Vegetables are expensive

culpepper

I grow a lot of my veg in the garden too.
You do need to think spacewise though.For instance Ive got my onions in now and will dig them out in about june and still have time to get something else in that space.Peas and beans take up less room if you pick the climbing varieties and you can plant low growing veg like lettuces under them in the shady bit.Leeks can be dug up and moved if you need the space and will fit in almost anywhere.
Veg can grow in amongst the flowers.
I really need to sort my fruit bushes out as they hardly did anything in the 1st year and we bought fruit weekly.
Veg has been from the garden since the end of may and Im only now having to buy carrots and mushrooms.
We still have beetroot,spinach,parsnips,leeks and brussels growing and potatoes in sacks to last round till next crop hopefully.Dried onions,tomatoes,courgettes,pickled onions and beetroot.
I read that if space is a premium,raised beds will multiply the space by 4 and dont bother with space hungry plants like potatoes as they aren't usually so expensive anyway.

Plum_Pie

Advice on growing stuff in tubs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/humber/content/articles/2006/04/11/homegrown_tubs_feature.shtml


A friend of mine grew lovely tomatoes and peppers in pots on a balcony in a council flat.

iceicebaby

If its cheap good quality fruit and veg you want then you cant beat lidls. I have always been impressed by theirs and I have a lidls within 2 miles of my front door !

C_Ronaldo

agutka

how about lidl/aldi, they soemetimes have half price veg

Penny-Pincher!!

Lidls is excellent for fruit and veg, especially when 50% off.

astonsmummy

I buy frozen veg as i chop and change what i eat somuch and things get wasted, but i do buy value bag of apples and value bag of bannanas, and oranges as DS (2 and 5 months) eats at least 5 pieces of fruit a day, he favours fruit over anything in his lunchbox, and they give ricecakes and fruit at nursery for snacks, guess who goes up for seconds on the fruit!

HappyIdiotTalk

iceicebaby wrote:

If its cheap good quality fruit and veg you want then you cant beat lidls. I have always been impressed by theirs and I have a lidls within 2 miles of my front door !

I was on my way to Sainsburys today and discovered that a Lidls had someone materialised out of nowhere near me. Never been in one before so thought I'd take a look see.

Absolutely brilliant! I was very impressed. I dont know if its normal at Lidls, but it seemed an awful lot of stuff was reduced. Got a punnet of mushrooms for 49p, tomato puree for 25p, 4 kiwi fruit for 8p each, pack of bannanas for 39p and left the store with 4 or 5 bags of shopping for less than £40.

I will defintely be shopping there again. Why didn't someone tell me there were so good and cheap!

rhubarbs

Organic Wannabe,

I live in Edinburgh too. Have you tried the food cooperatives? I've found them to be very good, great produce for a good price. The one I go to has a selection of organic food. Need to get there early though, I left it too late last week, no potatoes and no eggs left... Here is the link:-

http://www.ecfi.org.uk/food_co-ops.htm

Strepsy

I can sympathise, we're really skint now with Christmas coming and I've hardly been having any fruit and little veg myself, just buying it for the kids to make sure they have theirs, and it seems I've paid now because I've had a stinking cold for a week.

tawnyowls

lynzpower wrote:

Dont forget frozen veg- it IS nutritionally viable, in fact much of it is better than whats been shipped cross continent. Peas, sweetcorn etc are all cheap as, and last AGES.

Totally agree with this - if you've got a choice between shrivelled veg that's been sitting in a supermarket for a week and a packet of frozen veg, buy the frozen. Like the value veg, the frozen stuff is often the misshapen, but perfectly good stuff that the supermarkets won't touch for their 'fresh' display.

blackcateddie wrote:

Try the local allotments, it's much better to grow your own and then you know what pesticides have been used. Nowadays there a a number of allotments going free usually and the benefits of eating fresh and getting fit by digging the land far outway the ease of buying at the supermarket.
once you see the carrot water turning orange when you cook fresh, you'll realise how little vitamins those supermarket veg really have. Not expensive either, our allotment is £15 per year and the packets of seeds cost approx £30, manage to feed two families 90% of the year.

And if you can't manage this yourself, allotment holders are often happy to sell some.

Farm shops are also a good source.

HappyIdiotTalk wrote:

I will defintely be shopping there again. Why didn't someone tell me there were so good and cheap!

Ah, but they have - see the huge thread on the great Lidl/Aldi hunt.

For some bizarre reason, there still seems to be this image of them as 'only for poor people', yet their stuff is generally far better value and far better quality than in most of the UK supermarkets, mainly because many of the European countries won't allow the sort of junk allowed in food here.