Great “Easy Lucrative Garden Crops” Hunt: What costly foods can you grow with ease?

brownfrog

VickiB wrote: »

Tomatoes. If you don't want to bother too much with them, use a deepish pot or a DEEP grow-bag.

You can get special growpots that fit into a growbag to give you more growing room, or do the same by chopping off the bottom off old plastic pots (usually you need 3 per bag, and you obviously then top up the pot with extra compost. Or get two ordinary growbags (99p each?) cut matching holes in each bag, then turn one on top of the other so the holes are meeting. Cut another set of matching holes in the top bag, and you should be able to plant through both layers. It does need a bit of careful matching up of the holes, though!

brownfrog

pilgrim59 wrote: »

Eat it young ... lightly steamed, stir fried or use the leaf part in salad. I use the mature leaves more like cabbage than spinach, and steam the stems separately as they need longer.

It makes good compost though

Thanks for this. OK, so it sounds like I did the right thing. I'd read somewhere that you had to treat it like two different veg - the leaves being one and the stalks the other, so I'd boiled the stalks and then steamed the leaves for a couple of minutes just before the stalks were ready. Both tasted horrid though! They didn't even taste better after being frosted - I'd hoped they were like brussels sprouts and would magically become sweet and tender! Maybe they'd just gone a bit too ancient. I might try chucking the leaves currently on the plantst in the compost bin and try with the new leaves. I might also try a plant or two in a pot just in case they might be picking up the flavour from the soil. And if that doesn't work, I'll just have to give it up as a bad job - as others have said, no point growing what you don't like.

kevanf1

thebigbosh wrote: »

I guess with the UK climate getting warmer due to climate change I could always find some açai palm seeds to bring back on my next visit to the parentals

I'd check with Customs and Excise first. Some plants and seeds are not allowed to be imported into this country without a license... I think it's a very late reaction to the Japanese Knotweed problem

kevanf1

brownfrog wrote: »

Re Freecycle - it's a great source of free plants, but maybe it would work as a (sort of) seed swap too? If everyone started giving away their spare seeds, then they'd probably spot some they wanted )and I guess you could send two emails close together - one asking for seeds and one offering them. Might even be worth sending an email to the local group to see if they could start up an official one.

Hi. Sorry but you wouldn't be able to run a 'swap' on Freecycle. It's purely about offering items and relinquishing ownership without any strings attached. I run two Freecycle groups which is how I know :cool:

However, you may like to check out whether your local group has what we call a 'cafe' group. You may be able to set up a seed/plant swap on there. If not why don't you set up your own on either Yahoo groups or google groups and let everybody know on the cafe group. I certainly allow seed and plant swaps on our cafe group but we owners/moderators do all run the groups differently.

Take care.

Kevan

kevanf1

Ok, having gone through the last 6 pages there is one vegetable that I have not seen mentioned anywhere that is incredibly easy to grow. Watercress!!! I sowed some in a largish post filled with water retaining compost. It is doing fatnastically well. Yes, I did say a large pot. You do not need a constant stream of water to grow watercress. It's not to everybody's taste as it can be a bit strong but the tip is to pick the tender young leaves. It is packed full of iron and other minerals and just adds something to a salad. It's also usually around a £1 for a bag the size of a packet of crisps :eek: which I feel is way over the top expensive.

I'm not 100% sure where I got my seeds but I think they were form either Asda or Wilkinsons. Price was about £1.50 nad I have only used about a quarter of the seeds yet I have a large (very large) pot full of the stuff. I love it.

Oh, it's supposed to help men to combat hair loss... my wife says it's working for me :rolleyes:

Take care all.

Kevan

ps.
Oh, nearly forgot. If you plant strawberries in a basket near to the front/back door try planting some fragarant plants in with them. Something like phlox or night scented stocks and it'll waft into the house saving you money on air freshener in the evening. Just don't leave a light on or the moths will get in.

Jesthar

I have to confess to being a fairly limited crop gardener, but I'm learning! And once I get my garden sorted properly (only moved in a couple of years ago, so seeing what is there/damage limitation has been the order of the day so far... , hopefully I'll get more productive...

So, my experiences:

Runner beans - always get given half a dozen/a dozen of these thanks to Granddad, plant them up a couple of cane wigwams and they've always gone absolutely MENTAL! Need plenty of water, and I've no idea what variety they are (they have white flowers and look gorgeous!), but they taste great and crop by the handful. I remember walking through my supermarket last year towards the end of the season and seeing a moderately sized packet of runner beans (enough for maybe 3 people) for £1.50+, and thinking 'I'm still getting more than that off my plants every day or so - for free!' You can chop up and freeze excess (I prefer to give excess to friends where I can), but they don't freeze quite as well as peas and do lose some flavour, so it's best to use them fresh or not too long after freezing. One thing to watch out for early on is slugs - they LOVE to munch on young plants and the growing tips, and actually managed to kill a plant last year before I resorted to pellets...

Tomatoes - Another easy win - three Moneymaker plants in a deep growbag with an A-frame of canes for support, mine are up against a south facing wall for extra support, and also go mental! Last year the poor weather meant a lot of the crop didn't ripen (although I didn't pay as much attention as I ought - oops!), but they still grew and produced initial fruit like the blazes. This year, I an GOING to pay more attention to pinching out the growing tips, honest!

Rhubarb - not a fan of this myself, but the garden has an established crown, and I have plenty of friends who DO like it. Chuck some water on it when it's dry, cut off any flower spikes which develop, and it will do it's thing with no other intervention.

Peas - trying peas for the first time this year, shared a packet of seeds with my mother. One of the few legumes which actually freeze well, so I'm planning on planting a few seeds every couple of weeks in the hope of putting Birds Eye out of business with a nice succession of crop...

Potatoes - we grew these at my family home for several years a long time ago, but I'm trying my own in potato bags for the first time this year. Already earthed them up to nearly the top of the bag, earliest cropping variety should be ready to harvest in about ten weeks time.

Strawberries - got a few of these in pots this year thanks to mum, hoping for a good crop

Leeks - grew these a couple of times several years ago (were given some seedlings), need lots of water and earthing up, but otherwise pretty easy.

Carrots - trying carrots for the first time this year, once I figure out where I'm going to plant them! Any suggestions?

Mushrooms - or, if I'm being absolutely honest, mushroom (singular) in our case - we bought a kit several years ago, and that's all we got! Most expensive mushroom we ever bought... :rotfl:

~Jes

PVPW

Muffin99 wrote: »

Interesting post!

If you grow broad beans the tops of the plants are an absolute delicacy! Just boil them and see

I agree about the broad bean tips, they are delicious. Also it helps stop the black fly. As soon as you see any sign of black fly on broad beans, pinch out the tops and boil them up to eat then there are no nice young leaves for the black fly!

sphrp2

Bought some basil and spring onion seeds from Aldi and noticed that they're produced for Aldi by Mr Fothergills and selling for ~35p/pack which is a fair bit less than branded Mr F stuff.

I'm not an expert gardener but so far both the basil and onions are looking happy.

olderbutnotwiser_2

I usually squeeze a tomato over a plant pot of compost, cover the seeds with a 1/4" of compost, and hey presto within a week you have seedlings, leave them in the pot until large enough to handle and plant out into individual pots. I supplied all my friends a family last year with tomato plants, and had an abundance of fruit too.
Same with peppers, plant the seeds straight from the fruit that you are using.

angel1aura

Having just taken over a piece of land which is an old garden of nearly 1/3 acre I am trying pototoes including Pink Fir Apples, onions, garlic, artichokes, blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries, tayberries and goji's.

The cheapest was a bucket of rhubarb root free to the lady with a spade!

Peas and broadbeans and although not edible I will be trying to grow some tobacco plants!