When it comes to starting your plants, there are a number of things you can use. From peat pellets to reusable starter pots and potting soils, the list is long. The problem is that these all cost money. With the rising costs of just about everything, plant starting materials are also getting spendy. We usually start at least several dozen of each different plant. We do this to ensure that we have enough healthy plants ready for the garden once everything thaws out and warms up enough. To significantly reduce our seasonal garden startup costs, we do two things: First, in the fall, when we've cleared the garden of all the crops, we take a couple 5 gallon buckets, and we fill them with garden soil. This gets stored in our cold room over the winter and becomes next season's "potting soil". This saves us from purchasing expensive potting soil over and over. Second, over the winter, we save ALL our toilet paper and paper towel tubes. We save these because they are made from a light, unbleached heavy paper. They make great compostable "pots" for seedlings. We simply fill them with our saved garden soil, drop our seeds in them and let the seeds do their thing. When the seedlings are ready for the garden, we just plant the whole tube, and we're done. When everything is said and done, we've just saved anywhere from $60 to $100 on plant starting materials. The tubes pictured below are ready for seeds. Just debating what we want to plant this year.

This weekend is going to have some planning done. I'll be spending some time with the Girlfriend and we're going to be hashing out some schedule stuff so I can start doing the Live calls here in the Pinchpenny DIYer as well. With Spring slowly creeping up on us here in North Central Alberta, my goal is to start ramping up the DIY stuff come 2nd week of March. But scheduling between Skool and my Offline responsibilities has to be settled first so things can move forward. I do appreciate the patience from all of you as I wait out this weather hostage situation. I promise, there will be some good stuff for you as soon as weather permits. My request is this...until then, please, if you have any questions, ask them in the community. I'm really trying to avoid being a useless info or random info poster and would rather answer questions that help you get results NOW. Seems a better plan than slamming you with random information you can't really use. Looking forward to chatting more soon!

Just putting it out there that I'm hosting the coffee hour at 10 a.m. Mountain time. Would love to have a few of you there! Direct chat page link Calendar link

Just thought I'd toss this out there for anyone interested. At 12 noon Mountain Time, I'll be going live for an ask me anything session. https://www.skool.com/live/rYMvPTKQ8Gw is the link. Would love to see y'all there! Oh, and before I forget, if anyone from PinchpennyDIYer joins Pennywise Pantry, you'll have access to the affiliate program, which pays out 40% commissions. I'll also be upgrading anyone who joins from here to VIP so you'll have access to everything when it goes live. Again, looking forward to seeing you there!