Great “Easy Lucrative Garden Crops” Hunt: What costly foods can you grow with ease?

We used to have an allotment but have now started growing in the garden instead and on windowsills or anywhere else we can find. We get our seeds in a pack of 3 from the pound shop we are certainly not professional gardeners but so far we have grown

Peas
Runner beans
grapes
ribes
broad beans
courgettes
tomatoes 4 different varieties
leeks
onions
potatoes
goji berries
gooseberries
blackcurrants
red currants
strawberries
cabbages
lettuces

Well just about everything going and it all seems to be working. The easiest things you can grow are potatoes and onions and garlic. If you get very small ones you can grow them from the ones you buy from the shops for tea. You can grow them in pots or outside. We are trying at the moment to grow aubergines because where we live they are 97p for one and im a veggie so we use quite a few. We do have little shoots of aubergines so ill have to let you know if they end up surviving. My massive tip is if something doesnt seem to be growing just bear with it we have planted things in Feb and they have only just started shooting now so dont give up. Sorry for the long post:money:

Raspberry canes do not take 4 years to fruit - but you do get more fruit as the years pass by. Asparagus takes 2 or 3 years, but my rows are fantastically productive now. I agree that fruit is the easiest and most money saving crop. But in mid-April I have been able to supply six of us on self-catering holiday with more than they could eat of purple sprouting broccoli, spinach beet, real spinach, several sorts of tender kale, parsley, rocket, pak choi, many herbs, garlic, costing nothing but some hard work, seed packets and last minute picking. All this would have cost a lot from shops - and the season has barely started.

KittyCat wrote: »

, try Swiss Chard either Ruby or High lights - grow from seed and this crops for a full year or longer..

Bit OT here, but how do you use this? I grew it last year as it was suggested as a substitute for spinach, and I found it realy quite horrid - really strong and sort of earthy-tasting. Is there a point beyond which it's too much and should just end up in the compost bin?

sonas_baby wrote: »

If you don't have a lot of time for watering mix in some moisture retaining gel with your compost.

Money-saving alternative: if you use 'scrubby sponges' in your kitchen, then once the scrubby bit has worn away, don't just chuck them in the bin - store them somewhere until you're ready to plant up. Put a layer of them at the bottom of the pot, over the crocks/polystyrene you're using for drainage. They hold on to masses of water, and you're not adding to landfill. I've also heard of them being used to root cuttings, but I've never tried this myself.

Muffin99 wrote: »

My favourite is lemon balm which is really easy to grow and will come up every year so it's cheap too and you can get loads of delicious lemon-scented leaves which are also great to add to your salad bowl. Lemon balm is said to strengthen the brain and prolong life too! Infact Llewelyn,Prince of Glamorgan regularly drank lemon balm tea and lived to be 108! Also John Hussey, of Sydenham, drank lemon balm tea with a little honey to sweeten it and lived to the age of 116! But whatever - it's delicious!

Thanks for this - I got a huge clump of lemon balm from Freecycle and was wondering what it could be used for.

Re Freecycle - it's a great source of free plants, but maybe it would work as a (sort of) seed swap too? If everyone started giving away their spare seeds, then they'd probably spot some they wanted )and I guess you could send two emails close together - one asking for seeds and one offering them. Might even be worth sending an email to the local group to see if they could start up an official one.