Your Garden for Zero Dollars: Seeds, Soil, and Tools You Can Get Without Spending a Dime

You’re walking down a side street in a quiet neighborhood and see a plastic bin sitting on a curb. It’s labeled “FREE” in messy black marker. Inside, there are half a dozen terracotta pots, a slightly rusty hand trowel, and a stack of plastic seed trays. For most people, this is just junk. For someone trying to grow their own food without going broke, it’s a gold mine. This post covers how you can source every single thing you need for a thriving backyard garden—seeds, mulch, soil, and tools—for absolutely zero dollars. It matters because the "big box" stores want you to believe that a few tomatoes require a hundred-dollar investment, but the truth is that nature (and your community) provides most of it for free if you know where to look.

Where can you find free seeds for your garden?

It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the public service world: the seed library. Public libraries across the country have realized that their mission of sharing information can extend to sharing biological heritage. I’ve seen libraries in Denver and Seattle that have entire card catalogs—the old-school wooden ones—filled with packets of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, and native flowers. You don’t even have to “return” them in the traditional sense. You take the seeds, grow the plants, and if you’re feeling generous, you let a few of those plants go to seed at the end of the season and bring a fresh batch back for the next person. It’s a beautiful system that costs you nothing but a library card.

If your local library hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, you’ve still got options. Many gardeners are obsessive savers. They’ll have hundreds of seeds for a specific variety of squash and nothing to do with them. Look for local seed swaps on Facebook or Nextdoor. These events are usually informal—often just a group of people meeting in a park—and they’re usually thrilled to give seeds to a beginner. You can also check out organizations like