Acquiring plants for free or cheap

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mathiverse
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Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by mathiverse »

I want to get a bunch of indoor greenery to spruce up my living room and bedroom. I have a few ideas on how to do this for free and cheap.
  • Post on freecycle, Buy Nothing, and other similar groups asking for plants that need new homes
  • Check Craigslist for cheap plants
  • Grow my own in freely or cheaply acquired pots and soil from similar sources
I am also somewhat aware of propagating plant cuttings. I could ask for those on the freecycle-type sites too, right?

Are there any other methods of plant acquisition I'm missing?

theanimal
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by theanimal »

Ask your friends. Often times I have found that my friends who grow plants end up growing too many, feel overwhelmed, and want to give some away.

Wild scavenging. *Don't destroy any areas* but if you can take seeds from wild plants or even transplant a plant to your home.

Also, you can go very far on just propagating cuttings. I have a couple friends who have houses full of greenery grown just from propagations.

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Slevin
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Slevin »

Depending on your local region, you can also just take cuttings of plants in public areas and use those to grow your own cuttings. If I’m remembering correctly where you moved your area it is subtropical enough that I bet you can get cuttings of great houseplants people have used for landscaping. Cacti are super cool houseplants too.

The great part about plants is that most of them easily multiply into infinite plants. You can at worst get away with purchasing a couple cheap ones off Craigslist, baby them for a couple years, and after they explode in size cut them down to a smaller size again and gain tons of cuttings as a byproduct. I’ve just done this with my monstera and went from 1 huge plant to 14 small monsteras and one large one. Im overflowing in them; would happily give you one if you were close proximity wise.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by mountainFrugal »

Cuttings from people who already have house plants is the way to go. A majority of the major house plants are clonally propagated in this way to scale up large enough to sell (not from seed), so many common house plants will do well to take a cutting, keep it water for a week, and then transfer the cutting into some soil. If you want to get fancy you can add rooting hormone to the part that you put into the soil. It will depend on the variety of course, but a quick google search will provide an answer. :). Also, getting good at taking cuttings makes nice gifts for people.

ertyu
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by ertyu »

Steal from the office. Most standard office plants are really easy to propagate with cuttings. This is probably part of why they are office plants: it's easy and fast to get plentiful cheap greenery. Get one spider plant and you'll have 10 in no time. Most ferns, etc. also grow to fill their pots and can be split into two while being repotted.

Usually, soil can be got from somewhere outside, all it takes is a bit of determined looking.

To me, the limiting factor is pots, especially easthetically pleasing pots and pots that aren't made of plastic and won't bleach or become brittle when exposed to sunlight, as pots often are. So, diy pot ideas are welcome.

To follow up on @mf's gift idea, i've heard succulents are easy to propagate. They can be sold, too. We really need @C40 on this thread, dude had an awesome rooftop garden

chenda
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by chenda »

People in my area give away potted saplings, they just leave them by the front gate with a sign saying help yourself. So I do.

Frita
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Frita »

+1 to listings on Freecycle, free piles, and cuttings from friends

Another place I have found plant starts is the public library. (They have a puzzle library with a one puzzle buy-in.) I have a couple cacti from there.

Smashter
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Smashter »

Look for people selling plants for cheap on facebook marketplace/craigslist. When you show up to buy one they might have a bunch more they will throw in just to get rid of them.

We hooked a lot of people up with plants this way when we sold my last house. We got into a crunch where we needed to get rid of stuff fast. People would come by for one plant and we'd end up giving them a bunch more if it seemed like they'd go to happy plant parents :)

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Western Red Cedar »

+1 on getting cuttings from friends or family. A lot of people are really passionate about plants and will be eager to make a connection and share their knowledge. Getting the cuttings is great, but having a friend who can give you advice and appreciates your new interest is really valuable.

I'd also encourage you to look at edible herbs as well. You may be able to transplant some of these in the spring, but I think it is worth it to buy some herbs that you regularly use and incorporate that into your cooking. Fresh herbs make a huge difference in the quality of meals and sauces, and it is ideal when you can just pick them fresh from your window.

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Sclass
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Sclass »

I’ve been scavenging wild grass from the public areas of my housing development to replant my lawn. I take little plugs with my pocket knife and carry them home in a coffee cup. The wild grass is surprisingly tough. Much hardier than the stuff my lawn is currently made from. It can live where my neighbors let their dogs urinate. Normal grass from Home Depot dies in dog urine.

It seems most of the plants in our public areas are these non native ornamental plants from elsewhere on the planet. They seem to spread all over and volunteer. They’re soon to be the next invasive plant.

In my yard I’m constantly uprooting volunteer oak and walnut saplings. The squirrels are really good at planting them.

As far as I can tell there are plants everywhere. It’s actually kind of sickening how they’re all these exotic non native types. Half of the trees in my yard come from the Amazon or Africa.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

This way madness lies...

Many good suggestions above. I did end up spending some money in order to fulfill my 2022 Plant Something Every Day resolution (I conked out some time in May), but it was relatively minor on the obsessive hobby-scape spectrum. Also, on the other end of the process, you will wind up with a huge supply of gifts to share. If you want to take it to the next level, I found that home hydroponics was remarkably easy. A fun book about people who are so obsessed they do things like nab rose cuttings from cemetaries is "People With Dirty Hands: The Passion for Gardening" by Robin Chotinoff.

JenniferW
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by JenniferW »

Local seed library.. free. and you can donate your saved seed. We grow marigolds here .. save a few flowers and you can grow hundreds of new ones the next season. Trade seed with locals on gardening fb group.

Laura Ingalls
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Laura Ingalls »

Work for the parks department

Firewood and rejected plants end up at the end of my driveway

Walwen
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by Walwen »

In terms of houseplants, yeah, cuttings are the way to go. The office and asking people you know is a good place to start.... but other than that, basically any public place you see a healthy plant, if you ask nicely to take a single leaf and have enough charisma... well, I wouldn't say no if I were the worker. The only place this isn't acceptable is nurseries, since that's their product, making it "proplifting" aka propagation+shoplifting.

A warning: Dirt just from outdoors/a hole in your yard is a great way to introduce pests into your house and diseases unto your houseplants. You can sterilize soil easily though, using a microwave, oven, boiling, or hydrogen peroxide. Then if you're using just some random dirt, most houseplants will need an additive like perlite or wood bark, and probably a fertilizer, to be their best. You still can't be sure that random dirt doesn't have some pesticides or other chemicals in it that will kill your plants... Personally, you're best off buying potting soil/sourcing leftover potting soil, not repurposing dirt. But if you just want to have "unkillable" plants like spider plants, ZZ plants, snake plants.... do what you want lol they'll live.

A very cheap alternative.... you can grow many plants in just water! :mrgreen: You can literally just get some spring onions from the store, chop off half the white part (and eat it) and put the greens in water, and they'll grow roots and more greens. Can be rather aesthetic in a kitchen window, and produces a source of never-ending green onions, just snip the tops.
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arbrk
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Re: Acquiring plants for free or cheap

Post by arbrk »

My mom is an avid gardener and there are a few once-yearly events she goes to that are "plant swaps". People dig up the things that have grown too big/too sprawling in their yard to share. There are also facebook groups.

Another good route is just walk around your neighborhood and talk to people who are out gardening. There are people like my mom who will give you their extras when they grow. This takes patience but it works. There is always someone in the neighborhood like this. In my old neighborhood, one woman did a bunch of gardening for herself and other people on her street because she enjoyed it and to help people out (keep people's yards nice who were elderly or had young kids and couldn't do it themselves). She knew I loved gladiolus and any time she dug some bulbs, she would bring them to me. When I had extra stuff that was getting too big (forsythia always had to be trimmed and easily propagates), I would bring them to her for other people's yards.

I am about to move to a new house, and just walking around the neighborhood, I easily found the local gardener and talked with him. We haven't even closed on the house, but when we went the other day for the appraisal, he had left a gift on our porch with a note to come over and get some agave pups he had. People love to share their extras (the gardener's plants are always outgrowing their yards) and talk about their interests.

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