[poppie]

From a purely financial side I very much doubt its cost effective. I would love to see figures to the contrary. 

Right.....next year we'll all have to turn into accountants :blink: and cost our veg growing out, to proove it one way or another...what do you reckon? 

i agree with with mumofstig,we are all so used to going into the dreadful supermarkets and loading our trolleys its become a habit.
veggie growing in basic terms doesn't have to be expensive.i'm new to it all and really havn't spent much at all.we only have hard standing,and a lovely lawn.the lawn is now half its size.
cheaper to dig that,than to buy pots,raised beds and compost.
seeds have cost me 19p a pack.have swapped with others for things i havent got.
i suppose its all a matter of how far you want to take things.like your shopping trolley really.
either you settle for the basics or go for the finest.

[sunshineband]

Eating the produce grown by me and my small band of children at school ( too much even for them to eat  ) has given my OH a strangely proprietal air when he tells people we mainly eat home grown   

His contribution in seven months:
1. One watering trip
2. Carrying six bags of compost
3. Taking spare cabbage and fennel plants to work to give to his colleagues

He's not done bad out of this and doesn't grumble ..... not now anyway 

[PlymouthMaid]

Interesting discussion =
got my plot last August and a rough tot up now seems to say that I have spent about £230 (inc rental). I doubt I have saved any money yet but as others have said it's not about that alone. For starters, I would never buy fresh peas or raspberries because of the cost. The taste of most things is far superior. And what price the relaxation, the exercise, the friendship and the chance to contemplate your navel in company with nature.

[mumofstig]

Just because you wouldn't buy them doesn't mean they don't have a value
It means you have been able to 'upgrade' ...for free Don't you just love it

[KT]

I don't think you can really look at is as a way to save money - yes you'll save cash if you would actually buy the amount of courgettes your plants will produce but who buys 180 courgettes a season? I would never dream of buying fresh peas Id just grab a packet of frozen - far cheaper.

True i know im bound to end up with Waaay more courgette's than i would normally use, but i do actually use alot of courgette's. normally i would say that i use 1 pkt of 3 courgette once a week thats 156 courgettes a year at a cost of £82 a year.  (wow thats sounds bad when you write it down haha  )

Granted the ones i am growing have a limited shelve life fresh but i plan to make them into the sauce i normally use them in a freeze on bulk so im certainly hoping that once they are in full production mode i'll be able to make enough pasta sauce for the entire year and enough courgette for stir fry etc (other foods i use fresh courgette) for the summer months, not to mention a whole host of other foods i don't normally make regually because of the price of courgettes (marrow chuckney, courgette tea bread etc)

for what cost?? .... erm seeds where £1.50, soil is free, alittle tom feed so maybe £2 worth in total over the season.  1 bag of compost that  used to start the seedlinds off in £1 (asda smart price), a couple of pots so maybe another £1.  thats pretty much it really.

total cost of courgettes = £5 if i get more than i can eat it really doens't matter, because £5 is still alot better than my usual annual cougette bill of £82, infact all the better because then i can feed friends and family out of my food bill .. yay.

I could go on and on really ...... i probabally use 1 bag of frozen green beans a week, 52 weeks = £52 a year.  this year i've replaced those with french dwarf, french climbing and runner beans.. cost of seeds about £3, feed and neting canes etc pobabally takes it upto about £5 total.

Granted we could start costing up my petrol time etc ... but i till thats going alittle ott, infact i guess i should factor in the cost of the new freezer i bought just to keep these things in to store for winter  but really i think i've done pretty well out of my inital £50 investment. i've recorded £15 savings so far and my foods been cropping for less than a month and most of it is no-where near ready.

True enough its not always like for like comparisons but as long as my family eat i concider it a saving on something i would have bought.
 

[Lardman]

Just because you wouldn't buy them doesn't mean they don't have a value

Actually for the purpose of the discussion I think thats exactly what it does mean. If you won't / don't normally buy the item, just because you have it that doesn't mean you have saved its value. Much the same way a pair of shoes in the sale is only a bargain if you were going to buy them anyway.

[mumofstig]

But Lardman.....what i mean is......if you are eating fresh peas, what would you have eaten instead, frozen? Then you have given your fresh peas the same monetary value as frozen ones, but got fresh ones.
You would still have to replace your homegrown fruit and veg with something (that you would have to buy) even if it was a 9p tin of value beans and a reduced loaf of bread!
So no matter what you eat from the garden, it must have a value, cos it replaces something else you would have bought and eaten
Can you see what i mean

[Lardman]

Can you see what i mean

Yep I understand and its a very valid point, but the items value is limited to the item which is replaces, in your example 9p not £1.80 pack or whatever they're charging. So while you're diet is better your wallet isn't.

Should I then decide that I'd like some fresh beans with my fresh peas the combined value again can not exceed the 9p beans I would have bought if I had no garden produce.

If we look at something like fresh strawberries, they don't and never will make it onto my shopping list. I do however have a few plants in the garden.  As such they don't replace anything on my list - what monetary value can I assign them? Having them is not saving me anything.

I think however this is at a slight tangent to the OP question regarding saving money by growing your own. 

I better leave it there though otherwise Aunty will send me to the naughty step for being cantankerous.

[mumofstig]

Yep I understand and its a very valid point, but the items value is limited to the item which is replaces, in your example 9p not £1.80 pack or whatever they're charging. So while you're diet is better your wallet isn't.

That's why i said you got a free upgrade

[Christine]

There has been a discussion on allotment produce recently down the plot. I raise for me and for one other household. We are into year 3 on the plot and have learned which things grow on it. No - make it that I'm into year 3 working and both households are into year 3 in eating.

We've made a list of things we like and decided to grow the expensive stuff that we like. So that will be salad produce then, fennel, calabrese and broccoli, dwarf beans, leeks, parsnips, peas, red cabbage, courgette, marrows and carrots as you can get so many out of one packet and pick them young for eating raw.

Add in that we have a large variety of herbs, strawberries, raspberries and tayberries (all expensive). So all in all, the plot should cover its costs plus some next year. There will be a few pink fir apple potatoes to go with the salads (try buying those down the supermarket then).

Seems the way to go as it fits with our eating habits. Oh and I factor in my time as working on the allotment is my major hobby.

The other side of the coin is that gardening for food never really pays in the first or second years with collecting the tools and getting the ground into good heart. After that you really begin to see the benefits. Probably year 4 is where you really begin to make savings (allowing for flood, famine and plague of course as all gardeners know). You work up to saving money because you learn to grow and preserve what you will eat.

[poultrygeist]

And of course. Not only do you save on like for like fruit and veg btu while you're trying to eat all that produce, you aren't buying other things to try and make a meal from.

It's def a win/win situation. 

We only have limited garden space but we are eating stuff we'd have to buy and have freezers full of produce that will substitute for other things later (fruit for puddings, etc) that may have been bought off a shelf.

If that makes sense.

Rob

[sunshineband]

Let's face it, however you look at it it's just great to GYO 

[KT]

Let's face it, however you look at it it's just great to GYO 

I totally agree.

Regardless of the cost of what you are growing, anything you eat from your garden is money saved, because every meal is something you didn't need to buy.  If the green beans replace the 9p tin of value beans then so be it, 9p is saved and franky home grown beans are better for you, taste better and give you a nice sence of achivement to boot.

I agree with the people who say that you can't save you've saved XXX amount on things you wouldn't buy, when i factor what go's into my pot i don't factor in posh fresh beans when i harvest my green beans i factor in the money i would have spent on the cheap frozen ones i would have bought.  As it happen's everything im growing is something i would normally buy to one degree or another. Though as someone else said i concider the fresh stuff a free upgrade from the frozen veg i used to live off. 

I do figure though anything i eat (even if it's not a direct replacement ie bean for bean) is a saving, ok so i might not buy courgettes for teabread normally, but teabread eaten still has value as it replaces "something" i would have eaten mostlikely cheap packs of bickies or cakes after all growing my own doens't mean im eating more.

So really the only things i don't concider some sort of saving are anything i give away or throw away.

[digalotty]

this is interesting,  if theres a lidle close by seeds only 28p a pack and its well documented on here that you can can get very cheap if not free tubs to grow in from round the back of supermarkets, and if you have the room maybe some chickens.
you cant get fresher or tastier,   good luck

[2peasinapod]

Very fortunate here as OH was the main instigator of the GYO thing,
went to have a look at various sites and 3 weeks later we were on 

now to the other half of this thread
Strimmer                                         £60
fuel                                                 £10
seeds                                               £5
canes                                             £15
netting                                             £4
shed                                             £100

total so far in first year                 £194

and nothing from lotty yet (had some stuff from pots in garden )


ok the shed was a wedding aniv prezzi to ourselfs but we aint gona see any "profit" for a few years, and then theres the green house to build yet???