Expert Q&A Sessions, Gardening, Part 1: When are the best windows to buy seeds, tools, soil amendments, and plants?

In this interview we chatted with Luios1013 who has been a Slickdealer since 2019 and is a big time gardener.

Question: Can you tell us a bit about your gardening background?
Luios1013: Sure, I've been gardening for many years across a variety of climates. I currently reside in Zone 7b, which provides a nice temperate biome for growing flowers and vegetables like 8 months out of the year. I've got close to a dozen raised beds in my backyard, which offer over 400 sq ft of growing space (not counting in-ground flower beds and other more permanent landscaping features). To keep these filled up on a budget, I use a healthy mix of plants I grow from seeds and seedlings purchased at a variety of garden stores. I'm currently on a bit of a perennial growing kick, but I also have plenty of experience growing annuals, vegetable plants, bushes and grass. I try to do everything for my yard myself, both to save money and because it's (usually) a lot of fun. Plus, since I've been using Slickdeals for the majority of the time I've been gardening, it's been a site I've turned to time and again as I built out my library of tools, mulches and other gardening necessities.

Question: How do you think about timing purchases throughout the season — when are the best windows to buy seeds, tools, soil amendments, and plants?
Luios1013: Since gardening is a cyclical process, some purchases have pretty non-negotiable buying windows. To ensure a strong bloom or harvest, you need to start growing early enough in the season for your plants to have time to mature, but not so early that it's too cold for them to survive outside. Where I live in Zone 7B, this means I buy a lot of seeds in February to start indoors, and pick up seedlings once frost risk has subsided, usually at some point in May.

With these planned purchases on my calendar, I try to space out my tool and mulch purchases so they fall outside these times to avoid having to spend all my money at once. Black Friday is a great time to find gardening tool deals, but I've also found the start of the growing season (or just before it) yields some strong deals. Especially if you don't care about getting the latest and greatest power tool, you can often find killer deals on older models in March, as big box stores try to make way for new inventory. A few years ago, I got a slightly older model EGO mower for a fraction of its MSRP in March, and it's served me well ever since.

Question: What's the single biggest mistake gardeners make when trying to save money on supplies, and how do you avoid it?
Luios1013: I think a lot of beginners chase after their envisioned dream garden without doing enough research to ensure they're setting themselves up for success. Your local climate dictates what types of plants will do best in your yard, and not all plants play nicely with one another.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I knew tons of people who had trouble growing tomatoes in the extreme southern California heat, as these can stop producing in temperatures above 90–95°F. On the flip side, if you live in a colder zone with shorter growing seasons, you should avoid growing slow-maturing plants like sweet potatoes or melons, as they may not have enough time to yield any sort of harvest.

Similarly, you need to make sure that you're grouping plants with similar needs together. Especially if your overall grow space is limited, it can be tempting to put everything you want to grow in the same space, but you may find that their differing needs will cause problems. Want to grow herbs like thyme, rosemary or oregano? They prefer dry soil, and only need occasional watering. If they're in the same bed as water-loving plants like tomatoes or peppers, you're going to have to work hard to avoid drowning them.

For perennial plants, you should also take their mature size into account when planting. If you stuff your garden bed full of young perennials, you may run into trouble if they all triple in size over the next few years.

As you start to plan out your garden, take some time to learn about which plants do best in your zone. From there, do a little research on the plants you want to grow to figure out which groupings will work best. This will allow you to streamline your care routine and help prevent you from feeling like you have a "black thumb."