Making and saving money through your garden

It’s more important than ever to watch what you are spending and to save every penny. With that in mind, it might be time to look at how we can save and make money at home. Did you know that there is a huge variety of ways in which you can save and make money in your garden? There is a huge demand for organic, fresh produce and a much greater emphasis on becoming self-sustaining, so now is the perfect time to get your garden primed for not only making money but saving it too.

If you have a green thumb and an entrepreneurial spirit, turning your attention to your garden could be an easy way to make some money.

Keep chickens

Keeping livestock like chickens can be a good way to make passive income, as well as assuring a free, constant supply of eggs year-round.

Potential Earnings: From a flock of 10 hens, you could make up to £735 a year.

Selling eggs won’t make a huge profit, but you should be able to cover the costs of keeping your coop.

You can also make money from your chickens by[i]:

1. Selling day-old chicks – £4 – £20 per chick
2. Selling fertile eggs – £1 – £10 per egg
3. Selling meat – £2 per bird
4. Selling rare breed young hens – £500 per 100 pullets

Find out more about keeping chickens here.

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Beekeeping

Keeping bees can be a profitable venture for both hobbyists and professional beekeepers – you can make hundreds of pounds from a beehive each year[ii].

Potential Earnings: 5 hives could generate £2,025 a year from honey alone.

Initial costs to set up your hive will cost more than this, so you will need to wait for a year or so to recoup this money before you start turning a real profit.

You can also make money from your chickens by[iii]:

1. Selling pollen – £2 – £3.60 per 30g
2. Selling propolis – £4 – £6 per 30g
3. Selling beeswax – £15 per kg

Bees are extremely important for the environment. Find out more about bees here.

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Start a YouTube channel

Becoming a full-time Youtuber is a more viable career option than it has ever been before, which is great news for hobbyists around the world. Gardening is a YouTube niche that is doing particularly well, with well-known, popular YouTubers making a small fortune from ad revenue and sponsorships.

Potential Earnings: YouTubers doing well in this niche are making up to $169k a year.

Here are two of the most successful gardening channels.

1.    Epic Gardening

Views: 94.1k views a day[iv]

Net Worth: $677.5k

Annual Earnings: $169k

2.    Simplify Gardening

Views: 400,000 views a month[v]

Net Worth: $100k

Annual Earnings: $25k

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Selling Crops

If you grow crops to a good quality, you may be able to sell your crops to friends, family and at farmers markets.

If you’re serious about making money through growing fruit and veg, you may be wondering which crops are worth growing. Vegetables like carrots and potatoes are easy to grow but can be picked up for a very low price all year round, whereas other crops like chillies and asparagus come at a premium price, making them well worth growing.

In a price comparison across two supermarkets, we found that these were the most expensive vegetables being sold on average (per kg):

Worth growing

The lowest priced vegetables include potatoes, carrots and cauliflower. These are easy, high yielding crops to grow, but your garden space may be better used growing the higher value crop above.

Not worth growing

Here is a full breakdown of what we found:

*calculated from average prices of vegetables across two UK supermarkets

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Can you sell produce from an allotment?

Having an allotment is a great hobby, and a money saving activity. Although you cannot trade or conduct business on your allotment, there is nothing stopping you from taking produce away from your allotment to sell[vi].

However, you might have to wait a long time to access an allotment and turn over a profit if this is something you’d like to do, since the average wait time is around 18 months.

It isn’t that easy in every area, though. Some wait times are staggeringly high[vii].

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How your garden can help you save money on bills

There are plenty of ways that your garden can help you cut back on bills. For example, strategically planting trees creates a barrier which becomes a windbreak during the winter, preventing drafts and lessening energy bills. These trees also provide shade in the summer, which can stop your home heating up, reducing money spent on air conditioning or running fans.

[viii][ix]

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Sources

[i] https://cluckin.net/does-poultry-keeping-pay.html

[ii] https://www.bbka.org.uk/honey

[iii] https://grocycle.com/beekeeping-for-profit/

[iv] https://www.networthspot.com/epic-gardening/net-worth/

[v] https://www.networthspot.com/simplify-gardening/net-worth/

[vi] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jul/26/making-money-allotment-gardeners

[vii] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/garden/1498997/how-long-you-could-wait-for-allotment-data-evg

[viii] https://uk.style.yahoo.com/how-your-garden-can-save-you-money-105549744.html?

[ix] https://www.purinamills.com/chicken-feed/education/detail/how-long-do-chickens-lay-eggs-goals-for-laying-hens#:~:text=Laying%20hens%3A%20How%20many%20eggs,get%20shorter%20in%20the%20fall.