Instead of heading straight to the garden centre to stock up on what you need to grow your favourite flowers and veggies, check out these dollar store gardening supplies that are just as good as the more expensive ones!
I had another dollar store realization recently that I have to share with you and it involves dollar store gardening supplies. 🙂 Over the last year or so I’ve been noticing that a lot of my favourite little decor items around the house that I use over and over again have actually come from the dollar store. A lot of them were things that I purchased many years ago that have really stood the test of time, and often they’re things that the dollar store is still selling today!
It’s funny because we always think of the dollar store as being the place to go for cheap, disposable items that are fun, but that don’t last, and that’s just not always the case. You can get some really useful stuff there as well that you could end up using for a long time! I realized earlier this season that this is definitely the case with a lot of their gardening supplies as well. We’ve picked up quite a few cheapo things for gardening from the dollar store over the years and I’ve started to notice that some of the things we thought we’d only be able to use for a month or two, are still going strong a few years later!
So I thought I’d take you on a little dollar store gardening shopping trip with me today and show you a few of my favourite dollar store gardening supplies, as well as some of the items that we’ve found have worked really well for us.
Cloches
These basic plastic domes are one of my favourite dollar store gardening discoveries. First of all, people always ask what all those domes are that we have lined up in the garden and they make it look like we really know what we’re doing. Second of all, they really work. Whether you need to protect delicate little seedling from a cold snap or certain plants from pests that pop up out of nowhere during a particular part of the growing season, these simple little domes do the trick!
Twine and Wire
No matter what, at some point in the season you’re going to need to tie some plants up to provide a little extra support. I like to mostly use basic twine that I get at the dollar store because that’s the cheapest place to find it that I’ve found. Twine can be expensive in hardware stores for some reason! I’ll use wire sometimes for heavier plants if it’s needed. I have to give honourable mention to this clever foam covered wire that I saw at the dollar store this year. This looks like it would do a good job where you want to use a really delicate touch so you don’t harm a plant, but you also want the strength of wire.
Garden Edging
The dollar store actually has a lot of great little mini wooden fences that make great garden edging, as well as trellises and big pieces of bamboo that you can use as support. I was really pleased to see all the natural-looking wood options this year. I usually think of dollar store trellis and edging as being plastic or metal and really tacky, but these are actually really nice, especially for a farmhouse style garden like mine!
Also, bonus points go to all of the netting options they have there for keeping birds and pests out that I found right next to the pretty wood edging. 🙂
Garden Gloves
Well, you probably really only need one good pair of garden gloves to get you through the season, but if your family is anything like mine, then you probably tend to misplace your garden gloves more often than not. Extra pairs are always a good idea, especially if you have kids who like to help you in the garden for a little while and then take their gloves up to play and leave them all over the property. We keep a basket of garden gloves in the mudroom and just try not to worry about mismatched pairs too much. 🙂
Mini Rakes and Trowels
Small hand tools are absolutely essential for gardening, whether you’re pulling weeds or filling a new planter. It never seems to fail though, no matter how high-quality the hand tools are that we purchase, at some point they go missing, so I’m over spending $20 on one trowel. I like to stock up on dollar store hand tools now so I never hesitate to let the kids borrow them or help me in the garden with an extra one. I’ve also found in recent years that the dollar store trowels that manage not to get lost over the course of a season or two are actually much more durable than the dollar store hand tools of years past!
Galvanized Buckets
I’ve been shouting my love for dollar store galvanized containers from the rooftops ever since I first discovered how to age those cheapo shiny buckets to make them look perfectly aged and farmhousey. And I’ll do it again! 🙂 Of all the different dollar store gardening supplies, these are probably my favourite, even though you find them with the boxes and baskets, not the gardening stuff. These galvanized buckets make the best planters for all of your summer annuals and they cost just a fraction of what you’d pay for a regular planter in a garden centre!
Terracotta Pots
If you like the classic look of terracotta pots, the dollar store is the best place to find them. They always seem to have an assortment of sizes and you can’t beat the price! Check out my post on Aging Terracotta Pots With Paint for an explanation of how to give brand new pots a little extra charm instantly.
Tomato Cages
The dollar store gardening section seems to get bigger and bigger every year and I was so impressed with their selection of tomato cages and other various supports this year. Tomato cages are great for holding up a number of different plants and they also had some of those great peony rings as well, which are perfect for all kinds of fast-growing perennials.
Kids’ Garden Tools
Not only are the kids’ garden tools that you can find at the dollar store super cute, they can really help buy you some precious gardening time with you have toddlers and preschool-aged kids. You can find tiny shovels and rakes at garden centres that are just as high quality as real ones, but for $3 at the dollar store, this shovel has served us well over the last few years. The metal is a little on the soft side, so it has been bent out of shape a time or two, but bending it back into place is easy. For the price we paid, you really can’t beat it!
Soil Scoops
Soil scoops are my latest little discovery this year and the dollar store has a huge selection of them. They’re so simple, but they make such a difference when you’re trying to fill 20 planters with potting mix. I’ve always just used my trowel for moving and distributing different types of soil and potting mixes but using a big soil scoop makes the whole process about ten times easier. It’s my dream to have a little potting area with big lidded containers of different types of soils and potting mixes in big lidded containers, each one with its own soil scoop. I’ve got the scoops for it now at least! 🙂
What dollar store gardening supplies have you found to be super useful?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.