an area I want to soak I want it to soak in around my fruit trees into the soil so now we’re going to let that drain now the plants have been watered in with the diluted fish fertilizer we need them to rest in full shade for at least 2 to 3 Days To recover do not put them out in the sun they will not be able to handle the sun stress because the roots have been damaged and they’ve been badly Disturbed so leave them in the shade I’m going to leave them underneath this folding table by my sun room entrance because this little crevice right here is in full shade and it will be protected Under the Sun so it won’t even get any dappled light then after about 2 to 3 days as long as they’re not wilting and they are standing straight up we will move them into part sunlight in the morning and in the evening and we will slowly acclimate them over the next 3 to 4 days to full sunlight once again after that 7 to 10 day period they should be able to be transplanted out in the garden just simply take your transplant and flip the bottom make sure that you see some uh some Roots underneath here growing through or or flip it over and pull the bottom container off if you have yourself a nice root ball they’re able to go out into the garden now if I had say 3 days of cool overcast or drizzle with no heavy wind I could have separated them and planted them right out into the garden if I had totally overcast cool calm weather but I don’t have that it’s 86 and sunny and it’s going to be like that for the next 3 or 4 days that’s way too much heat stress if you had perfect ideal temperatures where it’s going to be over cast in the’ 60s and it’s going to be nice and Mild at night you could do this directly in the garden uh but you really need a prolonged period of time of those conditions in order to make that happen so it’s much safer to do this transplanted as seedlings let them recover in the shade then move them out in about 10 days or so once they fully rooted and they fill back out the containers again and if you don’t trust my methods well back in the winter I bought a parsley plant in a grocery store and I cut it into quarters because it was so large this is one quarter that I planted out in my garden way back in the winter time because parsley is freeze tolerant this parsley plant right here is another quarter and it’s a little bit stunted because it is getting overtaken by that monster Dill that is just thriving and these are the other two quarters that I let sit in my sun room in these two little containers they really need some fertilizer and they have to be transferred out into my garden I’ve been picking them all winter long uh so they definitely need some nitrogen they are yellowing and root bound so I need to get these out into my garden and find a little spot as soon as possible and that right there are three tips that you can use to dramatically reduce your costs and save a ton of money when buying transplants 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’re curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my garden they are all linked Down Below in my Amazon storefront the video description so expand the video description click on the Amazon link you’ll see everything I use in real life and while you’re down 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 hey Dale check out who’s back in the pond we have a friend another happy little Gator you can you can barely see its head over there floating around but I know what they look like at this point there was some fish over there I wonder if Mr Gator’s getting pretty hungry what are you thinking buddy are you pretty hungry maybe I can give you a treat does Dale want a treat Dale oh there’s a little biscuit for Dale back to Gator Patrol