Gardening dirt-cheap

Flip through the filmy pages of Martha Stewart magazine or step into an upscale garden shop like Smith & Hawken selling “outdoor lifestyle” with $70 rose forks and $40 leaf sleds and you may quickly forget that gardening, after all, is a dirty endeavor.

Dirty in the best sense of the word.

Experienced gardeners know that a good garden is defined by how much time rather than how much much money you lavish on it. Penny pinchers barely have to spend anything to pretty up their yards. For some, cutting costs is the ultimate challenge.

“I always attempt to garden as cheaply as possible and fortunately, gardening is a hobby that one can do for free,” says professional gardener and master pruner Curtis Short. He learned how to become a militant money-saver 11 years ago so his wife, Pat, could quit her teaching job to homeschool their two children.

In fact, they aspired to become what Pat Dacyzyn, author of “The Tightwad Gazette,” dubbed “black belt tightwads, practicing frugality in both home and garden. He saves shower and laundry water to irrigate plants, has his eye out constantly for freebies and giveaways and is an inveterate yard saler.

“Gardening can even be a net-gain endeavor if one produces food for one’s own consumption or fruits and vegetables or other items for sale such as cutting flowers or gourds for crafting,” he said.

With the prime fall planting season now upon us, we asked Short and other several experienced North Bay gardeners for their best tips for beautifying their back yards on the dirt cheap.

The best gardens are built on good soil and adding compost is one of the best things you can do to enrich your dirt. You can buy it in bulk at Sonoma Compost or simply make your own. “All you do is mix half brown dead material with half green material and wet it down so it’s as damp as a wrung-out sponge,” said George Zeleny, who leads how-to workshops through the Master Gardeners.

Then leave it to cook. You don’t need a fancy container. A pile on the ground is OK although three wooden palettes wired together in a “U” shape or an open fronted box will contain it more neatly.

“Brown” is dead plant material, fall leaves, newspaper, wood shavings and sawdust. Green is fresh green plant material, coffee grounds, farm animal manure and fresh lawn clippings.

For more information pick up a copy of “Let it Rot” by Stu Campbell available for under $6 at Amazon or in libraries. Zeleny will lead a workshop on cooking your own compost 10 a.m. to noon Sept. 27 at the Rincon Valley Libary, 6959 Montecito Blvd, Santa Rosa. 565-2608.

Fall is the best time to look for the best deals on plants. Many nurseries are looking to clear out the year’s stock and will offer mark-downs of 30 percent and more. If you’re in the market for certain flowering or fruit trees, or roses, you can save major bucks by buying “bare root,” during the dormant months of January and February. Unpotted and looking like a jumble of roots, they’re homely, but your frugality pays big dividends later.

Many serious gardeners rarely buy plants. They just trade them. The secret is sharing cuttings. Al Derrick, who teaches propagation workshops for The Master Gardeners, says the easiest way is tip planting. Cut back the tip of the plant 4-6 inches and strip all but one or two leaves at the tip. Dip the cutting in a root hormone powder such as Root Tone available at any garden center, then start the plant in potting soil in a small pot. Derrick saves even more money by mixing his own mix — 80 percent perlite to 20 percent peat, both available at garden centers. You may want to tent the young plant with something like a plastic bag to keep it warm and moist and keep it from drying out until it starts putting on new growth.

Plant sales

Garden clubs and nonprofits throw their own sales in spring and fall, selling off things they propagate themselves at what amount to wholesale prices. You can also find bargain plants by tiny backyard nurseries or informal home propagators at farmers markets, flea markets, rummage sales and yard sales.

Willowside School, 5285 Willowside Road, in Santa Rosa, has its own teaching nursery and throws a fall plant sale 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 13, Oct. 4 and Nov. 1. Look for wisteria, vintage roses, perennials, dawn redwood and Japanese maples, starting dirt cheap at $1 for 4 inch pots. 569-4724.

The Sonoma County Jail Industries Nursery sale attracts flocks of in-the-know gardeners in search of a great deal. They have shrubs, vines perennials, trees and grasses starting at $2 for one-gallon containers. 9 a.m. to noon today and Oct. 4, 2254 Ordinance Road at Airport Boulevards, Santa Rosa. 565-1625.

Graton Community Club Fall Flower Show and Plant Sale: Featuring plants propagated by club members who also are on hand to advise with tips. 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 24 and 25. Main & N. Edison, Graton. 829-9440.

This is a great way to multiply plants at no cost. Do it with your own plants to create more of the same or divide and separate and swap with other gardeners. Short says the best time to divide is autumn — mid-October through December with the optimum about Nov. 1. To divide a perennial, says Derrick, dig up the whole plant and notice where there are roots attached to various parts of the plant that can be separated. You want to make sure you have a crown and some root. The crown is above-ground growth where the foliage of the plant meets the root. Generally the part in the middle of the plant will no longer have much growth action and that is what you can throw away. Divided sections can be re-potted individually in potting soil and watered and kept in a shady area until they recover from the shock. Plants that are easy to divide include hostas, daylilies and irises.

Separating is similar, but rather than dividing the roots you can actually separate the plant without having to cut anything, Derrick says. Follow the crown down and simply tearing away. Siberian irises, he says, are among the easiest to separate.

Did you know you don’t have to have an orchard to enjoy a variety of different fruits? The secret is grafting. And many fruit tree owners are happy to sharing cuttings called scions. John Bramfitt of Sebastopol, a member of the Rare Fruit Growers Association, explains that you can graft multiple varieties of a fruit on a single tree or just a few.

“I planted a Fuji apple six to seven years ago and I have 20 different apples grafted onto it.” Towards the end of January each year the Rare Fruit Growers hold a scion exchange and virtually give away grafts — not all rare, by the way. They will also explain the grafting process, which is not difficult. It’s typically held the last Saturday of January at the Sebastopol Veterans Memorial Building.

It’s not that tough to start plants from seed — even indoors — and you can get multiple plants for the price of a packet. Different plants have different needs but basically you’ll need a seed starter soil (different than potting soil) and heating pads. Google “starting from seed” and you’ll be bombarded with good information about how to start different plants. Frederique Lavoipierre, director of the Sustainable Landscape Program at Sonoma State University, likes to grow annuals that seed themselves, like alyssum and bachelor’s buttons. That means letting the plants “go to seed” at the end of the blooming period. You won’t want to do this in big patches in the showiest part of your garden, but for more remote large areas the technique works well.

Short suggests striking up a relationship with a tree service. Many are happy to dump chippings in your driveway at no charge. He got sacks of wooden shavings from a door shop. Cabinet shops are also places to check for free sawdust or chips. Cardboard is also great for mulching and keeping down weeds. Lay this beneath your free chippings or sawdust. Ask at places like appliance and furniture stores and bike shops — which have the biggest boxes. Many will be delighted you took the cardboard off their hands.

Short suggests checking the freebie ads, Craigslist or with neighbors who might have extra lava rock or Sonoma Gold pebbles they want to unload if you do the hauling. These can be used to dress up drainage projects.

For pathways, paving and walls, look for salvage. Short suggests intercepting old concrete from a neighbor or construction site before it hits the Dumpster. It can be good for paving or walls, especially when given a natural-looking orange patina with some Ironite, available in places like Purity Chemicals in Santa Rosa.

There’s an abundance of riches awaiting at yard sales, thrifts and salvage yards. You can find anything from beautiful pots to garden tools. Even high-priced boutique-y garden gifts like gardening aprons and hand lotions can be found for a song at garage sales where people are off-loading unwanted gifts. Santa Rosa gardener Sandy Metzger’s favorite haunts are the Salvation Army’s massive daily yard sale at Lytton Springs Road just off the Lytton Springs Highway 101 exit in Healdsburg and Recycletown at the county landfill at Stony Point Road and Highway 116 near Petaluma. Tools, wheelbarrows, building materials for potting sheds, planting pots, you name it, all dirt cheap.