Growing food

[sillysmiles]

Given the expected rise in bills over the next little while are you growing more food at home?
What are you growing and in what kind of space? How much do you think you need to make a genuine difference in your food bills? And let's not forget that gardening itself isn't free. Compost, seed, plant food etc....

Yes there is upfront cost but once you’ve got that it the costs are minimal
We made raised beds
Make own compost out of veg peelings, newspaper, garden clippings etc - pays off after the first 18m or so
Buy cheap seeds at Lidl, B&M etc
Collect seeds from your plants for the following year
Water butts to collect rainwater

We grow a variety of things now. Important to think about your climate. You can extend the growing season if you have cloches or polytunnels.

Gardenfocused is a good website

We do but not in a massive way. I try to priotise expensive stuff - herbs, salad, raspberries and strawberries. If we were staying in this house I'd have an asparagus bed. I don't bother with carrots or potatoes as they're so cheap and I don't have much time or space.

If you're just starting out, auction houses that do house clearance type stuff often have lots of gardening tools dirt cheap.

@sillysmiles come and join the Vegetable Patch thread. Lots of growing of fruit and veg growing going on there.

I don’t think you can grow it cheaper than you can buy it - can maybe grow tastier or with fewer chemicals, but not cheaper.

I think it’s hard to save money growing food. I grow my own but mainly because I enjoy it and it tastes better. Last year I probably spent £200+ on seeds, pots, compost, feed etc… and there’s no way I got that much veg out of it.

There are somethings you can grow that will eventually save you money, things that don’t need much upkeep and come back each year. I have planted a lot of fruit bushes over the past 3 years and the rhubarb always gives a good crop and takes hardly any looking after. But things like carrots, peas, potatoes and onions work out cheaper to buy.

I grow peas but they take up a lot of space, buy the time I have shelled them I’m lucky if I get enough for one meal 🤣.

Any tips for how to make a raised bed cheaply? Everything available that I have seen is a lot of money.

@AppleButter I buy pallet collars from a local factory for £2 each-they are like the ones you can get at B&Q etc but way cheaper!

You don't really save much by growing your own (except perhaps salad leaves which are easy to grow and madly expensive) - unless you factor in the quality and freshness. Everything I grow is organic (which costs more) and a lot of it I eat within hours of picking, so it's going to be much more nutritious. Plus I can grow crops like raspberries that are expensive and some like chard, jostaberries, pink currants that you don't see in the shops much.
I think you have to consider it a quality of life issue rather than a money saving one.

[quote KristinaYang]@AppleButter I buy pallet collars from a local factory for £2 each-they are like the ones you can get at B&Q etc but way cheaper![/quote]
This. I use pallet collars and they are super to get started. The thing is, it is expensive to start so grow things that you eat lots of that isn't cheap. So lettuce for example. And spinach. I grew both year round and was saving £5 a week just on these. Other things that are cheaper and harder work, not so much. So potatoes for example. I grow herbs because 5 tiny leaves of coriander fresh can add the same flavour as a bunch bought in the shops. Same with basil.

But it takes some thought and watering, and feeding if in pots. And you have to be able to cope with things being eaten. If you are sensitive about it you will get upset and give up.

The pallet collars look great - but i wonder where I can get them from affordably. Thank you for the idea. I suppose you have them flat against the ground, and the bottom layer full of twigs?

Long term it is definitely worth your while growing fruit if you have room for it. Rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries and apples are wonderful but you will not break even in the short term and most things can't be harvested in their first year as the plant needs to establish. You can have wonderful successes but on the whole grow your own does not save you money, as others have pointed out. You also need to have time to process a fruit harvest and storage for jam or frozen fruit, as it comes in gluts. Again this sort of thing is not cheap.

Herbs and salad leaves are maybe an exception to this rule if you don't have to buy pots and tools etc to get started, and all grow your own will have lots of benefits so I'm not saying don't do it.

Where growing your own CAN save you money is if you can use herbs and other fresh ingredients to make very ordinary cheap food special. If you don't buy expensive cold meat platters but instead have bread or leftovers with a beautiful home grown side salad, or if your home grown tomatoes replace a plate of deli olives, that's a saving. You get the idea.

I think growing food is wonderful and life affirming but don't do it just to save money as it probably won't do that for you.

@AppleButter

The pallet collars look great - but i wonder where I can get them from affordably. Thank you for the idea. I suppose you have them flat against the ground, and the bottom layer full of twigs?

I got my first 27 off ebay, I had a vehicle though and could go and get them in the car, although it did take me 2 trips.

I think the first thing is that you have to be resourceful and find things to grow in that are to hand rather than spending money, as I said it is expensive to start with.

I've grown in anything and everything. You can use old tin cans, you can use wellies, one of the best ways is to buy a grow bag, and a living salad from the supermarket, loosen the soil in the grow bag and set it on a tray, after making a few holes in the bottom. Then take the living salad, seperate out all the plants and replant them all into the grow bag, making little holes to plant them in. Water them all in, keep them out of the sun for a few days and when they perk up you can start picking them. Or seperate the living salad into say 6, and plant in 6 seperate plant pots.

Or buy a bag of compost, and some plant pots and a packet of mixed lettuce seed and put the compost into the pots, and sow a pinch of seeds on the surface, lightly cover and water, and they should be up in a week, and harvestable in about a month.

The only way to get into growing food is to start growing food. And learning by your mistakes as you go.

I agree with deplorabelle.

Things that have worked for me :
I have bought supermarket parsley in a pot and when it's depleted put it (in growing season) in the garden where it's perked up to produce again.
If you have space for fruit you could ask for birthday / mother's Day present to be a plant. Check the supermarkets for cheap fruit bushes and trees.
Herbs like rosemary, thyme and sage will last a few years in the garden.
We grow some radish lettuce and spinach yearly, it's nice and you pull as you need so everything is fresh.

I definitely wouldn't see it as a short-term fix or invest money I couldn't afford to lose.

That being said, with places like Lidl selling seeds very cheaply, there's little to lose in sowing some directly into the ground (for those that don't need to be started off indoors) and seeing what grows.
There's also little to lose in asking for cuttings or any spare tomato/courgette (etc.) seedlings, if you know any gardeners. We often tend to sow too many because some seeds don't germinate.

Otherwise, I think it's definitely something worth investing in and building up over the long-term.

After an initial (expensive) outlay, the ongoing year on year costs are negligible. Just seed cost really.

I never buy compost now, just use home grown. I have an asparagus bed that will give us asparagus for 20 years with a bit of luck. Already been going strong for about 10 years. I routinely grow carrots, leeks, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, leeks, spring onions, broad beans, butternut squash, tomatoes.

The thing I find frustrating about vegetable growing, is that you never know until it’s too late whether it’s been a good season for a particular crop. Last year my tomatoes were dismal, after a lot of cultivation. So disappointing, so much time and effort! I don’t have a green house though.

Agree with the fruit, it is worth it but you need patience as it will take a few years to get a good crop. I have planted lots over the past 3/4 years including black currents, red currents, raspberries, gooseberries and rhubarb, I also have 2 beds of strawberries which out out runners each year so my crop doubles each year, last year I planted a pear tree that I picked up from the bargain bin in B&Q for £5, it will take a few years to get fruit but I just planted it and let it do it’s thing. I add a couple fruit bushes each year (this year I have added a couple blueberry plants). Most of the fruit bushes just look after themselves, same as the rhubarb, I just put a bit of manure around them in February.

Fruit is really expensive to buy in the shops, £2-£4 for a punnet of strawberries/raspberries, so I think eventually you can save money.

I also forage a lot (totally free food), last year I foraged mushrooms (make sure you know what your doing), wild raspberries, blackberries, vetch, wild garlic and damsons.

For context I already grow fruit (strawberries, apples, raspberries, currants, blueberries and gooseberries) and rhubarb. And after the first year I didn't do veg again, because I felt to be in any way self sufficient was more work than I was willing to put in! And I don't have a greenhouse/poly tunnel.

Salad leaves I will do again and maybe radishes and scallions...

My musings I think were to do with the idea of with rising prices around - is gardening a way to mitigate that.
Gardening to date has been a hobby and something I enjoy but not a money saving strategy!

I made raised beds from pallets got free from local builders yard. Cut the ends off and lay on side (so they look like a long rectangle laid out flat. You get three of these usually per pallet. Then cheapo L Brackets in each corner. You can plant smaller things, onion or herbs in the little planters that laying them out like this makes and the rest in the middle.

I grow garlic as a perennial so I get lots of leaves and scapes to eat each year, and if I want bulbs could dig some up but I don't tend to bother. I also have onions which I left to flower the next year and they then self seed. I use these as 'spring onions' in that I just pull the green leaves - never stripping one plant - and they seem to just go on and on.

Things like a looser leaf cabbage or a kale are good value because Kale is stupidly expensive and very productive in the garden. Never pull all the leaves from one plant - just get a one or two from each if you have a few - and they will go on and on until they flower, at which point you snap off the flower heads and eat them like sprouting broccoli. The plant will go on and on giving these flower heads for ages. My best cut and come again cabbage is from Real Seeds and is called Becky and Paul's Asturian Tree Cabbage. We've been eating it all autumn and winter and it's just started with the flowers.

Potatoes etc as others say are not cheaper though much tastier grown at home.

I have lots of herby leafy things which are perennial and look after themselves and mean I can not buy salad leaves most of the spring, summer and some of the autumn. Salad Bennet, French Sorrel, Nasturtiums (not perennial but self seeding), Stridolo are my main go tos for this.

I make my own compost, and buy manure cheap from local horse place.

Beetroot grow very easily and give a good return.

I grow winter squash varieties that would otherwise cost £6-10 each and they taste so good. I don't bother with butternut because it's so cheap and plentiful at the supermarket.

Courgettes give you a good return on investment - as do tomatoes (normally - last year was awful). Both and pretty easy and low maintenance. If grown in the ground which has been enriched with manure and good compost don't need any feeding. I don't feed my ground grown crops much if at all - and I grow lots of comfrey which can be spread around things to feed them for free.

I think if you're careful you can go it cheaply enough to either break even or be cheaper than buying stuff, but it's also very easy to spend loads.

We have saved a fortune on chillis since we got a chilli plant. It gives us hundreds that we put in the freezer and last all year. Similarly I think we save money on herbs we use a lot compared to buying in the supermarket.

For us the key has been to grow things you like, and that aren’t readily available. We also have an allotment which helps with the amount of stuff we can grow. We mainly grow:
Spuds - only 1st and 2nd earlies.
Strawberries
Currants
Peas
Broad beans
Kale
Cucumber and heritage tomatoes in the greenhouse
Rhubarb
Salad leaves
Herbs
Sprouting broccoli
Red and white onions
Red and white shallots

We don’t bother with any other brassicas as we’re shit at them, frankly. We also have a horrid bramble which grows along the allotment fence but we haven’t got rid of it because it yields around 12lbs of blackberries a year which go into pies, crumbles and jam.

Ah that puts a different complexion on it @SillySmiles if you already garden for pleasure, have established fruit trees etc. If you are going to garden anyway you can probably increase your yield and efficiency. Have a watch of the prolific Steve's Kitchen Garden and Allotment channel on YouTube for advice on how to maximise your returns (he has a free ebook and loads of resources too).

I think it’s already something people are getting into in hope to save money, the lists for alone end plots are huge and seems trendy to grow your own. I think more allotments should be made and/or community allotments, we have one near us where anyone can go and help, in return you get to eat the produce, this seems quite popular as you don’t have to care for your own plot.

Thinnings from beetroot / leaves are nice too.

Homegrown garlic is lovely fresh.