The new trend that’s helping us eat more healthily and cheaply
The challenge of eating healthily on a budget has had a boost from a growing trend in the last year – the rising number of people renting allotments and buying seeds. Even some people unable to secure an allotment have found ways to join in. Emily Garland created an edible roof garden on her houseboat: “I hadn’t realised the pure joy of seeing veg grow noticeably every single day”, she says."
“Now, as the new generation of allotmenteers harvest their first or second crop, are they really living and eating more sustainably, healthily and cheaply as a result?”
Have you taken this up since lockdown, or were you already doing something in this way?
Not an allotment but growing veg in the garden or trying to. I think you end up spending far more on such pursuits than you save. You do have to factor the hard work into the overall cost. It’s a nice thing to do as a hobby but farming itself is a very difficult job.
It is reckoned the food produced also tastes better than that bought in the shops. Something like organic I would have thought, providing your’s is grown without chemicals that is.
@Baz46
Yes I grew new potatoes for the first time this year, never having done so before
They were in big tubs in the back garden
I found them very low maintenance which I think I need!!!
I’m now looking to see what can plant in them next…
Had three crop yields of a similar size from all 3 tubs
Nothing tastes nicer than “garden to plate” I did notice the difference in taste immediately
I have certainly grown more produce in my garden since Lockdown and purchased a mini greenhouse and lots of large tubs.
I replanted some raspberries changing to an autumn fruiting variety. New additions this year include french beans ,fennel and in large tubs lots of different kinds of lettuce leaves , baby carrots,spring onions, welsh onions and more herbs including dill and coriander.
Some things in tubs…
@Baz46
Yes I grew new potatoes for the first time this year, never having done so before
They were in big tubs in the back garden
I found them very low maintenance which I think I need!!!
I’m now looking to see what can plant in them next…
Had three crop yields of a similar size from all 3 tubs Nothing tastes nicer than “garden to plate” I did notice the difference in taste immediately
My father grew all the vegetables and fruit for a family of four, plus for relatives and neighbours if any were going spare (fruit and veg, that is, not relatives). That used to taste so different from what I buy now in the shops, I can still remember the taste and helping out in the garden whenever required. Shelling peas sitting in a kind of sun swing in the garden was something I also remember.
About six or seven years ago I flattened our garden and made a large-ish (say 10’ x 45’) raised bed of around two feet in height.
I mixed well-rotted manure and other organic stuff in, and tried improving the clay soil over a few years.
But nope, it was still no good for growing things in despite my best efforts and that of a few greenfingered friends too.
The number of hungry wild vistors we get from rabbits & squirrels to deer are an added difficulty, so I gave up.
Which is sad because I love garden-fresh fruit and veg. but what it would take to do that here makes it very, very tricky.
I love growing veg, a constant battle yes, and yes it’s not cheap, but there is no veg that you can buy that is fresher, tastier nor more satisfying than something that you have raised and nurtured with your own hands…
The cats think that the raised beds were put there as a special toilet for them. The fox thinks so too. Having to clear fox poo from the beds every day is not fun.
That reminds me of when there used to be a milkman with a horse drawn milk cart, the neighbours all used to wait for the horse to do what horses do, then out would come the coal shovels and buckets to scrape the manure from the road for either their roses or vegetables. Strange how we recall things from so long ago just on the mention of something isn’t it!
I think my dad used to do that for his strawberries. I was even tempted myself a couple of weeks ago when I saw some on the road. It’s meant to be the holy grail of gardening.
Well, it’s far superior to what gets spread on the fields in this agricultural area. I hate to think what that might be but the ‘aroma’ is enough to put anyone off food grown in those fields for ever more!
In the past have grown tomatoes, corn on the cob, courgettes, aubergines radishes, cucumbers, and others, mainly in grow bags and using one of those little polythene type greenhouses, but in recent years I have been so busy at work throughout August that I haven’t bothered.
