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21: FOODIE FRIDAY- 10 Garden Hacks to Save YOU Money This Summer!

• Marnie Martin- Midlife Mentor, Empowerment Coach, Happiness Expert, Best Selling Author • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Ready to transform your gardening experience while saving serious money? Welcome to the first-ever Foodie Friday segment where I'm diving into garden hacks that will revolutionize both your garden and your grocery budget.

As someone who finds profound joy in growing and cooking my own food, I've discovered ingenious ways to stretch every dollar in the garden. From regrowing grocery store purchases to utilizing "waste" in creative ways, these hacks embody a zero-waste approach that's both practical and deeply satisfying. 

Ever wondered if those green onion roots could keep producing? They absolutely can – and they'll even survive winter in many climates! My living lettuce hack transforms a $1.99 grocery store purchase into weeks of fresh salads. By repurposing beet seedlings, turning tomato "suckers" into new plants, and propagating herbs through simple cuttings, you'll multiply your garden's yield without spending an extra penny.

The truly game-changing practices come from using parts we typically discard. Those cauliflower leaves make incredible chips. Vegetable scraps transform into the most flavorful soup stocks you've ever tasted. Even those onion ends can grow into whole new onions with a little patience.

These techniques aren't just money-savers – they connect us more deeply to our food and the natural cycles of growth. They remind us that abundance is often hiding in plain sight, waiting for us to recognize the potential in what we already have.

Whether you're gardening in containers on a tiny balcony or tending sprawling garden beds, these practical tips will help you maximize every inch while minimizing waste. Join me in discovering how the garden can teach us lessons in sustainability, creativity, and delicious possibility.

Ready to get growing? Subscribe for more Foodie Friday segments where we'll continue exploring ways to make life more delicious from garden to table!

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Speaker 1:

Hey, beautiful friend, it's Marni. Welcome back to this episode of Life is Delicious. Now, today we are actually going to talk about something that's a little left of center than what we have been talking about, but I've decided to add a specific segment to the show because I am a huge foodie. I love to grow vegetables, I love to grow flowers, I love to cook. It's all something that I really love, and that's one of the reasons I actually named the podcast Life is Delicious, because it is delicious and so much of what makes my life happy and joyful is, a being able to grow my own food and, b being able to cook for myself and for the people that I love. So I wanted to add a segment today called Foodie Friday, and we're going to do this one once a month and I'm just going to add a few little tips and tricks on how you can make the most of your garden or your kitchen, and today I have got 10 garden hacks that will help you save loads of money this summer. Garden hacks that will help you save loads of money this summer. So if this is something that lights you up and makes you feel excited, because you love to do that as well, I hope you'll stick around because I have some really great ideas for you and you don't want to miss them. Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Marni Martin and I'm so glad you're here. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious family.

Speaker 1:

This podcast isn't about surviving midlife. It's about crafting your next chapter life overflowing with purpose, joy and delicious possibilities. Listen, midlife doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be a beautiful invitation to remember who we are, to rediscover a new version of ourself, or to completely reinvent our life to reflect who we are becoming now. So if you're tired of being exhausted, living life on autopilot and putting everyone else first, then you are in the right place. Each week, we'll bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies, as well as inspiration, to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your joie de vivre. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

So I've been really playing with my garden. Last year I put in one garden bed with the help of some friends and my son. I hadn't had a garden actually for a few years and I had no idea that it was going to bring me that much joy, but it just did, and it was my first sort of experiment not my first experiment with growing my own food, but my most recent and I just kind of came back to that love of being out in the garden and it just made my backyard look better and it was so much fun. I grew flowers, sunflowers, as well as an array of other things, and this year I was super fortunate that I got to add two more garden beds, also with the help of my friends, and some amazing soil that we got to put in that was 100% compost and it has taken off like crazy. So this year I'm trying a whole lot of new things, but I'm learning a lot of stuff too, so I wanted to share some of the little things that I've done over the years. This year in particular, I've found I'm learning so much more about how to have a bit more of zero waste in the garden, so being able to utilize everything that I plant and we'll get into that a little bit later and also how I use grocery store bought items to amplify the garden and to be able to have sort of a cut and come again situation that you can use over and over and over, and it saves you having to buy that at the grocery store every week. So it's awesome. So here we go.

Speaker 1:

Garden hack number one is green onions. Now I know this sounds like it's pretty obvious, but a few years back, I buy green onions all the time. It's something that I keep in my kitchen constantly and honestly, I think it was last year was the first time I actually was like. You know, the ends of the green onions already have roots on them, so I cut them about an inch up from where the ends of the green onions are, and when I'm choosing them, I specifically look for ones that have nice solid roots. But if they don't, you can take them and put them into a little shot glass or a little cup of water and just leave them there for maybe a week and you'll see them like in day one or two they will actually start to grow and you'll see them growing right away. But you can actually put them directly into soil. Either way works.

Speaker 1:

I've done a little bit of both. Sometimes I want a little bit more of a root base. So I will keep them in the water for three or four days till they sort of start to sprout a bit more, and then I just take them out, poke a hole in the dirt and stick them in. And I have grown green onions in containers and in the garden. And in the containers I'm not even kidding, they actually winter over here on Vancouver Island. So I had them in pots outside. I just kind of chucked them over into the corner like it's not gardening season anymore, and I came out and went holy cow, those green onions are still growing and producing. So it's one of those things that we like to call cut and come again. So when you put them in the garden they'll just continue to produce. You won't get so much of the whites, because the whites are sort of buried underground, but you'll have green onions all year long.

Speaker 1:

So I will sometimes plant like 12 to 18 of them just so that I have a nice little stash. And then you know, I try to stagger my cuttings. But it's an awesome thing to do. And for what? $1.47 or something. You can buy a bunch of green onions and eat off them all summer long.

Speaker 1:

So number two is lettuce. So this hack is one of my all-time favorites and this year I just started. I do grocery delivery, so I have Walmart quite often bring my groceries here. I buy something called living lettuce and I just learned about this last year and supposedly when you buy the lettuce with the roots still on it, with the root ball, it actually is supposed to last much longer in your fridge than traditional lettuce. So I bought that originally just to try it out, and then I got to thinking same thing with the green onions. I thought it already has roots on it.

Speaker 1:

Why wouldn't I try to take these apart and plant them in the garden? So I have planted them in individual pots on my steps on my patio and this year I actually took them and put them right into the garden and I am not kidding you, that is amazing. I had no idea you could do sort of a cut and come again thing with this, but the trick is to just remove the outer lower leaves and let the center stay intact. But honestly, I think it's $1.47 or $1.99 and you can get three different individual lettuces and they're not super huge. But I take a little bit off and keep it in the fridge and then I just plant them direct into the garden, into the dirt, and they continue to produce. I have some in the garden now that I've probably had for four to six weeks and I've had a continual harvest, and at some point they may get to a place where they will bolt, but at that point you just pull them out of the garden, throw them into the compost and then you can buy more. So it's one of those things. That's a really inexpensive lettuce hack so you can eat good quality crunchy, awesome garden fresh lettuce all summer long.

Speaker 1:

Now the other thing about lettuce that's really cool is if you have a small space. A lot of people don't think they can grow lettuce, but almost all lettuces grow really well in a pot and I have a butter crunch lettuce. I have a bunch of arugula and I've done two different sets of arugula in pots and I am so impressed by how well it produces and you just go out and give it a little haircut, maybe on one side, and the next week it'll come back. Then you cut the other side and it's a really great way to be able to eat a variety of different lettuces in a small space. So I hope you give that a try, all right.

Speaker 1:

Number three is beets and turnips. So what I did this year and it was my first time ever trying beets and turnips and so I direct sowed them into the garden, and then of course they have to be thinned right, because they get out, you get way too many. So this year what I did is I let them grow until they were at least one to two inches tall, and at that point they have enough of a little root on the bottom that when you take them out and you pluck them to make space for the other ones, you can actually direct sow those right back into the dirt. So this year I've had so much fun. I've never actually made my garden quite as compact as I did this year, but this year I actually used up every last little space. So all those little turnips are tucked in between the lettuces, they're tucked around the zucchinis, they're tucked under my broccoli, they're under my kale, and the turnips in particular are actually really hardy and, just you know, take right away. They have like about one to two days where they're a little bit wilty and then they just spring right back up.

Speaker 1:

The thing I love about the beets is that the greens. You can eat all of the greens, so I love that because they're beautiful. The ones I grew were red beets, but there's such a huge variety to choose from. You could have a whole array of different kinds of beets, but the red ones that I seeded have a beautiful red leaf and they're delicious. And if you actually cut them at the base, where the beet is, then the stems of the leaves can actually be chopped up and used in stir fries or use almost like a celery of sorts in your salads and that sort of thing, and so it's really fun to be able to go. I'm not going to waste any of this stuff. I'm actually going to use it. And if you don't end up wanting to put it in salads, I have another awesome little hack which I'll get to later, and it's all about putting excess veggies in the freezer to make soup stock later. We'll talk about that at the end of the episode.

Speaker 1:

So number four is red and white onions. I had no idea. I am a big proponent of saving all of my scraps to make soup, so quite often, as we just talked about, I would cut off the end of the onion. That has, you know sort of that little kind of root at the end and I would throw them in a Ziploc bag and just keep them for whenever I wanted to make turkey soup or whatever. But those little ends that have the little roots per se are exactly like green onions, and apparently I've tried it. I haven't harvested anything yet, but I'm doing a little garden experiment and I put them directly into dirt and started to water them and they are starting to sprout and it's amazing. So I'll keep you posted on that. But if you're curious about a little bit more about how that works, definitely look it up on YouTube, because what I've seen on YouTube from people is when you plant them and let them sprout, you may have to wait until like the fall for them to actually harvest, but apparently they make two to three actually whole onions right from just that one little end piece. So I'm super excited to see how that works out and I'll keep you posted.

Speaker 1:

Number five I learned some new things about tomatoes. I'm a huge tomato grower, I love to grow all different kinds and I'm a bit of a kamikaze in terms of being a single gal with eight tomato plants, which is way more than one person should ever eat or could ever eat. So what I learned this year, though, is that there are supposed to be and again, I would do some YouTubing on this, but I believe that there is supposed to be one to two main shoots on your tomato plants, and then, if you get those big suckers that kind of come out at the junctions of where the leaves and the stalks start, if you let them get big enough, or if you happen to see one that's gotten quite big, often we'll look at it and go, oh great, more tomatoes are going to come off there, but what that does is actually takes a little bit of the energy away from the plant, so removing those suckers allows the tomato to put all of its energy into fruit production of the main stalk or the secondary stalk, if you have two. So what I never knew before is that those suckers because I've had a couple that I had to remove, and it kind of broke my heart because they were pretty established. Obviously, I didn't catch them when I was in the garden, so I went out and I was like, oh, it's like four inches long, how do I take that off? But what you can do, snip it with a sharp knife and you can actually root those as a whole new tomato plant and I had no idea, and I've been growing tomatoes for 20 years and that's all new to me so you can put them into water and sprout them. Apparently, I haven't tried that. The ones that I took off of mine, I put directly into the dirt and I'll granted, they look dead for probably a good week and they have just started to come back, and there was one in particular. I thought, oh, this isn't going to work, so I pulled it out and it had a whole bunch of roots on the bottom, so I tucked it back in and we'll see what happens with that. But it's just so fun to experiment with things like that and if you think about it, you can get one really great or two really great tomato plants. Wait for those suckers to come up, snip them off and you've got a whole new plant. So that's another way to really save some great money in your garden. Okay, number six basil.

Speaker 1:

And I know there are a lot of other herbs I'm imagining you can do this with as well, but I happened to watch this one particular YouTube video. I believe it's called Epic Gardening and his name is Kevin and he's awesome. And he said don't go out and buy a whole bunch of different basils. Take a little bit more of your money and pick two to three nice gourmet basils, ones that you want to mix it up a little bit like a Thai basil or a Genovese basil, and then take cuttings off of them. And there's a particular way to do this and he'll explain that if you check it out on YouTube, for sure. But when you do a little cutting off of these basil plants and then you put them into water, they will root within a week and so again, you can get one to two to three really nice, beautiful, maybe a little more expensive basil plants and you can continue to propagate more basil off those all summer long. So it's a really great way to save some money there too.

Speaker 1:

And I plant my basil just beneath my tomatoes because apparently your tomatoes are actually supposed to taste better when they're paired with basil at the base, and my basil seems to really like it because it doesn't get blasted with sun. It's got a little bit of shade there, but still the nice warmth of the garden dirt. So that seems to be a really great fit for me. And yeah, then you get to have spaghetti sauce and all kinds of the good Italian things that basil and tomato go together. So it's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Number seven this is my very first year growing broccoli and cauliflower and I am really, really new to this, so I had no idea what to expect. So I put in a purple sprouting broccoli, which I think was the wrong season for it. It's grown a little bit, but it's a beautiful plant and they're nice and tall and stocky. So I've got a lot of things planted underneath them which are doing super well because they have that little bit of a shady space. But I think that broccoli actually is going to produce more, like in the cool season or even possibly winter over. So it is June now, so we'll see. I'm playing with that. But my cauliflower it went crazy. I've just recently harvested about four cauliflowers and they were all almost the whole size of a dinner plate. It was insane. And I've because I've never grown cauliflower. I just assumed that each individual cauliflower only produces one head. Well, each one of mine actually had two and I had, I think two of my plants had three. So I've got little baby cauliflowers coming off the side.

Speaker 1:

But one of the things that I found was so interesting and I just didn't know this before was that broccoli and cauliflower leaves are edible. And the cauliflower leaves are huge and they kind of have a texture like cabbage, kind of between a cabbage and a chard. So they're a little bit more dense and thick. And I just pulled them off and I thought what am I going to do with these? So I chopped them up, because I'm trying not to waste anything. It's nice to put things in the compost as well, but if I can eat it, I'm not going to compost it. So I took all the leaves and I've chopped them up finely and I put them into a zippy freezer bag so I could use them in smoothies. And they do have a little bit more of a stronger flavor than, say, a spinach would, but I still really like it. And then my freezer was starting to get a little bit full because there was so many big leaves. So I thought what else can I do with these? So I did some research and I found out you can make just like a kale chip. You can use broccoli and cauliflower greens to make chips. So again, I put them into the oven with some nutritional yeast and some garlic salt and you can add red pepper flakes or a little cayenne pepper if you want some heat, and roast them at I think it was 300 for 15 to 20 minutes and oh my gosh, they are so yummy and it's one of those zero guilt snacks. If you just need something to munch on in the evening, you can sit there and snack for 15 minutes and it's like eating a salad, so I think that's a win all day long.

Speaker 1:

Number eight herbs. I actually told Alexa to put dried oregano on my grocery list the other day and then I caught myself and I thought wait a minute, why am I doing that? I have a whole patch of oregano outside. So I went and gave it a massive haircut, brought it in, popped it into the air fryer on dehydrate and, oh my gosh, I was like why haven't I been doing this all along? So sometimes it takes a minute to remind yourself that there's things in your garden that you can actually utilize that we forget sometimes to do so. Again, mint is the same thing. There's thyme. I don't haven't dried any of the basil, but I probably will this year because I'll have quite a bit. And once again, what a great way to fill your herb cabinet up or your freezer, because I keep all of my herbs in the freezer until I need them. And yeah, it's an awesome way to add a little bit more to your pocketbook Number nine. Add a little bit more to your pocketbook Number nine tomatoes.

Speaker 1:

So if you have too many tomatoes which a lot of us do you can only make so much salsa and so much spaghetti sauce. But one of the things I love to do is to just take the tomatoes and put them onto, cut them into pieces and put them onto a cookie sheet, drizzle a little bit of olive oil. You can put some balsamic vinegar. Put them onto a cookie sheet, drizzle a little bit of olive oil. You can put some balsamic vinegar. You could just drizzle some of that dried oregano or basil or thyme on there as well. Whatever, however you want to flavor it. You could use rosemary too, because that would be delicious. But I will put them into the oven on low and just let them almost get like a sun-dried tomato, and it just intensifies the flavor, and then you can keep them in the freezer for whenever you're going to make a sauce or a soup or whatever you need. And it's such a great way to not waste our tomatoes, but also to amplify their flavor and make them a little more versatile for whatever you want to cook in the winter months when you don't have those fresh tomatoes.

Speaker 1:

So number 10 is what I brought up a little bit earlier and it took me a few years to get in the habit of doing this. But now that I've gotten into the habit I absolutely love it. It's I keep all of my scraps from everything that I cook and I have a big, huge freezer bag in my freezer and I just bring it out whenever I'm making a stir fry or making soup or making whatever a salad, and I take all of the ends of anything that's in good shape, not rotten or anything, and I just pop it into the bag. So it's an array of things. It could be beet greens, it could be, you know, ends of onions, which I hopefully will be planting now. It could be anything celery stalks, you name it and I throw it in there and just keep it in the freezer. And then when I have a little chicken that I've roasted or a turkey carcass, I will put it in to, you know, make the broth for it, and then I throw in all the veggies with it and I can tell you 100%, my soup game upped about 50% when I started doing that. It just adds a different level of flavor to your soup stock and I even made some bone broth the other day and used all of my veggies from the freezer and it turned out really, really yummy and really super healthy and again, you're just not having to buy soup stock if you can make your own. So it's a great way to save and use your scraps to create something yummy. So here's a little bonus tip and this is not a garden hack, this is just a great freezer hack.

Speaker 1:

I am a single gal, so I don't actually eat a lot of chips or crackers or rice cakes or any of that stuff. I mean, I do, but I don't eat them fast enough to actually have them not go stale. So one of the things I thought I would try it was one Christmas when I had been doing some charcuterie boards and I had a whole array of different kinds of crackers and chips and things and I thought what on earth am I going to do with these, because I can't eat them fast enough or they're going to end up going stale. So I wrapped them with an elastic band and I put them all into a freezer Ziploc bag and I put them into my freezer and it is honestly one of the best ways to preserve your crackers, your chips, your breads of any kind. If you want to make breadcrumbs, you can keep all the extra pieces of heels and stuff of your bread, as well as things like rice cakes and rice crackers. They all perform absolutely perfectly in the freezer. And I take my taco chips same thing. I just pull a few out for whatever taco night I'm doing and I put the whole bag into the freezer and then, when I want some, I just pull some out and they are as crisp as when I first opened the bag. And so now I actually do keep like my corn tortillas. And you know, if you get the hard taco shells, those keep brilliantly in the freezer as well. And I'm going to do a whole Foodie Friday on freezer hacks because I am a crazy freezer person. I freeze everything, including my herbs, and there's a whole bunch of things, so we will talk about that on another episode. So there you have it, friends. That's 10 garden hacks that hopefully will save you a boatload of money this summer and also give you some joy in your garden to see if you can make things go a little further than you did before.

Speaker 1:

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope it inspired you or motivated you in some way to keep going and to create your very best life. Want to know what to do next? Share this episode with someone that you love who maybe just needs a little more delicious in their life. Women, where like-minded women come together to support and inspire each other, and where we get to hang out together and I offer cool bonuses, videos and some extra content. And lastly, don't forget to subscribe so that when new episodes drop, they'll be queued up and ready for you. In case no one has told you today, there's not one person on this planet that is exactly like you, and the world is a better place because you're here. So thank you for being here. I'll be back next week and I hope you'll join me right here on Life is Delicious.