Don't grow lettuce as I only like the crunchy hearts not floppy leaves and don't like peppery things so don't grow rocket either. Would like to grow onions but only the red spring onions have worked for me to date.
Raspberries for me are totally economical. I served a huge bowl of raspberries for pudding when family came round. If I had bought them, they would have been about £20 worth, and not taste as nice, as the growers tend to pick slightly under ripe. We still have Polka to come, June and July we had raspberries on porridge most days, and I have several kilos in the freezer for winter.
No idea what type of autumn raspberries I have as were given starters winter before last and he has been growing his for over 20 years splitting up and giving away bits for years. He joked that half the county is growing his plants.
OH picked 3 kilos in one go from a hitherto hidden and very congested clump he found when strimming the "wilderness" in spring. Far too many to eat at one go and we don't really eat jam so I made strained, rather than blitzed, raspberry coulis and it is delicious. Love raspberries but so expensive in the shops, as you say.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I grow lettuce mixed leaves in a raised bed, 50p from wilkinson and I have been eating fresh leaves for weeks! Also little Gem which the tortoise enjoys same price! I am not going to think what my allotment has cost but I don't care I love it!!
It's not a straightforward question for me. I don't aim for self sufficiency and few things that I grow displace things that I would buy. Soft fruit is the biggest saver - easy as anything to grow on the whole, buy it once and harvest for many years, and very expensive to buy, generally, because of the cost of picking and transporting such perishable produce. I'm fortunate to be able to grow blueberries in the ground - 2 bushes have this year produced 2kg of berries and there are still more to come. So that's about £20 worth of fruit from 2 bushes that cost £10 4 years ago. And which produced fruit last year, will next year. I feed them with comfrey from slips bought for £2 8 years ago and water them (rarely) with rainwater or water from the spring. Raspberries are a similar deal. I don't have to buy potatoes between early July and - usually - late October. I don't grow many, but they are useful in the rotation, so I don't consider the cost in simple terms - I need them. I can't remember the last time I bought a bulb of garlic. You simply can't buy beans or peas as fresh as if you pick them, walk to the kitchen and cook them and they never taste the same if they aren't that fresh. I do grow lots of leafy greens all summer and most of the winter. Far less gets wasted than buying a big bag from the supermarket, much of which turns to slime before we finish eating it. In the months when there's not much in the garden and we're eating supermarket veg, we tend to end up with a lot of two or three different veg. In the summer months, our average meal has half a dozen or more much smaller quantities of a much bigger variety - a few leaves of 'tree cabbage', a handful of stalks of green sprouting, a few runner beans, some french beans, maybe a couple of carrots or a chunk of beetroot as well as potatoes straight out of the ground. Rounded off with a dish of blackberries and raspberries with cream, or black currants with custard - it's ultimate low cost luxury, really. Then there are the things they don't sell in the supermarkets - chard, gigantes and fresh borlotti beans, salsify, elephant garlic. And it's cheaper than a gym, gives me something to look forward to every season, a reason to be outside any day of the year. Priceless
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Didn't realise how much I enjoy growing until this year when we arranged a holiday, so no growing from seed, no early planting, all plants from the garden centre at end of May,except French beans last year's seed, so really late start. I was champing at the bit by the time we got home and the plants were the first thing done. Never again.
As a direct comparison of cost, I think it easily saves me money, I seed some my own veg year-on-year and we do plant swaps at work. I planted half a dozen fruit trees last year so a bit of patience is required (arghh) until they start yielding (one apple tree is). A pack of Organic tomatoes is a couple of quid, we pick around one pack a day, an organic apple is about 60p and it all tastes so much better.
In addition, my young girls are really getting into 'allotmenteering'. You can't put a price on seeing your 2 year old get excited about splitting a pod of peas and hoovering them all up, yet when I put cooked peas on her plate she needs encouragement to eat them all!
I think even if I lost money on that it might well be worth it. Actually just the home grown tomatoes would be worth it alone (Mountain magic).
Yes I agree home grown is best. Mind you the hubby did say he dreamed about cucumbers the other night, so maybe the glut of them is having an effect ...... 😂
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I'm fortunate to be able to grow blueberries in the ground - 2 bushes have this year produced 2kg of berries and there are still more to come. So that's about £20 worth of fruit from 2 bushes that cost £10 4 years ago. And which produced fruit last year, will next year. I feed them with comfrey from slips bought for £2 8 years ago and water them (rarely) with rainwater or water from the spring.
Raspberries are a similar deal.
I don't have to buy potatoes between early July and - usually - late October. I don't grow many, but they are useful in the rotation, so I don't consider the cost in simple terms - I need them.
I can't remember the last time I bought a bulb of garlic.
You simply can't buy beans or peas as fresh as if you pick them, walk to the kitchen and cook them and they never taste the same if they aren't that fresh.
I do grow lots of leafy greens all summer and most of the winter. Far less gets wasted than buying a big bag from the supermarket, much of which turns to slime before we finish eating it.
In the months when there's not much in the garden and we're eating supermarket veg, we tend to end up with a lot of two or three different veg. In the summer months, our average meal has half a dozen or more much smaller quantities of a much bigger variety - a few leaves of 'tree cabbage', a handful of stalks of green sprouting, a few runner beans, some french beans, maybe a couple of carrots or a chunk of beetroot as well as potatoes straight out of the ground. Rounded off with a dish of blackberries and raspberries with cream, or black currants with custard - it's ultimate low cost luxury, really.
Then there are the things they don't sell in the supermarkets - chard, gigantes and fresh borlotti beans, salsify, elephant garlic.
And it's cheaper than a gym, gives me something to look forward to every season, a reason to be outside any day of the year. Priceless
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
A pack of Organic tomatoes is a couple of quid, we pick around one pack a day, an organic apple is about 60p and it all tastes so much better.
In addition, my young girls are really getting into 'allotmenteering'. You can't put a price on seeing your 2 year old get excited about splitting a pod of peas and hoovering them all up, yet when I put cooked peas on her plate she needs encouragement to eat them all!
I think even if I lost money on that it might well be worth it. Actually just the home grown tomatoes would be worth it alone (Mountain magic).