Gardening and landscaping can add value to your home, curb appeal, and work as a great stress reliever. It can also be expensive - unless you follow some thrfty guidelines!

Like all budgeting tasks, it takes organization and planning. You can have a perfectly landscaped yard and a garden full of vegetables that you can place on your table at a low cost.

• Learn the basics. Make use of your local library, the internet, and local nursery.
• Keep it fun. Don't go overboard and create a flower or vegetable garden that will take all your free time. Start with a small spot in your yard and make it a pleasure - not a chore.
• Save - Don't Spend. For vegetable gardens, you should harvest more in savings than your spend in making the garden. Again, this requires proper planning.

• In your yard, use plants that serve more than one purpose such as shrubs that are green all year and flower sometime during the year or trees that show off early spring blossoms and provide shade during the summer.
• Grow flowers that seed themselves such as poppies, violas, sweet peas, sweet alyssum, and larkspur.
• Exchange excess plants with gardening friends and neighbors.
• Buy gardening tools at flea markets or yard sales.
• Start with basic hand tools instead of buying expensive power tools.

• Undiluted vinegar will kill grass between bricks and sidewalk cracks. Just spray where needed.
• Same goes for weeds - undiluted vinegar will kill weeds. Just be careful, it will kill grass (which you may not want).
• Vinegar is a wonderful thrifty cleaner! Use full strength to clean clay and other pots.
• Deter critters with vinegar. Spray vinegar around doors, appliances, and along other areas where ants are known to gather and the vinegar will keep them away. You can also sprinkle some vinegar in areas you don't want Fluffy to hang out, scratch, or sleep.
• Preserve cut flowers and liven droopy ones by adding 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar to a quart of water in a vase.
• When you pick fresh veggies from your garden, wash them with a mixture of salt and vinegar, those bugs will float right off!

• Avoid plants that need a lot of extra care.
• Pick plants that have a good root system and don't need extra watering.
• Weed daily to attack weed sprouts before they get out of hand.
• Save seeds to grow your own, or purchase seed to start a quantity of plants at a deep discount over store bought transplants.

E-Books about saving money when you garden