If you’re one of the select people gifted with green thumbs and a love of everything gardening, you may start to wonder how you can use your gardening skills to make money. You can do some basic things to monetize your garden, such as selling produce, but some extra out-of-the-box ideas may appeal to your other interests. These unique ways to make money by gardening can link your other hobbies together and create a more interesting use for your garden.
Make Tea or Oils
Fans of fragrant flora who won’t back down from a challenge may enjoy trying their hand at making tea blends or fragrance-infused essential oils. When growing tea, you may need to wait up to three years for the tree to fully mature—but after it’s ready, you can create white, green, black, or oolong tea for any blend ideas you may have. Find the perfect mix of dried spices, fruits, and flowers for a signature flavor.
If you’re planning to create your own infused oils, remember to make the final product safe for skin. Typically, essential oil crafters tone down their pure infused oils with carrier oils, such as coconut or olive oil. Feel like a real-life potion maker by combining your favorite-smelling plants into an oil-based fragrance, perfecting the trade, and selling your own products.
Garden All Year with Hydroponics
Local restaurants don’t just close during the winter if they don’t have local produce—they transport it from somewhere else or switch to different seasonal menus. Offer out-of-season fruits and vegetables to small restaurants and dinner tables in your town by learning how to garden with hydroponics. Whether you keep it in your home or in a greenhouse, a hydroponic garden allows you to form a closer connection to your plants and learn the science behind water and nutrients. After you successfully harvest and sell your produce, you may consider expanding the garden outside of your home to create a hydroponic business.
Start a Gardening Blog
Do you want to show to the world how well you know how to garden? With a love for writing and photography, you can create a public blog to share the progress in your garden and provide updates to dedicated followers. Try to think of any interesting things that make your content stand out. Topics such as finding time to garden with kids and gardening in small spaces may generate the most views. If you’re not confident in your ability to design a web page, consider starting with a small, separate social media page and moving up from there.
Blogging is one of the more unique ways to make money by gardening since you’re not earning money directly from your garden itself. You’re using the knowledge you’ve gained from the garden to inform others—something that’s just as valuable as your harvests. Create meaningful partnerships with businesses and generate advertisement revenue to pocket some extra cash.