Aldi + Goodwill = Hanging Baskets

I’ve told you before that I’m no master gardener. But, I do like to try my hand at growing food and beautifying the outside of our house with plants, and this year I decided I wanted to put up some hanging baskets.

Weis carries hanging baskets, but the cheapest, smallest ones they carry are $12-$15. I wanted to put up 5, and the idea of forking over $60 was less than appealing to me. I’m not positive how much these cost at Home Depot or Lowe’s, though the prices there are probably better than the grocery store prices.

Happily, I haven’t even had to check at a garden/home improvement store because Aldi has intermittently carried these lovely (empty) hanging baskets over the summer for the appealing price of $3.99.

I even got 2 of my baskets at the reduced price of $2.99. Yay! So, my 5 baskets have only run me $18, which is not much more than the price of a single basket at Weis.

I had a old black wrought iron hook for the first basket, and we bought one from Lowe’s for my second basket.

I found these two packages of white hooks at Goodwill for $1 apiece (they’re from Caldor and were made in 1980!). I didn’t want white, but I knew I could fix that, so I bought them.

After some primer and spray paint, they’re now as black as my other hooks.

(please excuse our obviously unfinished deck staining job. We’ve got the deck, railings, and posts stained, but we haven’t tackle the beams and other underside pieces yet…it’s been above the recommended temperature for days!)

I thought you might like to see that one of my baskets is hanging right by my retractable clothesline. 😉

The baskets in these pictures have baby marigold plants in them (and nasturtium seeds, which will be popping up soon), and one of the upper deck baskets has geraniums from Aldi in it.

My baskets make me all happy when I look at them, and I’m especially happy that they didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Yay for Aldi and Goodwill!