mistakes.

jaxx46

Sick of salad leaves here as well lol. Am keeping up with the courgettes so far by making chutney and jam, not tried soup what recipe do you use please?

SmallEnglish

At least you are eating healthily! I have been quite enjoying all the vegetables I've had so far - although I've been having peas and beans with pretty much everything - luckily I am a big vegetable fan anyway.

lizzyb1812

Hi

I've sown just a bit of salad leaf/lettuce seeds every fortnight and I have too much even though I have a salad most days. But my seeds cost 97p per pack from Wilkinson's and I've used just over a pack so far (it's a salad mix type pack). So I don't care if I don't eat it all. 4 months of perfectly fresh salad leaves for about £1-20? How MSE is that? And what is left when I move on to the newly grown patch is pulled up and put on the compost heap.

As far as more solid vegetables go, I just freeze a glut. Sometimes made into a recipe like cauliflower cheese, sometimes just chunked into stew sized pieces, briefly blanched and frozen in bags to go into stews etc later in the year. You can't save caulis, courgettes, like you can potatoes, but if you freeze them now you won't be buying them later.

As far as freezer space goes - well I bought a cheap secondhand freezer to use for home grown fruit and veg, free blackberries, BOGOF pizzas, etc. Got it last year and it paid for itself in about 3 months. And we always have good quality produce available even when money is tight.

Sorry this is so long. I do grow too much of some stuff and too little of other stuff, but overall I grow enough to save me money without compromising on quality, so, so what if some goes into the compost

Dustykitten

The encouraging thing from this thread is that even if you only have a small space it is worth growing your own.

For 5 of us I now sow one wigwam of beans (mix of runner and flat) and a few french beans and that is enough for all of us throughout the summer.

I think the tip is to grow more of what you can store. Tomatoes will freeze well if they are to be used in soup. Leeks also freeze really well so next year more of both of those for me.