Growing ur own fruit and veg, worth it?

savemoney

I am hoping to set up a community project on my new allotment. I will in peak growing season be donating some of my surplus produce to a local food charity. I am hoping to make the allotments more eco friendly and try and grow organic food. Using good home made compost made from left over green waste and grow comfrey. I will be using less chemicals and using snail/slug traps with beer substitute in it, netting to keep pests off and weed suppressants.

But before then allotments need quite a lot of work on it

JayneC

I have to say that I find I do save money if you are directly comparing the actually cost of produce, but discounting the 'cost' of your labour.

I would far rather spend my time in the garden than going to a job to earn the money and if you have the time to spare you absolutely will save money - if you are careful and don't fall for the garden centre marketing.

Having said that some things are easier to grow than others - I've given up on carrots, but they are cheap enough to buy - or I do without, swede is successful so I have that instead!

You can make your own compost - a wormery doesn't take up much space and not too difficult to create one yourself, or municipal compost, or even a deep mulch of grass cuttings/leaves/twigs/cardboard that the worms will decompose in situ. Pee is freely available as has been mentioned! You can plant beneficial plants that will feed the soil - clover (you could forage it) beans and peas/lupins (find someone with a plant and scrounge some seeds). You can usually find pots on freegle or use yoghurt pots/loo roll inners/etc. If you buy some seeds organise a seed swap and share the pack - one pack will probably be too much any way. Most fruit (from poundland) is fab as once you got it it looks after itself (almost) and you can propagate easily - with currants just stick some cuttings in the ground and a new plant will grow, strawberries make their own babies quite easily so a couple of plants will multiply over time. You can save your own seeds to grow again next time (best to get open pollinated varieties for this as F1 hybrids may not come true next time). Tomatoes, peppers, chillies, cucumbers, lettuce, rocket are all good to save seed from.

Look into permaculture.

There's a good book
Grow Your Food for Free (well almost) by Dave Hamilton, perhaps you could lend it from the library?

I am like you, I have £25 per week for food (and household stuff/toiletries) , for me, teen boy, dog, cat and 2 chicks. Usually feed up to 9 on a Saturday when kids/grandkids visit too. I could not afford to grow my own if it cost me anything - I pay £22 a year for my allotment and have 'acquired' tools overtime from boot fares and asked for them as gifts at Christmas/birthday, etc. You can improvise most things and don't need to splash out at the garden centre ( I rarely visit), cultivate friends who garden too and you'll find you'll be given loads for free, there's always an excess of something, somewhere!

JayneC

savemoney - Just noticed where your location is - I think I live near you Which allotment site are you at?

savemoney

Jayne I am at Woodlands

JayneC

Oh my friend is there, I'm at Sandybed May have to organise a seed swap or something sometime?!

Actually my friend may be interested in helping you with your ideas at the site. PM me if you'd like me to ask him.

EDIT - I have comfrey too, if you'd like some?

savemoney

Thanks for offer jayne. I recently set up a blog ( allotment is shown) but so far haven't started my allotment. its so overgrown and needs lot of work. My comfrey wont come until May I got the Russian sort that doesn't seed

I might Pm you later have to pop out to pick boss up from work

savemoney

I have managed to bag a greenhouse tonight from my neighbour for £30 it's a small greenhouse made from aluminum and needs some glass but hoping to use it this year

Parsimonia

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

The black block;

WOW, and sorry if I offended, I don't see how a single person hermit can achieve that,:T:T:T:T

The red bit;
That is of course why I added the caveat, "'and I don't mean you"

Good luck

edit;
make that the blue bit:A:A:A

Don't worry, I wasn't the least bit offended (even though I'd missed the bit when you said "I don't mean you"...); you made a fair point, and not at all in an offensive way.

As for spending £25 a week...well, it's early days for us (only been doing it since 23rd December) but so far so good....some weeks when we haven't needed loo rolls or washing up liquid etc we've got it as low as £18!!! This week, when everything seemed to run out at the same time, we spent £30.94...ouch! Luckily we'd put aside the money we'd saved in lighter spending weeks....

Parsimonia

JayneC wrote: »

I have to say that I find I do save money if you are directly comparing the actually cost of produce, but discounting the 'cost' of your labour.

I would far rather spend my time in the garden than going to a job to earn the money and if you have the time to spare you absolutely will save money - if you are careful and don't fall for the garden centre marketing.

I don't count the cost of my labour (or the little that hubby will be able to contribute. He doesn't work, but can't use his arms much so will only be able to help out a little. It's much better for me to use my evenings and weekends gardening, rather than doing something useless like watching TV.

JayneC wrote: »

You can make your own compost - a wormery doesn't take up much space and not too difficult to create one yourself, or municipal compost, or even a deep mulch of grass cuttings/leaves/twigs/cardboard that the worms will decompose in situ. Pee is freely available as has been mentioned! You can plant beneficial plants that will feed the soil - clover (you could forage it) beans and peas/lupins (find someone with a plant and scrounge some seeds).

We compost already (have been for 3 years now) but we have hardly any compost after all this time!!! Not quite sure how to increase our homegrown compost (we already compost all kitchen waste and we don't have much garden waste as most of our garden is paved...having said that, we live really close to a riding centre so getting horse manure wouldn't be too much of a problem (though how to get it home might be....) Does it have to be male pee? I think I read that somewhere....

I'll look out for comfrey on my dog walks...I'll have to look it up first though so that I know how to recognise it!!!

JayneC wrote: »

You can usually find pots on freegle or use yoghurt pots/loo roll inners/etc. If you buy some seeds organise a seed swap and share the pack - one pack will probably be too much any way. Most fruit (from poundland) is fab as once you got it it looks after itself (almost) and you can propagate easily - with currants just stick some cuttings in the ground and a new plant will grow, strawberries make their own babies quite easily so a couple of plants will multiply over time. You can save your own seeds to grow again next time (best to get open pollinated varieties for this as F1 hybrids may not come true next time). Tomatoes, peppers, chillies, cucumbers, lettuce, rocket are all good to save seed from.

Look into permaculture.

I'll check all this out - thank you!

JayneC wrote: »

There's a good book
Grow Your Food for Free (well almost) by Dave Hamilton, perhaps you could lend it from the library?

I got straight online to the library and ordered a copy! Thank you!

JayneC wrote: »

I am like you, I have £25 per week for food (and household stuff/toiletries) , for me, teen boy, dog, cat and 2 chicks. Usually feed up to 9 on a Saturday when kids/grandkids visit too. I could not afford to grow my own if it cost me anything - I pay £22 a year for my allotment and have 'acquired' tools overtime from boot fares and asked for them as gifts at Christmas/birthday, etc. You can improvise most things and don't need to splash out at the garden centre ( I rarely visit), cultivate friends who garden too and you'll find you'll be given loads for free, there's always an excess of something, somewhere!

You've shown me it can be done - I feel encouraged!!! Thank you!

RAS

If you have not yet shared the joys of the Money Saving Oldstlye forum, you might want to pop in?

They know which is the best cheap loo-roll and all else plus what to do with stardrops, vinegar and washing soda etc.

One MSOS style comment I would make is that if you can put small amounts away toards a rainy day it is worht it. For when the cooker claps out etc as well as for annual expenses.

And are you acquainted with www.freegle.org.uk? Can be a good source of all things gardeny including soil.