Creative Gardening Ideas For Tight Wyoming Budgets

A friend of mine has a mom-and-pop-style sandwich shop, and in a world full of chains, it's a tough business to keep the doors open. I saw her post on social media lately that, for the time being, they would not be adding tomatoes to their sandwiches because the cost of tomatoes had jumped significantly.

We've all had to watch what we purchase while grocery shopping lately, and hopefully that's not how it's going to continue. If it is, you may need to look for alternative ways to get things you'd normally buy at the store, like produce.

Growing up, both of my grandpas prided themselves on their gardens, and it was a competition between them and their neighbors to see whose garden went in and started producing first. In the end, it didn't really matter because by midsummer, their gardens were producing so much that they were giving it away.

It's not just about throwing some seeds in the ground and waiting for them to grow; it takes work, timing, and patience to build a successful garden. Wyoming's growing season isn't really a long one, but if you know when to jump into action, you can still have a highly producing year.

Knowing when to start planting and when to transplant is key to success, and we're in that time period now. If you need help determining when to start the process, there's a chart to help you.

With prices the way they are, it looks like it's time to start thinking about a garden, or at least growing items like tomatoes to make your dollars stretch further at the grocery store. If you're like me and don't have room for a garden, you're probably wondering how you can do this, right?

Last summer, I watched my neighbors have fresh tomatoes all summer by planting a tomato plant in a large pot on their driveway. If I learned anything from my grandpa and their love of gardening, it has to be the old saying, " If there's a will, there's a way. My neighbors were proof of that, and had freshly grown tomatoes to show for it.

If you're not sure where to start, here's a video I found of how to grow maters in a 5-gallon bucket.