Cost effective veg to grow?

[TronaldDump]

I've finally got round to turning over a veg patch in the garden and am trying to plan what to grow next year. I've always found potatoes and carrots not worth growing as they're so cheap in the shops. I think courgettes and tomatoes will be worth growing. Can anyone else suggest things which are easy to grow and which might be harder to come by or more expensive next year?

Squash! Three seeds from a store bought squash (washed and dried), planted in a mound yielded 20 squashes!

Tomatoes 🍅

The other key question is what do you enjoy eating? Because that’s a big part of the motivation here. We grow things that often get thrown away as out of date if you buy them from the supermarket, like salad leaves or that have a very limited shelf life.
We grow herbs, courgettes, aubergines, mixed salad, spinach, mangetout, leeks, garlic, shallots, bell peppers, mushrooms, blueberries, figs, strawberries and tomatoes. No chillies because no one eats them here. I’m aiming for 4 season planting as far as I can. Next year, we are adding small squashes, callaloo and a lemon tree.

I am a novice gardener and I converted my garden into a veg patch.

Swiss chard has grown amazingly well. Use it like spinach.

Courgettes were amazing, but do not be tempted to trim any leaves off to get extra sun. My plants (the ones I trimmed) became diseased while the others were ok. .

Tomatoes were disappointing but i think that was due to the cold summer.

Rocket wasn't that great as it (ironically) grew too fast for me to keep harvesting while the plants were young and tasty.

Mint and chives have exploded. Keep in tubs!

Good luck.

Depends why you are planting. If you are prepping then potatoes and onions are perfect to grow asthey would make up a lot of your meals.

If not we grow broad bean, pumpkins, peas and I’m starting cucumber and tomatos

Oh wow loads of replies thanks! I've grown chard before but DH and the DSs really didn't like it so that's off the list.

Peas, mangetout and spinach are a great call, we eat loads of those. We're lucky to have plenty of herbs already and fruit trees too. I've also been building up soft fruit over the last couple of years so we've got plenty there.

Side I've always found potatoes easy but really struggled with onions! Have you grown from seed? To be honest not really full on prepping, more trying to safeguard against shortages or huge price hikes next year if we can.

Plant the over winter onions now, then more in spring if you need to. Grow from sets, it is easier.

Does anyone grow tea?

Tea is a type of camellia, grows just fine. Curing it is the trick.

I’ve never tried it but it strikes me that a mature bush or two would be no bad thing.........

Spring onions (grown from the head of a spring onion), chillies, salad potatoes in pots, cut and come again lettuce, spinach, herb, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, broad beans and runner beans all did really well for us this year.
We have a community orchard near by, so we have had some apples and pears locally and swapped toms for onions with some of the people up there. Which we are now pickling.

We are thinking of sticking up on picking vinegar.

To be honest not really full on prepping, more trying to safeguard against shortages or huge price hikes next year if we can

If you think like this then you on a hiding to nothing. For example, usually the prices are hiked due to shortages. If there are shortages it is often down to the weather. What makes you think that you know better than people who do this for a living?

Personally, my main motto when growing food - and I teach this subject - is to grow what you will eat, and grow small amounts of a greater number of crops/varieties so that if you have a bad harvest you will maximise your returns. Also work out when you are likely to harvest, and work backwards so that you are sowing at the right times [alot of people have spoiled crops because they go on holiday the very week everything is ready].

Grow what works well in your area, grow what the soil determines would best grow in your soil, grow what you can easily obtain seed of, and save your own seeds so that you end up with varieties that grow well in your area. But growing to avoid shortages in the coming years, is not the way to look at it.

Rhubarb is a doddle once it ‘takes’. I used to have to go out to our rhubarb patch and bring in some sticks for my mother to use in a pudding. (Leaving the leaves to mulch down.) Otherwise, we just left it alone - it seems to look after itself, year on year.

Wise words, Tentacle. I’d also advocate learning how to store and preserve. With the best will in the world, certain crops are going to come good at the same time. (Weather and seasons.)

Tentacle, how can I work out what will grow in my soil? Tis

What sort of soil is it - and do you have any neighbours or friends nearby who grow things?

Oh dear I'm not a very good prepper

I mostly want to grow veg for fun, we have soft fruit, apples, pears and plums already. I guess I just want to maximise the usefulness of what I grow - like this year when you couldn't get a courgette for love nor money because they're all imported and the harvest failed in Spain. My friends with allotments had plenty!

Some wise advice and suggestions from everyone though, thank you, am building a good picture of what I think I want to plant. If it doesn't work out then so be it - but if it does then all to the good.

Then go ahead and grow it for fun. Why not? At the least, it will give you a good and realistic idea of what growing things is like.

Plant for fun. It is the best way to learn. We’ve learnt that peas don’t like our soil and nor do carrots but pumpkins love it

My butternut squash grew like a weed this year, have loads of them.

I'm not growing potatoes again, have thrown a lot away.

Grew loads of tomatoes but they mainly died of blight! I'll look after them much better next year as I left them to it this year and it didn't end well.

Next year I'm going to grow raspberries. Easy to grow apparently and expensive in shops. And we eat them by the kilo.

Broad beans also grow like a weed, you sow them now or shortly when there is little else to do on the veg patch, and it's a doddle to freeze the surplus. Dh adores them so I'm sowing even more for next year as we've already run out of this years frozen ones.

Asparagus is great if you have room for a permanent bed. Grows well and is expensive to buy.

Experimenting and learning is being a good prepped though. That’s how you develop expertise. If you want to grow something that doesn’t like your soil, think container.

Or think ‘new eating habits’. People are divorced from the seasons at the moment. (The ‘inalienable right’ to eat salad all year round. )