£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

DawnW

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Week 51: Day 2

Morning! Sat down with DH last night for a quick run through of the new budget from Feb onwards, as this is the first month of the new budget since the remortgage. We are going to try to sit down weekly to check how we’re doing, even if it’s just 10 mins over a cup of tea.

Menu plan this week is 95% leftovers, which is rather pleasing. But the fact that the food shop was still just over £40 shows me how much we spend on fruit/flour/dairy etc, and I don’t think there’s much gain to be made there - all Aldi/Lidl (I just don’t have the time to find/drive to a market to save the odd 50p here).

Don't forget that prices are rising TOPM. Butter, for example, has gone from about 95p to £1.40 or so for 250g over the last few months, and that is in Lidls. In Sainsburys you can add at least another 5p to that

Should you ever or your OH ever find yourself near a market while on your travels, do stop and have a look, especially for vegetables and fruit. I got 2 big shopping bags full last week for £6, and at my request, they were happy to tip most items straight into my shopping bags. Delicate things such as the tomatoes and mushrooms were put in brown paper bags... no plastic I don't go every week, as there isn't a decent market in our little town, and I have to go to a bigger one, but it is worth it now and again.

Wilkinsons are good for cheap seeds btw, if yourAldi or Lidl don't stock them. They grow just as well as the expensive ones. And that reminds me, I must look through my seed tin to see what I have left, and what I need to buy for this year

Verbatim

Poundland can be good for veg seeds. Haven’t looked this year but in previous years I’ve had 4 packets for a £1.

Treadingonplaymobil

Ooh, I am actually going to the nearest city on Weds, which has Poundland and Wilko, although neither are huge ones. Good incentive to check the gardening stuff before then so I know what’s worth buying.

try_harder

Loving your meal planning wish i could get my head round that ,it all just seems like so much work to me ,you are so well organised very jealous.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Just a question, but does making ghee work out cheaper than buying it? (My quick 'my supermarket' check of both products indicates it could be)
But I have noticed the price of butter going up considerably recently.
In fact, as we seem to be going through masses of it at the moment, I need to check out the prices in costco compared to Aldi.

Wish

Treadingonplaymobil

wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »

Just a question, but does making ghee work out cheaper than buying it? (My quick 'my supermarket' check of both products indicates it could be)
But I have noticed the price of butter going up considerably recently.
In fact, as we seem to be going through masses of it at the moment, I need to check out the prices in costco compared to Aldi.

Wish

I haven't actually done the comparison since the latest hike in butter prices, but it definitely made sense to make rather than buy before. Will have to check!

try_harder wrote: »

Loving your meal planning wish i could get my head round that ,it all just seems like so much work to me ,you are so well organised very jealous.

It's not that hard once you get stuck into it - our challenge was first getting into meal planning, then getting into realistic meal planning, so there was some scope for wiggle on days that didn't go to plan, so we didn't end up nipping out for a 'top up' shop.

Treadingonplaymobil

Have just braved the garden shed. Infested with woodlice - it was pretty old and rotten when we moved in, now it's just terrible! But anyway, we have three or four metre long shallow trough planters, like these. I can't find the the reusable grow bags, annoyingly, but I will ask DH if he's seen them later on. We also have a few bags which would do for growing potatoes in and a handful of biggish pots, 30-50cm diameter. Also a huge pile of earth to fill them (from doing the front garden) which would need topping up with compost.

We've been slightly put off growing our own food - we had an allotment for a year or so, and it became a massive issue, way too much commitment - so I'm proceeding with caution just now! I'm thinking of starting with:
- a couple of strawberry plants - we have grown these before fairly successfully, and we have a handful of pots they could go in.
- one long trough of salad - to cut and come again throughout the summer? Should we do two pots? We eat a fair bit of rocket etc in the summer.
- one long pot of perpetual spinach/chard stuff - I have grown this before too, with no probs.
- another long trough of something different, or just more salad?
- salad potatoes in the bags - when do they have to go in? Should I buy seed potatoes now? can't remember.
- tomato plants if we find the big reusable growbags.

Does that sound manageable? I don't want too much work, but I'm thinking that using our own stuff and the odd bag of compost and seeds we might be able to do some fairly financially efficient growing this year.

joeyjimbles

We do the baby salad troughs, the ones where you cut and it re-grows. My only suggestion is to sow them a week or more apart so that your second trough is growing whilst the first is ready, then the first is regrowing whilst you eat the second and repeat. The seeds were from Range and are a mix of mache, rocket and some soft baby leaves. We still have a couple of rogue hardy rocket leaves every now and again - was great at Christmas. We also grow herbs, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and radish.

sashybo

Hi TOPM, been a while since I’ve posted on your diary but have been quietly reading along.

We started growing a small amount of fruit & veg last year. If you’re looking for salad/early potatoes then it will be end of February into March you’ll want to be planting so yes I’d be looking to get the seed potatoes fairly soon. We grew arran pilots last year which were lovely & will be doing them again this year.

What variety of tomatoes are you thinking of? We grew sun gold (an orange cherry tomato size & very sweet) & floridity which are a small plum tomato and found they gave a lot of fruit as long as we kept on top of picking the tomatoes. We were a bit rubbish at this as our first baby was born in June but we still managed a good amount.

Other veg - maybe radish, runner beans, courgette or small cucumbers? We are novices and managed to do fairly well with all of these, although it wasn’t a great year for veg all round. DH also grows a few different varieties of chillies but we have a greenhouse as don’t tend to get the best of summers in Scotland. :rotfl:

When_the_going_gets_tough

I’m a basic gardener but I do grow soft fruit. Our raspberry patch produces fruit for months - double fruiting variety and we also grow black currants redcurrants rhubarb and have planted blackberries and gooseberries. The brilliant thing is they don’t need much attention and soft fruit is quite expensive.