How to pinch pennies around the house

Tight times require some creativity and common sense. There are dozens of ways to pinch pennies around the house, starting with simple things like turning off the lights when you leave a room (all those watts add up) or dialing down the thermostat.

In the garden, conservation pays dividends threefold in saving money, water and time. It makes the fruit of your efforts that much sweeter.

As part of our weeklong series, here are more ways to save, this time around the home and garden.

Plant Vegetables

Under optimum conditions, one $1.99 packet of tomato seeds can produce 750 pounds of tomatoes. A half-ounce of lettuce seeds is enough to grow 12,000 heads; a typical $2 packet may contain 1,000 seeds. That's a lot of green for not much coin.

Make-It-Yourself Containers

You can make your own growing pots for seedlings out of newspaper. This will help to get those veggies growing early. As an alternative to expensive peat pots or plastic containers, try this idea courtesy of the California Garden Clubs' Kids Growing Strong program.

You need a page of black-and-white newspaper, a half-liter plastic water bottle and tape (cellophane or masking work fine). Cut a 5-inch strip of newspaper lengthwise (that's about 22 inches long).

Use the bottle as a mold. Place the bottle sideways on the sheet with about 1½ inches of paper extending past the bottom of the bottle. Roll the newsprint around the bottle into a cylinder. Secure the end with a little tape.

Fold the edge over the bottle bottom and secure with tape. Slide the newspaper off the bottle and you have a 3½-inch-tall pot. Fill with potting mix and plant a seed. Place pot in a tray or saucer and add water.

When ready to transplant in the garden, you can put the whole pot in the ground; the newspaper will dissolve, just like the peat pot.

Compost

Talk about turning trash into treasure. Composting recycles garden rubbish and kitchen scraps into nurturing fertilizer. The city of Modesto (www.modestogov.com, 538-2557) and other municipalities offer programs on easy backyard composting and discounts on composting bins.

Be Fertilizer Savvy

Your plants aren't fickle about brand names; they'll grow with the cheap stuff. When shopping for fertilizers, look at the numbers (the nutrients, not the price) on the side of the box. A typical balanced fertilizer will have a "grade" such as 10-10-10 (denoting the percentages of available nitrogen, phosphate and potash, respectively; the major nutrients needed for plant growth and development). Buy by the grade.

Coffee Grounds Mulch

Coffee grounds make great mulch for roses and other blooming plants, especially those that love acid soils such as camellias or azaleas. Ask your favorite barista for coffee grounds at your neighborhood coffee place.

Newspaper Mulch

Recycled newspaper is another effective mulch in the vegetable and flower garden. The USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service recommends using a quarter-inch-thick layer of newspapers around plants (that's the thickness of a typical Saturday edition of The Bee). Use primarily black-and-white pages; color inks may harm sensitive plants. (According to our production department, The Bee now uses mostly nontoxic soy-based inks, so our pages should be safe to use. But the full-color advertising inserts may not be.) A layer of newspaper -- which may take several months to break down -- helps regulate soil temperature and conserve moisture; that saves water and time weeding.

Caulk

That's money slipping through those cracks in your home. By properly sealing your home from the elements, you stop heat loss. That means lower energy bills. Look at the weatherstripping around windows and doors, too.