Stretch Your Landscaping Budget with These Money-Saving Tips
Beautiful landscaping increases your home’s curb appeal and may make neighbors envious. It also increases your home’s value. Keeping your landscaping looking great can get costly. Use these money-saving tips to stretch your landscaping budget.
Test Your Soil
Start your landscaping on the right foot by doing a simple soil test before you plant anything. Testing your soil first saves you money in two ways. First, you won’t waste money on applying expensive additives to your soil that you don’t actually need. Second, certain plants can’t live in some soil conditions. Knowing the type of soil you have before you plant helps you save money by not planting something that will probably die. A good soil test recommends what to add to it to create the best growing environment.
Tackle Weeds Early
Weeds hurt the best landscaping efforts. They’re ugly, and they hurt your other plants by taking away the water and nutrients these plants need to stay healthy. It’s much easier and cheaper to take care of young weeds. When weeds are small and haven’t really started taking over your lawn and flower beds, you can remove them by hand at no cost. If you let weeds get away from you, you might be forced to buy a weed killer to take care of them. Good weed killers cost a lot. Some weed killers can also cause you to damage your flowers and lawn accidentally. Replacing damaged parts of your landscaping costs you even more money.
Mulch Your Flower Beds
A nice layer of organic mulch on your flower beds makes them look better. It can also save you money in many ways. Mulch helps your soil hold water better, so you save money because you don’t have to water as much. A good layer of mulch also helps cut down on weeds, which helps you avoid buying weed killers. If you use organic soil, it breaks down over time and helps replenish nutrients in your soil. This helps you save money by spending less on expensive fertilizers.