Anyone else growing your own to try to mitigate price rises?

[12yearsinazkaban]

We tightened our belts back in 2020 when things were a bit rocky and decided to try to grow our own food and I am so glad we did now that the cost of food has gone up. I am really stepping it up this year to hopeful grow enough for my family (parents and siblings not just us).

Is anyone else considering it? Compost is usually about 3 or 4 pounds for 40 litres and seeds are 29p in lidl. Pots are abundant if you have a bin a drill or knife for drainage holes. There are lots of heavy croppers such as courgettes (wonder what thread inspired this one?) and beans and lettuce.
We never ever pay for lettuce anymore. Just have a pot in the kitchen and pick as we go. Same with spring onions. We had herbs before we moved but I don't know what happened to them.

Not to mention its good your you, and can encourage better eating habits and eating more seasonally. I know its a privilege to have the time but I'm a sahm because we can't afford nursery fees so this is my way of 'contributing' to the family finances. and boy did it help.
First year was a trial and error, but second year was amazing. the wealth of free knowledge on the Internet. We also throw less rubbish away from packaging and food scraps are composted so taking the bin out had halved too.

I didn't know that one cucumber plant will grow a cucumber or 2 every other day, and courgette plants give sometimes up to 2 or 3 a day. Massive! Beans, French beans, runner beans, bloody lovely and hundreds. Tomatoes are easy enough too. A couple plants started now is absolutely doable for some. I really don't know where I'd be if we hadn't tried it. It really is a life saver for us at the moment.

I bought perpetual spinach seeds and have three large crops and it's wonderful.

I'm lazy so what sticks sticks. I have a capsicum plant now, find they grow better as single plants in a pot. Nothing yet but it's my baby. This was from a pepper I ate.

I need to get into gear for more. It would practically eradicate our food bill as we're a plant-based family.

What's easy to grow?

I'm having a lot of success with microgreens, I can't see us buying any salad leaves this summer, the set up costs are low but I need to bulk buy seeds somewhere to make it more cost effective.

I'm not really doing it too save money, although it will, more from a having fresh salad greens to eat perspective. I'm planning to move soon so I'm not planting anything in the garden this year, unless it's a few things in pots that can be moved with me.

Spinach, as you know, any leaves are great as they are so expensive in the shops.
Courgettes are the best, beans, tomatoes, radish, cucumber is really good. beetroot are quick and so nice. what else? pumpkins and squash are Hardy and even though I forgot to water god knows how many times we got loads. we sort of match our diet to what's cropping so we basically ate courgette in everything. I wouldn't bother with cabbage or cauliflower or broccoli first year. They didn't work for me yet

Although sprouting broccoli (is it tender stem in the shop) did well. And if you leave it to flower and go to seed you get free seeds for next year.
chives and onions. loads really.

do you have a garden? or just pots?

Ah when we moved our potted plants got forgotten about and most weren't planted put in time and we lost a few on the move. It was horrible.

Apparently aubergines crop well but ours have never made it.

Wow, didn't know that about courgettes!

I'm doing it more from the fact that I've switched to organic, and it's that much cheaper. I'm also worried about supply issues later on in the year due to the war, so prefer to have a private supply.

I've got tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes on the go already, will add courgettes.

Can you give me some advice. I'm a very lazy gardener and want something that just grows each year with zero effort from me. I have rosemary and sage, raspberries (although I find them quite difficult to pick because of all the prickles). I also have some apple trees and two pear trees (never had a single pear though).

@thecats try cucumbers too if you gave hanging baskets they take no space (but lots of water) we got a waterbutt from Facebook market place so no extra cost on the bills.
for years I was under the impression it would be expensive but it pays for itself after a while

Oh and a tip from me! My husband always picks loads of blackberries in the autumn and freezes them. I never knew what to do with them and just added to apple pies. I've discovered they're really good in smoothies with apple juice and banana.

I am a bit squeamish about things I grow myself. I've tried a few things like herbs, strawberries, but it always goes a bit overgrown or mouldy and I stop wanting to eat it.

Am I missing something about setting up the ideal environment for growing? I've got a planter and some pots with dead old shrubs in, so I want to reporpose to grow. I understand the basics of dirt and fertiliser. Should I use netting? Cover with bark to stop weeds, or leave it bare?

When something like lettuce is ready, how much do you pick in order to stop it going overgrown and skanky? Do you get what I mean? I really want to get over my aversion to the outdoors - dirt, bugs, mould, wetness...

I grow my own herbs to save money. I've never had much luck with vegetables. My garden seems to have every pest known to man. My cucumbers had mosaic virus, my raspberries had sawfly, my lettuces were filled with tiny white flies. My only success was two blueberry bushes in pots which gave me hundreds of blueberries and the herbs which seem to survive as long as I use nematodes to keep the slugs away.

I've grown my own for quite a few years even more so when I bought my greenhouse 4 years ago. This year I'm growing tomatoes cucumber, padron chillies, peppers aubergines, kalettes, cabbage, leeks, shallots, celery, beetroot, little gem lettuce, radish, spring onions, salad leaves, French beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, courgettes, pumpkin, butternut squash, potatoes, pak choi, cape blueberries and loads of different herbs and a blueberry, fig and quince.

We grow a lot of fruit and veg on our allotment. We grow gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, lettuce, radishes, apple trees, beans, onion, garlic, parsley, rosemary, thyme and spinach.

It's great that it's home grown as we know there are no pesticides, but I wouldn't say it saves us money. It's only our second year with the allotment, and once we'd bought the plants, essential tools such as a strimmer for the grass paths, spade, fork, trowels, kneeling mat, gardening gloves etc, it's probably cost us more than the food would.

But still, we enjoy it and get organic food from it, so it's worth doing.

you sort of just have to eat it, but I know what you mean, with lettuce just pick a leaf or 5 everyday and have on a sandwich (from the bottom) so you're always harvesting fresh leaves.

to stop pests you need to try companion planting. planting flowers like marigolds with tomatoes deter pests. What else? I don't know really, I started eating straight off the plant and when I didn't die it was reinforced that this food is safe.

also think about all the pesticides (basically poisons) sprayed on your food. At home the worse you get is a bit of rain water.
I didn't like slugs or worms when I started but now I can pick them up and move the slugs but it was a gradual shift in my perspective. Took a while to get over "plastic is safe" midset.

I can also sit with spiders no as there's so many there. I know its not the same thing but it's in the same category.

It's easy to spend more than you save (compost, seeds, pots, plants) if you don't think it through. A crucial (but often overlooked) principle is to grow what you will eat. Learning how to save your own seed can help - or there are tricks like planting a discarded bit of tomato or planting root vegetable tops to get them to grow again. Avoid expensive F1 hybrid seeds.

If you have a bit of space, soft fruit is probably the best investment - very low maintenance, less space than fruit trees, and you're growing something that is very expensive to buy in shops. You can get soft fruit plants very cheaply in high street discounters and as long as they look reasonably healthy they'll probably do you proud with a little TLC. They will almost certainly need netting in the fruiting season so birds don't carry off your harvest. It's worth having a good look around for foraging opportunities like blackberries and wild plums in your local area. I love wild garlic this time of the year but you have to know where to find it and how to identify it (the smell is a real giveaway!). Windowsill microgreens/sprouts, herbs and salad are great, though managing sowing/harvesting/using so you have them at the right time can take a bit of getting used to.

Oh, one green/money-saving tip is to save your yoghurt/cream pots and food trays - make holes in the bottom of the yoghurt pots and use them as plant pots, and stand them in the trays to catch the water. You can even cut up plastic lids to make labels.

We grow allsorts but started with a fruit cage. You can pick when you want and the birds don't get there first. Fruit tends to be expensive so it's a good saving too.

As others say, it's easy to spend more than you save. I suspect we still do spend more but its our hobby too. We have peas already in and planted 70 beets today. Love beetroot hummus and roast beets. Will grow a lot of sweetcorn and salads and herbs. In the greenhouse we have tomatoes but will probably end up with far too many in a 4 month period, and return to buying 8 months of the year.

It's fun to do but some things you won't really save by growing yourself, if that's the main aim.

I've got a few pots of potential food. Only thing is, I live in a flat sonam growing in the communal area. Really glad downstairs neighbour has moved as he attacked my plants in the past.

We enjoying growing veg but don't feel it saves money. The best bit about it is being able to eat stuff straight from the garden
Also you do have to be prepared to eat what is ready

I personally don't find that it saves me money, although if I did get into it on a bigger scale maybe I'd reap the rewards in years to come.

However I love it as a hobby, I love eating something I've grown myself and seeing my DDs get involved in learning how fruit and vegetables grow.

Last year I used toilet roll tubes to plant tomato seeds (from some shop bought tomatoes that had gone a bit squishy in my fridge) and stood the tubes in an old mushroom punnet. When the seedlings were big enough I planted them out into bigger pots still in the toilet roll tubes as the cardboard just rots down and it was really successful. I did similar with old egg cartons cut up to make individual little pots for seeds.

I forgot to say that in an attempt to save money on pots etc we do have a strange range of planters, anything from fizzy water bottles to baked bean cans that my grandsons painted. It doesn't save money but we did it on a larger scale in 2020 when we couldnt always get the variety of vegetables

I’d love to grow more, but I’m limited to pots and also the slugs ruin a lot. I am growing lettuce from seed because it’s constantly out of stock in Tesco who deliver my shopping. I’ll probably get a couple of tomato plants, I’ve probably left it too late to plant seeds now. No point growing cucumbers because last time the slugs ate them all. I’ve tried to grow french beans before, but didn’t harvest many.

I have an awful lot of fruit trees and bushes. All bought vert cheaply so do take a year or so to start fruiting. But it's almost no effort for massive results.

Vegetables are cheaper than fruit and can go wrong very quickly in my experience. I'm sure I grew the worlds most labour intensive tomato's last year 🤦🏻‍♀️

Morrisons have £5 fruit trees in at the minute, so I added an apple and pear tree. They also have thornless blackberry plants, but I've a huge one already. Blueberries always seem to do well, we get thousands a year now the bushes have aged a bit.

We started with strawberries, tomatoes and herbs, all really easy to grow outside (I live in the South) , to be honest I just leave them outside all winter they die off and then just come back again. Chillies I do in smaller pots and move into the kitchen.
Peppers take a little more care, Courgettes and cucumbers are prolific once they get going but need moving indoors over winter, shed works for ours. Rocket, radishes, spring onions all really easy and just grow and grow. I've also got two giant pots one with a blueberry and one with a blackcurrant, I did buy these as seedlings but for very little from eBay! We're trying melon this year because it's DS' favourite but I'm not convinced about that one.
Not got into root veg yet, haven't got the motivation for raised beds or veggie patches, but I really enjoy the bits we do grow.
I work full time but find it doesn't take much, usually have one weekend around Easter getting everything sorted, then just a quick water in the evenings when it hasn't rained and pull out any weeds I see at the same time. DS loves helping and will suddenly eat things from the garden he would usually refuse.
Start with a few bits and add one or two new things each year, that's what we've done and it doesn't feel daunting.

hi,ive just ordered these if anybody is interested

www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/grow-your-own-fruit-trees-autumn-abundance-orchard-bundle

I have a few tomato plants now.

But is there anything I can still put in now that will work?