Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

Sounds amazing.  We have quite a large garden but do not do anything productive with it at present (I don't think sitting on the patio counts).  No excuses any more as our dog has grown out of the dig everything up at every opportunity phase!!  We did need to have some work and a patio laid but that's all been finished for a couple of years now.  It's quite a sunny garden with very heavy clay soil.  Would you suggest we spend this year improving the soil and perhaps grow something later or are there a couple of things you would suggest we could start with.  Novices here but want to start as it is definitely something I see in retirement.  We are likely to move house again in the next 3 years so don't want to invest too much in hard infrastructure (green houses etc) as would like to do that at the next property.

Any advice appreciated (you've probably been asked this dozens of times!).

L x 

Cheery_Daff

Oph, excellent list there! 😃 I am seriously considering having a fallow year on the veg growing front. I've grown some things since I've been here, but the last 3 years I've started growing stuff, then things have got away from me for various reasons and I've barely harvested any of it. Last year I harvested damsons, but that was it - I didn't even pick the rhubarb! 😱

So I'm thinking a consolidation year is in order... Get my seating areas properly sorted out and other garden infrastructure, make sure I harvest and use the perennial stuff (fruit bushes, herbs etc), and maybe grow some flowers - less pressure to harvest.

I don't know, going to ponder.

Suffolk_lass

Less_Talk_and_More_Action said:

Sounds amazing.  We have quite a large garden but do not do anything productive with it at present (I don't think sitting on the patio counts).  No excuses any more as our dog has grown out of the dig everything up at every opportunity phase!!  We did need to have some work and a patio laid but that's all been finished for a couple of years now.  It's quite a sunny garden with very heavy clay soil.  Would you suggest we spend this year improving the soil and perhaps grow something later or are there a couple of things you would suggest we could start with.  Novices here but want to start as it is definitely something I see in retirement.  We are likely to move house again in the next 3 years so don't want to invest too much in hard infrastructure (green houses etc) as would like to do that at the next property.

Any advice appreciated (you've probably been asked this dozens of times!).

L x 

I know you weren't asking me @Less_Talk_and_More_Action, but as with all things hereabouts, I have a view.

I would grow potatoes this year because they will help to break up the clay into a much more crumbly accessible form. Our last house was in a brick-making belt of heavy clay and if we left it too late with an area, we would be planting beans with a pickaxe, it was so hard. The other thing to do is research where you can get well rotted manure near you. It is often cheap or free and planning to put this down in October/November this year and letting the worms take it down will help enormously. A local garden club, or someone who grows their own and likes to chat, is a great way to find out what grows well where you are, when the last frosts are normally, and those sort of insights that any advice on here can't really help with

EssexHebridean

Echoing the suggestion about potatoes - that's what we plan to put into the majority of the new bed we are planning in our garden - we're right on the northern edge of the London clay belt so breaking up of heavy soil is something we are familiar with the need for! Also dig in LOTS of compost or as SL says if you can get it, manure. 

That's a cracking growing list Mrs F -  I was debating about squashes or cucumbers but I think we may struggle for space for the former, and I'm not convinced we would get the value from the latter.  We do have the start of a list though - and are mainly heading back to the sorts of things we had success with when we had our allotment - even to the extent of some of the same varieties that we remember so well. 

joedenise

I've had better luck with butternut squash in pots than in the ground - the bonus being they don't tend to cover the entire garden that way!

Makingabobor2

Ooh, sounds amazing what you are planning on growing. @foxgloves ,Can I just ask....as a relative newbie to all this veg growing.  How easy is it to grow Aubergine? Can you grow them in large pots & troughs? 
What is this about putting seed potatoes in egg boxes? I know about cutting them in half or something...is that chitting? What are the egg boxes for then? 

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
@LTMA, Yes, I agree with @Suffolk_lass & @EssexHebridean that the go-to crop for breaking up clay is generally potatoes, so getting a patch dug over ready for some spuds would be a possibility. There are heaps of different varieties. We are just growing a couple of types of first earlies this year, but salad potatoes are also a decent option as these are often more expensive to buy in supermarkets & you can try some quite fancy ones like pink fir apple, anya, etc. However, I think you mentioned you are looking to move in around 2 or 3 years? If that's the case, you might just want to concentrate on keeping your garden ticking over & tidy ready to go on the market and just add little inexpensive things to add to your enjoyment of it before you sell up - i.e a nice garden bench or painted old one, a couple of big containers in a prominent position to be enjoyed which you keep filled with seasonal plantings, etc. I am not sure how much effort I'd want to employ if I wasn't intending to stay. 

@EssexHebridean - re squash plants, yes they do like space, but for a small space, have you thought about growing upwards? Last year, we tried growing a tromboncino for the first time because our friends gifted Mr F a packet of seeds. I only sowed one to test them out but they were very successful & we will grow more this year. We planted our tromboncino at the foot of the metal arch which leads into our veggie plot. The fruits start off green & are very interestingly shaped, hence the name! They are like courgettes but we noticed that the seeds were confined to the bulbous bit on the end, making for a more solid, less watery flesh. In late summer, any left on the plant start to ripen to a golden colour & when you cut into them, the flesh is more like a butternut squash colour & can be used accordingly. The footprint of our plant was probably only about half a metre squared as it climbed upwards. Just a thought for you to consider. 

@Makingabobor2 - I have grown aubergines very successfully ......& also had years which were a complete & utter fail (like last year). Aubergines originate in hot countries & can be very sniffy indeed about life in the north-east midlands. I start the seeds off in my little heated propagator in Feb, pot the seedlings up indoors & then gradually get them used to colder areas of the house before they go down to our unheated greenhouse. There they are cloched, wrapped & generally cossetted until they decide either to grow or turn up their toes. I aim for 3 plants in a growbag, but I like the buy the deeper-filled ones if possible. They do need to be in a greenhouse though.
Re chitting of potatoes. This is simply sitting them on a sunny windowsill with the best eyes upwards so that they get  a head start by sprouting before they are planted outside. Don't overthink the eggbox element, as this is simply useful for holding one potato per section! We don't cut our seed potatoes in half, but I know that some hardcore veggie gardeners do, thinking that if each half has chits, then then they can get two seed potatoes out of one iyswim. 

No time for any more as we are booked onto an online talk shortly. Hope everyone has got off to a good start to the week today. We have been for a lakeside walk  - did treat ourselves to breakfast in the cafe (Personal Spends, of course!) but I kept out of both the garden centre & the gift shop so no temptation.
F x

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

Thanks so much @Suffolk_lass for taking the trouble to reply to me.  We did put potatoes in about 4 years ago - but just in one tiny bed.  They grew but then the pandemic and other things happened and we didn't move on from there.  We have one side of the garden that I don't think has ever been dug (since the house was built - 1950!!).  We need to plan and also prep, so I will talk to Mr L.  We meet loads of people out dog walking so will no doubt find a mine of useful local info through that route.

Thanks again - sorry for hijacking your thread @foxgloves

L x 

Makingabobor2

Thanks FG for the info. X

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Good job we're NOT camping! Popped into the greenhouse today & a huge gust of wind blew in & caused a really quite scary structural wobble! A very routine humdrum sort of day here at Foxgloves Manor, but am getting tasks done & keeping the frugal faith. Today's budget-helping stuff:
*Virtually no ironing....just a couple of items so low energy-use, both mine & the paid-for kind.
*Made a sourdough - currently proving, also a pizza base for tonight's meal & some bread rolls still to come.
*Made a porridge pot & defrosted some home made soup for tomorrow's pack-up. Will put in a fresh buttered roll too. *Did a few budget updates - mostly groceries & spends. Paid a few transactions off credit cards.
*Investigated loyalty points on Mr F's credit card. I noticed that the balance of these dropped by a large amount before Christmas so had been expecting vouchers to arrive. It seems that they will be due this month so will wait & see. Of course it's possible that Mr F has changed to digital ones & hasn't noticed he's received them online.
*Surveys very thin on the ground today - did an Ips*s, a quick Taste Nation & 2 supermarket feedback prize draws, but nothing else around this morning.
*Salvaged the pair of disposable gloves from my hair colouring yesterday. I don't like single use plastic stuff & find these gloves are perfectly re-usable for soggy jobs such as garden pond or compost bin maintenance so they have been pegged up to dry overnight & will be put away for future use.
*Was going to ping Mr F & ask him to pick up some coleslaw on his way home to go with the pizza I am making, but I am going to save a little bit of this week's little grocery underspend by making some carrot mayonnaise instead. I have pumpkin seeds & sultanas so that can be the shopped from home solution.
*Took a bowl of veggie scraps & coffee grounds down to the worm composter first thing as I want to keep the free liquid plant food coming. If they go dormant, obviously it stops.
*Continue knitting across the back of my cardi. 
And I also need to chase up workman about setting a date for our garden work. I have put a notional sum of money aside in this month's budget & would like to get the job sorted as we have other dates we could do with getting into our diaries & also, I would like to make that 'guesstimate' into an actual figure.
Well, the first rain is starting to hit the windows. We now have snow forecast for Thursday into Friday, although not the nonsense '550-mile long polar vortex ice-bomb snow chaos' scenario beloved of the red-top media. There may well still be a degree of chaos, because this country does get awfully thrown off course by 2cms of the white stuff, but we can only wait & see if & where it actually falls. 
Right, time to go & have a look at that sourdough then I shall start thinking about my lunch hour.
F x