Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Sun_Addict

@BlueJ94 if you have a L*dl near you, they’re selling tomato plants with tomatoes already on them. 

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

Hi @BlueJ94 - For home grown veggies, you've missed the sowing dates for a lot of stuff. You could theoretically grow a later crop of sweetcorn & can still sow things like beetroot, chard, etc, but tomatoes, peppers, chillies, etc, really need to be sown in Feb & March. You can still sow plenty of salad stuff - rocket, the spicy seed mixes, lettuce, radishes, spring onions.
Another option is to visit a garden centre & see what young veg plants they have in stock. You might be too late for tomatoes - I know our local garden centre sells out quite quickly - but you might find some & then you can grow them on in your mini-greenhouse or outdoors in a sunny spot. You can buy young pepper, chilli, cucumber plants too & pretty much anything else, but as the growing season progresses, garden centres won't buy in new stock as that 'window' will have passed. It's worth you having a look, although it is a more expensive way to grow food than from seed. 
The thing with growing a decent crop of different veg is that it takes planning & I know how busy you are with working long hours across 2 jobs. If you're serious about growing some food, it'd be worth you sitting down in January & making a list of the veg you'd like to grow, do a bit of research about when to sow (the back of the seed packets can be very helpful or look online or get a basic veg growing book from the library) & make a little timetable of what needs sowing when. For instance, it's no good sowing everything in January in a massive fit of enthusiasm only to have everything die of cold........or leave it so late that the plants don't have enough of a growing season left to produce any food (that's why peppers, aubergines, tomatoes, etc, need starting early). Then you can make a list of veggie seeds you need to buy, plus other things like seed compost & can ensure you've saved enough plastic meat/veg trays for sowing into (free seed trays, yay!) & have a supply of pots the right size for potting up baby tomatoes, etc, to grow them on. 
So it's up to you how you progress it. If you eat a lot of salad in the summer, then that's probably the quickest win this time of year.
F x

@BlueJ94 I just wanted to chip in to say that when you look at what you plan to grow, consider what you like eating, and what you will do if you have a bit too much produce (I still have a shelf of French and Runner beans in my produce freezer that are from 2 years ago - I realise I am paying to store them but I never really like them, cooked from frozen - so now I grow fewer, pick younger, and gift surplus). Maybe consider things that either taste so much better when grown and picked at home (sweetcorn, carrots, for eg) or things that are expensive (raspberries) or not normally in the SM (dessert gooseberries). Then look at when best to get these (perennial fruit bushes are best planted in Autumn, when they are dormant) - gooseberries in October, strawberries in Feb/March, and be aware there is a grow-your-own thread in greenfinger section of the forum if you want to hang out or ask questions with like-minded forumites

foxgloves

I think those are really good points, @Suffolk_lass, esp re basing planning on what the veg grower likes to eat. I know gardeners who no longer grow things like potatoes & onions because they are usually cheap to buy - we're not growing either atm - but throw themselves into growing stuff that's always more expensive in the shops. When I'm deciding what to grow, I usually have in mind what I'm going to do with it in terms of batch cooking, so while I have heaps of tomato plants this year, I know I will be making pasta sauce, pizza sauce, curries, two types of chutney, ratatouille, tomato soup, etc, as well as plenty of passata. On the other hand, I no longer grow runner beans because after a huge crop one year, all dutifully blanched & frozen, Mr F announced he didn't actually like them! So only grow french beans now. Sweetcorn is another good example. Picked at perfect ripeness & cooked the same day, it is better than any shop-bought, but ours is always all ready to pick pretty much at once, so we have to plan in room in the freezer.
Another way forward would be to look at what you'd spend on salad from about May to October & just aim to grow that, but do it really well with a variety of more interesting leaves, radishes, spring onions, maybe tomatoes from 2 or 3 bought in plants, etc. 
F

foxgloves

Morning all - another Monday, another week (she says, stating the obvious.....) Another showery grey day here, so no laundry on yet, although my plan is to do the first load of the week this afternoon, drape it over the airer (which will not be switched on) so that it can start drying before being pegged out first thing tomorrow. It's not a gardening day either. I did consider doing some weeding & clearing in between showers, but the borders are really chocka with flowers atm & I will get too soggy working in amongst all that wet greenery. 
I've just done my regular Monday morning budget updates. No nasty surprises there. Week 2 grocery spend not too bad for a BH weekend, as we did factor in some treats. I shall want at least two of weeks 3 - 5 to come in at less though, as I think I do budget generously & I'm definitely expecting some money leftover to via into savings pots. We'll see how that goes. Very little food effort required tonight - just a couple of jacket potatoes, another bowl of salad (all leaves homegrown atm & spring onions will soon be ready too) & leftover beef in BBQ sauce which I cooked in the slow cooker yesterday. I hadn't tried that recipe before. We both really liked it, esp Mr F & so I am going to make sure I am the one who divvies up these leftovers, as I know I can get a decent meal for us both tonight plus with a bit of rice, a couple of microwaveable lunch mugs he can take on his late work shifts.
Yesterday, we finally received our energy bill. The problem has been that our smart meter & whatever automated process the Tentacled Ones use to procure regular readings has not been working. We have had to provide manual readings to enable a bill to be produced & there has been confusion over a figure which is now presented in a different way. Anyway, the bill arrived. I've number crunched the figures & it looks ok in that our credit balance has increased a little, but it is difficult to make a comparison with the previous month because due to the problems, the billings periods are irregular, instead of the usual month. Instead, we've been billed for 35 days for electricity & 39 days for gas. To enable a meaningful comparison, I have compared how much we spent per day averaged out over this period compared with our last normal bill which was 21st March to 20th April. By these workings, we have used a little more electricity (up 13p per day) but less gas (down £1.31 per day). Not ever so useful as we still had builders power-tooling away during the beginning of this billing period, which will explain the electricity figure, but the decrease per day in gas use will be because we did still have a bit of heating on at the start of the previous billing period. You know what? I'm boring MYSELF now with this & I think I'll go & fire up the coffee machine & find a banana for the brain cells! I'll wait & see what happens re the fixing of the smart meter problem, as that's what needs to happen now.
Hey, aside from the wet weather, hasn't it turned cold? I'm wearing a long sleeved jersey dress, a cotton over-jumper thing, have a hand-knitted shawl around my shoulders & I'm still cold! Shall defo be making a hot water bottle for later when I have a few sitting down tasks to do. When we visited our friends at the weekend, they put the heating on!! I said 'Oh please don't put your heating on in June for us, honestly we're fine' but they have still been using it when they've been feeling cold, which I thought was brave given how insanely those tariffs are rising. I'm afraid they'll need to bring an extra layer if it's still this chilly next time they visit us!
Right, caffiene is much required. Wishing everyone a decent start to the week.
F x

Blackcats

Thank you for taking the time to share the energy saving tips - very helpful. 

 I use a separate screen with my work laptop and have started switching it off when it's not in use e.g. if I'm on a phone call (and believe it or not my colleagues in the public sector do indulge in very long phone calls).  I also have the radio on in my office and used to turn the volume down when on a call or concentrating - I now switch it off.  Probably fractions of pennies saved but they all add up don't they?  Another who struggled with maths o level - somehow I scraped my way by 1 mark into a c grade. 

We have used our air fryer a lot which has meant hardly switching the oven on.  Cooked crumble, cake, roast potatoes and various roast dinner bits in the oven yesterday - OH stared in horrified disbelief as the smart meter burst into life and ticked away vigorously.

BlueJ94

Thank you @Sun_Addict, @Suffolk_lass and @foxgloves

Lots to think about! My strawbs are happy growing in my little pot. So can't wait to eat them once ready. Will definitely make a list of things I can grow that I know I will definitely eat.

I'll make sure to write a list and do some research also, I also did see some tommy plants in my local garden centre the other day! Thanks all

foxgloves

You'll enjoy your homegrown strawberries, @BlueJ94 - you'll be able to pick them at peak ripeness to eat straight away, instead of supermarket ones which have been in cold storage. I've done 2 picks from our plants so far & I think it looks as though there'll be a small bowlful tomorrow as well, now that the sun has come out.
F

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Funny sort of day today, though very relaxed so far. Piano tuner first thing, which meant making sure no cats hiding in living room waiting to 'help'. Mr F wfh this morning so I nobbled him before he got started to help me with a techie issue with my laptop, so that was another little job out of the way. Laundry all pegged out for free drying I'm pleased to say as the forecast for tomorrow looks rainy. No effort at all required for tonight's nosebag as I'm just doing spaghetti with some of the chard pesto I batch-cooked recently & a bowl of salad. Quite a lot of random garden jobs need doing, so I am heading out there for a couple of hours this afternoon to work my way through those, hopefully in a nice zen-like state, as the sun's shining & the birdsong is lovely today.
I need to mix up some tomato feed - I've bought a powdered feed in a box this year, which my Mum used to use....partly because it's less plastic, but also because when we compared how many watering cans of feed it makes compared to the plastic bottles of tomato food concentrate, there was just no contest. It always feels exciting seeing the first tiny fruits appearing on the tomato plants. Other tasks will include sowing more salad, tying in a cucumber which has started triffiding into a neighbouring pepper, deadheading & cutting back late Spring perennials & dosing the beans, courgettes & squash with seaweed solution.
It's going to be a no-spend day because although I've been looking online at shower curtains......hundreds of the fiends (feels like thousands).......I haven't really found anything 'just right' as yet. I am reluctant these days to settle for stuff that is just 'ok' as in the past, this has frequently led to another spend not long afterwards because I wasn't happy with the first item. We don't actually have a shower, as such (just an integrated bath shower hose for hair washing, etc) but our bathroom window is right over the bath so fabric curtains can get quite wet & steamy. I have been planning to replace them, but haven't found any suitable readymade ones. I could certainly buy some fabric & make some myself - I haven't ruled that out yet - but it occurred to me that buying a really nice shower curtain which I can shorten to fit would fit the bill on both counts. If it's attractive & nice quality, it can be drawn across the bathroom window like a normal curtain, but it would also be waterproof so much easier to care for & more suitable for being in a steamy wet environment. I have found shower curtains online which are priced at more than £100! I was quite shocked anything so polyestery with no shaping could possibly be so expensive! I won't be buying one of those, that's for sure! 
Well, I must crack on with lunch & a drink - I'm trying to drink half a litre of water every afternoon - then set about wielding the watering can & secateurs.
F x

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Yes, I agree. I know a lot of these energy saving measures are miniscule in the scheme of things, but lots of them done very regularly will all add up to at least a small degree of saving. We have changed energy supplier about 4 times in the past - each of them telling us their tariffs were lower - but the only time we managed a significant drop in our monthly payments was when we decided to reduce our usage by plugging silly bits of wastage. We had electric storage heating back then & I remember one of the savings was me telling Mr F he must stop turning the heater next to the cat's bed up to '6'! He thought he might be cold at night, despite the fact that he was covered in fur! I was recording regular weekly meter readings then, & turning that heater down to '3'  (or '4' on colder days) actually showed in the figures! Who'd have thought it? Just one heater!
There looked to be a lot of laundry this week, but I have managed to get it all into 2 loads & made sure I turned the setting down to 30 degrees for washing my load of coloured clothes. I think I'm doubly motivated on this because it galls me that the bosses/shareholders of these big companies seem to be making record profits while tariffs are shooting up for the rest of us. Our money's better in our pockets rather than theirs in my opinion!
F x

EssexHebridean

You've just reminded me that I planned to look for a replacement for our shower curtain Foxgloves - either that or find some miraculous way of removing the effects of 5 years of hard water and it routinely being left slightly damp...I might try sticking some white vinegar in a spray bottle as a first form of attack actually - give it a good spray and see whether that improves the look of it. I love the curtain - by a fluke it was almost the first one I found when we had the bathroom re-done and it was literally perfect for the room, so I'm keen to get it "keepable" if possible. I could do with a second one anyway though I guess - then the current one will get washed a bit more often! I'm with you on the prices people are apparently prepared to pay for such things though - the other one that astonished us was kitchen bins - when we had the kitchen done our 20-year + old one really *did* need replacing, and we decided one one of those with rubbish one side and recycling the other - well, when I realised that they were available to buy from a particular brand for a three-figure sum you could have knocked me down...as MrEH said - "you'd need to be a 'SimpleHuman' alright to buy at that price!"