Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Frugal Living => Topic started by: SWhite6124 on December 30, 2012, 16:55
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Hi. I have a garden about 30ft by 40ft and have a 8x6 greenhouse in one corner. The rest of the garden is just grass but I would like to be more Eco friendly/ Self sufficient. Any ideas?
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Take some of the grass up to make beds or even build raised beds to grow veg? Plant fruit bushes? :unsure:
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What do you mean by eco friendly? Self sufficient?
Rainwater harvesting? Solar power? Grow Your Own veg?
None of these are necessarily 'Frugal Living'.
If you can be more specific in your thoughts, we can move the thread to a better forum for specific answers.
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Try all of the above and get some hens as well! Enjoy 2013 - you could be very busy sorting out a new lifestyle!! ;)
Try to do one thing at a time.... :blink:
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Like the others have said, put more of your thoughts down here and we can see what we can suggest.
You don't need a huge garden or allotment to be more self sufficient. None of us will ever attain total self sufficiency, but we can do our best.
Things like solar power, wind turbines cost money and are long term investments, but starting small, things like not wasting what we do have, whether it be saving washing up water to water certain things or help flush the toilet.
Not wasting left over food. On the odd occasion when I cook too much, what I don't use gets frozen in margarine tubs or little plastic bags and used for soups, stews, curries etc.
I make nearly all my own stuff, to us fast food is an egg! :) I make my own wine, butter when I can find the cream cheap enough, bread using the supermarket own brand strong bread flour, jam, usually using my own apples and blackcurrants.
Recycling things we might otherwise throw away. My OH makes logs from shredded junk mail when he's in the mood, I save any bits of wood I can find for the woodburner and occasionally cook on the woodburner too, plus I have a kettle suitable for woodburners.
Saving your own seeds when you can from things like tomatoes, peppers, runner beans once you get your little garden up and running.
Although you only have a small garden, think growing up as well as across. As well as my runner beans, I save some of my alderman peas to re-sow next year. Small fruit trees, either the skinny minarettes or up a wall as an espalier.
All helps save space.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, wait until the others come on here with more ideas!
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What I would like to do is to be able to grow fruit and veg to be harvested all year round. I still have small children so would like to keep some area of the garden for them. I suppose you can fill your garden with too many plants that get wasted. I would like to have a go at storing and preserving jams or chutneys, so could reuse my glass jars. I once read that a woman was halfway through the year and was still on her first black bin bag of rubbish, we throw one a day away. Again we could reuse jars, and I have just acquired a compost bin but what would you put on it? Collecting rainwater is something else I am looking into. Again I have read in magazines about people utilising every inch of their garden.
What books to read do people recommend?
Any ideas would be welcomed.
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All raw vegetable waste from the kitchen can go in the compost bin, mixing/wrapping them with paper stops the compost getting too wet.
Newspapers pages can be scrunched up and added, as well as shredded papers/junk mail.
Grass cuttings can go in as long as you haven't treated the lawn with any chemicals, along with torn up cardboard (but not the glossy sort - it doesn't rot down properly)
If you grew veg on half your garden you would have more usuable growing space than I have on my allotment, so you could grow quite grow a lot :D
Borrow Joy Larkcom's book Grow Your Own Vegetables for some interesting cropping plans for small spaces. But first you need to think about what you want to eat, and grow those things ;)
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Borrow Joy Larkcom's book Grow Your Own Vegetables for some interesting cropping plans for small spaces.
There's always this one as well - currently with free postage and 11 quid's worth of seed!
http://www.allotment-garden.org/toolshed/our-books/growing-in-small-places
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John's book as mentioned above is very helpful for small space growing. This link is too, from garden organic!
http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/schools_organic_network/leaflets/SquareFootGardening.pdf
But as I said above, think upwards as well as outwards. It's amazing what you can grow in a small space!
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The biggest difference anyone can make to their personal carbon footprint is actually composting :D
Not everyone knows that, but it really is true
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There's always this one as well - cuuently with free postage and 11 quid's worth of seed!
http://www.allotment-garden.org/toolshed/our-books/growing-in-small-places
That is definitely a worthwhile book, and pocket sized too so you can carry it around easily to read while you wait at doctor's appointments and such.
I'll be ordering THIS (http://www.amazon.com/Maximizing-Your-Mini-Farm-Self-Sufficiency/dp/1616086106/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356984827&sr=1-1&keywords=maximizing+your+mini+farm) one this week for other sorts of information. I'm on 3/4 of an acre but only about 1/4 of it is usable so I constantly search for more ways to improve my yields and methods.
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When I first started to dig up my garden for veg, one of the old members on here recommended I read Cost-effective Self-sufficiency - so I bought a second hand copy from Amazon :)
I see that it has now been updated, and I'm sure it would be worth a read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cost-effective-Self-sufficiency-Eve-McLaughlin/dp/0715338285
perhaps they'll have it in your local library if you'd rather not buy it :blink:
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John Seymour's book is also packed with useful information:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency/dp/0751364428
Whilst it might appear to be aimed at those wishing to do things on a larger scale, the knowledge can still be applied on a smaller scale.
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Compost everything you can - dust from vacuum cleaners - newspaper in moderation( I rip it into thin strips like shredded paper -if you tear from the edge that is 'serrated' its easy) .In fact anything organic.
Does your husband shave get him to use a brush and soap not foam from a can.
Shop in charity shops for clothes. Do you have a woodburner? If so use pallets for firewood.
Plant some suitable fruit bushes in pots if your space is limited.