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?

I know you said veg but how about fruits? Like thornless blackberries, blueberries, apples, pears, figs?

Sweet potatoes. Easier than you think to grow and “super food”.

Tea will grow in the UK, there is a commercial tea garden in Cornwall. However Cornwall has a microclimate. Although traditional tea growing areas may have cold winters, they also have warm and wet summers. You can't really replicate that here.
I spent several weeks a few years ago auditing tea gardens in Darjeeling. The original chinabush is reaching the end of its life. Anything you can buy now as a plant is a "clonal" which is perfectly fine, bit inferior.
Tea that you buy is generally a blend, so something like Adam or ( more often) Kenyan or Vietnamese for strength, but the real aromatic topnote teas will be gone forever in a few decades.

Assam - autocorrect never fails to amaze me...

Gone forever?

I thought that when the OP mentioned price hikes she meant on imported food (due to a weak pound because of political reasons) ie the price increases would be unrelated to what is easy to grow or a one-off weak crop.

We grow things we eat a lot of (French beans, courgettes, berries, apples, pears and plums) and things that we like but are hard to find or expensive (we live in the sticks). For example, artichokes or turnips - there was a recent thread on MN about turnip shortages

I found growing onions good value - a small bag of sets from the garden centre, planted in early Spring and harvested in mid Summer, will keep us in onions until the Spring next year.

Hadn't thought of onions. Thanks for the idea.

I grew chillies a few years ago and froze enough to last a year (and we like chillies) from about 10 plants. I had access to a polytunnel but I think some will grow without. And squash.

Yep, no more chinabush tea in the next decade or two I'm afraid cosie
Another thing that is worth while growing is Asian greens like Pak choice and mizuna. They grow well and are expensive to buy.
Something I grew a couple of years ago as a bit of a novelty, but actually did amazingly well, was tomatillos. Use them in mexican food and pickles.
Also hardy kiwi - tiny berry sized fruit that you eat skin and all.
Goji berries also grow well in UK if you like them ( I don't).
If you feel so inclined, buy a copy of "food for free" and go foraging. I regularly use nettles, wild garlic, blackberries, hazelnuts, chestnuts and various mushrooms ( note, make sure you can recognise the toxic species very well if you do this!)
Also winter squash varieties are great as they store very well.
Potatoes - try some of the more unusual varieties such as kidney ( Jersey Royal when grown in Jersey) or new potatoes in a pot for Christmas. I particularly like a blue skinned variety called Arran Victory. It has amazing flavour.

Green manure is your friend. Grow lamb's lettuce or something over the veg patch over the winter then dig it in. Might be too late for this year.

Learn to love swiss chard as it's so easy. So is kale and will grow through the winter. Home grown carrots and spuds are wonderful but I don't have the space for them.
Squashes, runner beans, borlotti beans etc are great as they grow upwards. Squashes keep for ages so will be handy in winter months.
Non-bolting spinach is best. Courgettes tend to produce gluts but I have never managed to achieve this.
Pak choi and oriental salads (mizuno, mustards, mixes) are good, as is rocket. They are versatile and the seeds are cheap.
Peppers and aubergines are expensive to buy but not the best for being productive.
Herbs are good - perhaps add to the ones you have. Parsley, chives, and coriander are my favourites. Sow things like basil and coriander in stages. Perennial herbs like tarragon and lovage are great. I use lovage in curries.
Strawberries and alpine strawberries are nice.
Spring onions, spring greens, leeks, pak choi etc will grow from the ends of shop bought ones.

Plan what you want to grow where and when now. There are plenty of web sites.
Wilko seeds are pretty good for cheap basics. Otherwise, look in garden centres in the autumn. DIY places tend to be expensive.

Try a spud tower. They take up little space and are excellent. Or an empty compost bag to same effect if not as pretty.
Green manure is ace.

That may be, in effect, what we were doing by putting the rhubarb tops back on the patch. (Green manure.)

We did a potato tower this Summer. It was so much easier and more productive than growing the beggars in the allotment!

I thought green manure was a ground cover crop grown over the winter.
I did lamb's lettuce one year. edible and deters cats from what cats do on bare soil.

Yellow caugettes and broad beans. You can blanch and freeze broad beans for later in the year and you can't buy yellow caugettes easily.

Going to spend the cold dark nights this winter planning my veg garden.

Mike

We were just raised to return as much to the ground as we could.

Courgettes.

Don't forget runner beans and French beans. You can leave the last few beans of the season on the plant to mature into the seeds for next year. Also because they grow tall on canes, they take up very little ground space for the crop size.
Also garlic. Choose a soft necked variety such as Solent Wight and you can plant out the individual cloves now. They are ready to dig and dry around July.

Runner beans. We had a massive vegetable garden when I was a child, but unfortunately my father was prone to monoculture.
The year of the runner beans is seared on my mind even now.
Runner beans soup, salad, chutney, curry....
Two huge chest freezers in the garage filled with runner beans...
Along with sprouts they are the only vegetable that turns my stomach on sight!

It must have been really really massive. My grandfather had a (fairly large) runner bean trellis in his garden and he supplied enough for meals. (Admittedly that was most of the summer but they had no freezer.)

He used to grow very large marrows as well. I had to 'feed' them when I was staying there.

It was about 1/4 acre. Layed down as a runner bean plantation that year. The year of the potato was more manageable.
I look at runner beans now and occasionally feel obliged to buy some. Then utter revulsion overtakes me

I grew Scarlet Emperor runner beans on a homemade wigwam in my tiny garden mainly because they looked pretty and broad beans because the flowers smelled so good and they were great for my soil. And spinach and cherry tomatoes for my lunch box picked every day.
Haven't done that for years. Need to start again.

Well done for positive thinking, shhh. This year coming, perhaps?