Landshare

Gardening can be surprisingly cost effective. But you could be at risk of losing the potential savings without some planning and care.

1. Identify your favourite foods that cost the most in the supermarket.

It really depends on what you like to eat. After all, there’s little point in growing something expensive in the shops if you aren’t particularly keen on eating it.

2. Herbs and salad leaves are popular choices of money saving plants.

Growing your own herbs is one of the best and most enduring ways of knocking a hole out of your food bill. Most are easy to raise and many are quick to grow to harvest. Leafy annual herbs are great grown simply from seed - just sow them direct (i.e. in the ground where you want them to grow) or start them off in pots or guttering before planting them out. As they develop, don’t cut the whole plant back, just cut or pick up to half the leaves at a time, and the plant will grow more to replace them. The woodier, perennial herbs (those that live longer than a single year) such as rosemary, thyme, and sage can be raised from seed very cheaply, but they are slow growing – it can be well worth investing in a few plants to get you underway and using them immediately – it’s still cheaper than buying the cut herbs from the supermarket, and if you’re careful not to pick too heavily they’ll develop into large plants and replenish the leaves you harvest for years to come. Try http://www.jekkasherbfarm.com for plants.

This cut and come again approach to leafy herbs really comes into it’s own with leafy salads. Yes, by all means grow some of your lettuces until they form full hearts, but if (like me) you prefer a salad of mixed leaves, you can grow to suit your way of eating. Many lettuces can be harvested just like the leafy herbs: simply take a few of the outer leaves off each developing lettuce, and pick up to half the leaves from leafy plants such as rocket. They’ll soon regrow in the warmer months, even (although slowing in pace) through Winter. This approach works best if you grow a couple of plants each of a wide variety of lettuces and salad leaves – try Green Oak Leaf lettuce, Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, wild and/or salad rocket, oriental leaves such as mizuna, mibuna, chop suey greens, mustard red frills, and don’t be afraid to throw in pea tips, edible flowers such as nasturtiums, borage, leafy fennel tips and tender new herb growth. This approach also maximizes the yield per seed and saves time, as for every act of sowing you’ll have multiple harvests. You’ll not only have save a few pounds for every harvest you pick, you’ll have freshness and variety you’ll not find in any shop.

3. Short season favourites

You will also find that varieties that are more expensive in the shops and cheaper at home are those that are a bit harder to grow, are a bit trickier to harvest or have a short season.

Short season favourites in particular are well worth considering for your patch – purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus, and new potatoes all appear for a fleeting window in the harvesting calendar, and are a cinch to grow. Each is also prone to losing sweetness and condition rapidly on picking – so not only will you save yourself a few pounds by growing them yourself, you’ll be getting harvests vastly superior to their shop-bought cousins.

Easiest and quickest to harvest are the new potatoes – try International Kidney (aka Jersey Royals), Belle de Fontenay or Yukon Gold. For a simple fast-forward method, half empty a bag of organic compost, equally space 3 seed potatoes in the remaining compost, and sink them a couple of inches. Roll down the top of the bag to a couple of inches above the level of compost and water well. As the leafy stems grow in the coming weeks, add more compost gradually, leaving a few inches of leaf showing, and water occasionally. Do this in March and you’ll have delicious early potatoes by late May (earlier if you keep the bag in a greenhouse or similar). When you think the time has come, snip off one of the bottom corners of the bag and carefully investigate. If the spuds are too small, leave them to develop some more – if they’re good, then just remove the ones you want to eat, leaving the rest in the compost for another supper.