help in feeding family of 5

seeking_happines

i realy need some help ..due to loss of benifits ( partner is working and im self emplyed) and long term illness are financial state has suddenly got very very bad
i do have a greenhouse and have grown suff but not for many years.. so am starting out now and need to grow as much as i can to supliment our food budget,
so the question is realy what can i grow now in the green house and outside or on my windowcills (sorry spelling not my strong point!)

me and my 3 boys oh yes and partner look forward to your replys,

ps2 unwilling teanagers and an 11 yr to do digging :rotfl:

DaftyDuck

Sorry to hear of your predicament.

It's a little bit late in the year to maximise yields at the moment. The fastest growing - and still plantable option - would be salad greens, spicy greens, lettuce and the like. The Poundshops have mixed packets of seeds (quite remarkably, they are priced at a pound!!!), although whether they are still available, I can't say. You can still plant carrots and beetroot, both of which are easy to grow (and quite quick to mature in the case of carrot). Not too late for French Beans, if you are quick and a bit lucky ... Spring onions will go now, radishes will always grow, and be ready in a few weeks.

All the above would be better planted in June/July according to the experts... but I'm still planting them now, and having success.

It will depend where you are in the country of course. I'm south and sunny.

Just a further thought. Got access to the LIbrary? Near the countryside or seaside? Find Richard Mabey's books - "Food for Free" in particular. It's all about foraging hedgerows and the like. There are some seriously good foods out there being ignored. We're coming up to blackberry and apple seasons, and the Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent hedgerows bulge with unwanted goodness.

One other crop.. Potatoes. It's entirely the wrong time of year for those as well... utterly! However, if you have any spuds that are a bit mankey, or even chunky potato peel, plant them. In six weeks you might (!!) have tiny taytoes, in nine weeks, there should be passable sized spuds!

Good luck!

Edit: Our local Homebase is flogging off off the "posh" Jamie Oliver tomatoes, cucumbers and the like at the moment. Normal price £££, now 50p or a pound for 3. Given you have a greenhouse, that may be of use.

Del_Astra

Not sure what you can plant at the moment, as most are harvesting right now. But get them digging, I would be tempted to go with Broccoli and winter cabbage, I'd try some leaks, I say tempted as I don't really like Broccoli or cabbage that much.

You can grow lettuce all year round so put a few in the greenhouse in a large pot or something that you can pick the leaves as required.

Raddishes will grow / crop now, I think you can get winter hardy ones as will spring onions / leaks.

Good Luck, I hope the teenagers are willing to eat what they grow?

Start planning for the spring, grow what you will eat, trying to grow the more expensive stuff so you don't need to buy it, or stuff that can be stored easily, Onions will hang in shed for a few months, peas can be frozen, beetroot can be pickled and stored in jars, as can pickles.

seeking_happines

thankyou ....have got the eldest clearing out the green house of weeds...these i can definutly grow !
like the idea of carrots and if i can tun a few manky spus int something edible that would be great,

could i grow herbs on my window sill during the winter , parsley chives and basi would be great and what about garlic ?

i have the hope that if the kids are hungry enough they will eat anything ...i hope

seeking_happines

oh sorry forgot to say we are in south norfolk 1 hr from the coast

botchjob

Sorry to sound negative but the sad truth is that it’s cheaper to buy food than it is to grow your own. Unless you have a ready supply of free, good compost, you’ll have to buy that in if your home-grown crops are going to be up to much. And there are fertilisers on top of that. And netting, canes, seed, pest control, allotment fees, garden tools, etc. A 25kg sack of main crop spuds can be bought for under a tenner. To grow that amount your own you’d need to spend more or less that on seed potatoes and fertiliser. And then wait for 4 or 5 months.

I LOVE my allotment but, if the only consideration was cost, I could certainly buy much cheaper fruit n veg down the market, than it costs to grow my own. Taste, quality, and the satisfaction of growing your own are different matters entirely (nothing beats home grown!) but if my main criteria was feeding my family while watching every penny I’d be down the market towards the end of the day. Good luck!

seeking_happines

hi, thankyou for the good luck wishes, but i probobly should axplain where we live etc,
we do have all the tool and our spus here ..are £16 sack....wish we lived in your area , also as we live 10 from the nearest shops fresh veg is not realy available as my boys get the bus to school i have no need other than food shoping to go there, we normaly buy our food on a monthly basis as its cheeper so the veg doesnt last till the end, so for us with a largish garden it does work out cheeper with petrol etc to take into account.
thank you for the good wishes,

DaftyDuck

I know South Norfolk very well, having grown up just south of the border, and then moved back as an adult (twice) to the area.

There are seriously good harvests out in those hedgerows.... Between Harleston & Bungay the Waveney is alive with crab apples, apples huge sweet chestnuts later in the year, blackberries, medlar, hop (beer for daddy... mmm), the elder berries will be ripening, and there are any number of walks full of harvest. See if you can get hold of Richard Mabey's book for advice.

Hoping your long-term illness problem doesn't prevent a good forage!

(I know the Hoxne, Harleston, Bungay & Hempnall area pretty well, also the Castle Acre area from earlier, but moved on 7 years ago. If you are interested in the exact locations of harvest spots in that area (albeit a few years out-of-date, pm me your rough location, and I'll see if I know any closer.)

seeking_happines

brill.....have oftain wonderd about wild hop but unsure what it looks like, and daddy does like beer......lol
am able to get out and about im on the mend it is just taking a long time and the gardening and foraging will do me good .
my mum has crab apples to will be begging a few off her together with her crab apple jelly recipe.

oh yes sweet chestnut..what do the look like and how could i preserve them?

blackberrys. we have a very overgrown hedge full of them which i have been keeping an eye on .. (he will do almost anything for a blackberry and apple pie .....) ..just managed to stop my 18yr from "cleaning up all that horrid hedge mum"!

looking forward to more ideas and what other people have done in there veg garden to save money....

RAS

Borrow Joy Larkcom "Growing Vegetables" from the library. At the back there is an article about growing salads in a polytunnel over winter. The list would be very useful to you for the green house.

Winter onion sets and garlic need to go in outside soon and it might worth a planting of broad beans outside as well.

You might also be able to grow spring cabbage; start in the ghouse now and plant out next month.

Google lasagne bedding if you need to get growing space but do not have time to dig.

And forage now til the first frosts.

Cheap seeds come from lidl and a few other sources.

seeking_happines

is there a thread for growing your own food cheaper than you can buy it for ?