Thursday 7 August 2008

Homegrown veggies - for first timers!


We're not gardeners. We kill plants, with too much or too little love. However, with the price of food rising by the week, we're starting to reassess whether we couldn't learn to plant a few seeds. We only have a small patio garden, it has enough room for a few pots though so we thought it would be worth a try.


So, last Wednesday, we took a trip to the local B&Q and got some compost, some seed trays, seeds for Kos lettuce, small carrots and herbs. We also got some Chilli, but unfortunately it's soo late to plant those now.


Our carrot has taken longer but started to sprout too:

And here is a picture of the dill - still not sure what to cook with it but it will be nice to have it available when we need some:


We also bought a ready-grown pepper plant for £10.50 at a local flower shop, which has around 14 peppers on it, so this should save quite a bit when they have start to hit fully grown size.


We bought a strawberry plant which so far shows one perky strawberry, here's to hoping the next one will come up soon or it will be a short lived fruit salad!

Sadly we missed the correct time for planting tomatoes, but my next stage will be to try and plant potatoes, which by all accounts just needs a deep box with holes for the water to drain, and plenty of soil!

All in all, we probably spent £27 on everything.

4 comments:

Sophie Gist said...

Hi Paul and thanks for posting - keep checking back for more tips!

twinklie said...

Hiya. I've been over on the growing veggies board on Moneysavingexpert and was just wondering if you could tell me how big your containers are?

Also where do you have yours kept a the minute?

I'm going to join in the growing my own next year. Need money to buy stuff with then time to plant it all, both of which I don't have right now. Ha ha.

Sophie Gist said...

Hi Rachel - I just used small pots we had in the garden for now and then plan to re-pot them when we need to... Remember that you don't need to buy pots to start with - use egg containers, yoghurt pots (I started a chilli plant in an empty yoghurt pot) and also margarine tubs etc can be used - just put a few holes in the bottom. Some of th eplastic containers from meat can be washed and also used to save money. Then buy pots when you need to...

Anonymous said...

I suggest to cut the onion in half, more on one side. Than make a little round around the hairy part those been dry roots. and try to pull out WITH smallest white part, intact. Put in water and after it start to grow to rich homemade compost pile. those few green leaves are worth trouble peeling with care. dill like food for free. :)