Growing your own - is it worth it?

[umslopogaas]

I think, in answer to the opening question "is it worth it?" the answer is, financially no. Especially if you cost in your time, but even if you dont, the economies of scale mean commercial growers can do it much more cheaply. The main advantages are:

1. You can grow a range of varieties that are hard to come by commercially and have interesting (often much stronger) flavours than the stuff in the supermarket. For example, I dont know how many varieties of tomato are available in my local Morrisons, but I have a seed catalogue that last year offered fifty eight.

2. You can eat it very fresh: commercial cold storage is pretty good, but some of the stuff in the supermarket does sometimes look a bit tired.

3. For those who care about these things, you can grow it free of pesticides, though if you do, be prepared for big problems with pests and diseases. In fact, be prepared for big problems even if you do use pesticides, because the range available to amateur gardeners is very restricted, and excludes a lot of the really effective stuff.

4. Its fun, if you've got the time to devote. I grow various stuff and enjoy the challenge, but I'm retired and have plenty of time to plant, weed, stake and spray.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No, there's more to it than that - it's always well-textured and crumbly before you even start digging.

That's my experience, anyway.

But surely you've done quite a bit of work on the soil before then - preparing the trenches, and (significantly for potatoes) hilling them up.

[Nick Armstrong]

4. Its fun, if you've got the time to devote. I grow various stuff and enjoy the challenge, but I'm retired and have plenty of time to plant, weed, stake and spray.

Keeps you fit too? As long as you don't eat too much of the produce chipped and fried, presumably....

[Nick Armstrong]

a solitary aubergine is sitting looking at me from the garden

You really do need to stop using those cut-price pesticides from the Ukraine...

Or lay off the mushrooms a bit....

what should I make to justify exterminating it? Perhaps a moussaka. Any suggestions?

Another Greek idea, more simple, would be an aubergine dip - Melitzanosalata. Like garlic? Make it very garlicky! It's delicious that way....

http://whippedtheblog.com/2010/02/16/melitzanosalata-greek-eggplant-dip/

Aka with a tweak or two: Baba Ganoush

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/baba_ganoush_44415

[umslopogaas]

Well, I guess it helps keep you fit, especially in the early stages of bringing land into cultivation. However, having got the plots cultivated, I dont find it very hard work. I dont deep dig, apart from the bit where I grow spuds. Moving compost around takes a bit of effort, and those bags of manure you buy from the garden centre are quite heavy, but overall I find it quite relaxing. Its bad for the back though, I am sure any GP will tell you that the first fine weekend of spring will be followed by an outbreak of bad backs at the local surgery.

[french frank]

I have managed to produce a solitary aubergine which is sitting looking at me from the garden. I must cook something with it, but what should I make to justify exterminating it? Perhaps a moussaka. Any suggestions?

Aubergine Imam bayildi - stuffed aubergine is a classic - as a veg with meat or just as a vegetarian dish..

[Flay]

Its bad for the back though, I am sure any GP will tell you that the first fine weekend of spring will be followed by an outbreak of bad backs at the local surgery.

I couldn't say. I'm usually off work at that time with a bad back....

[Flay]

Aubergine Imam bayildi - stuffed aubergine is a classic - as a veg with meat or just as a vegetarian dish..

Thanks for that ff, and also to Calibs. I might try the Imam bayildi, although I think using a tin of tomatoes will save a lot of faffing in that recipe.

[Flosshilde]

Re using space effectively, potagers seem a good idea, and don't take up too much space, but there may be problems about where to site them. Most likely they'd do best in our garden in the areas we want to use for lawn or for flowers, and tucked away by sheds and under trees is probably not the best way to get good results.

Agreed that a shady area isn't the best place for a vegetable garden. The real old fashioned cottage garden would probably be a good way of combining ornamental & utilitarian. Unlike what's called a cottage garden now, which basically means a rather informal profusion of herbaceous, shrubs, etc, the original cottage garden, as found attached to actual peasant's cottages, had a vegetable plot on each side of the path leading to the front door, with borders of flowers on either side of the path.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

...I am sure any GP will tell you that the first fine weekend of spring will be followed by an outbreak of bad backs at the local surgery.

Let's hope not. I'm in the middle of building a raised bed (39.37 inches in height) using concrete blocks. It isn't the weight of the blocks that's the problem. It's digging the trench for the foundations. I've got mountains of subsoil everywhere.

[MrGongGong]

Once you have established beds you don't need to do any of the ridiculous "double digging" or even "deep" digging at all
Just avoid walking on the soil so it's not compacted and rotate what you plant , weed it and fork it over
saves a fortune in osteopathy bills

[umslopogaas]

Wise advice Mr GG! I think this obsession with double digging originates in a time when if you wanted a garden, you just commanded someone else to do the hard work. My understanding is that in those days, if you wanted to bring a plot into cultivation, you got your gardener to double dig it in the first year. Then he planted a crop of spuds because they suppressed the weeds. In subsequent years, he just needed to break up the surface and add a bit of manure. Just as you say, and in any case, as far as I know the GP cant do much for an overstressed back except say "you idiot" or if you look sufficiently prosperous "why didnt you pay someone to do it for you?"

And Eine Alpensinfonie, good luck, it will be worth the effort, but dont worry too much about the accuracy, gardening in my experience is not an exact science and certainly not carried out to two decimal places of inches! If the construction doesnt quite look square so much the better, it blends in better with a rustic look, doncha think?

[ardcarp]

I think, in answer to the opening question "is it worth it?" the answer is, financially no. Especially if you cost in your time, but even if you dont, the economies of scale mean commercial growers can do it much more cheaply. The main advantages are:

1. You can grow a range of varieties that are hard to come by commercially and have interesting (often much stronger) flavours than the stuff in the supermarket. For example, I dont know how many varieties of tomato are available in my local Morrisons, but I have a seed catalogue that last year offered fifty eight.

2. You can eat it very fresh: commercial cold storage is pretty good, but some of the stuff in the supermarket does sometimes look a bit tired.

3. For those who care about these things, you can grow it free of pesticides, though if you do, be prepared for big problems with pests and diseases. In fact, be prepared for big problems even if you do use pesticides, because the range available to amateur gardeners is very restricted, and excludes a lot of the really effective stuff.

4. Its fun, if you've got the time to devote. I grow various stuff and enjoy the challenge, but I'm retired and have plenty of time to plant, weed, stake and spray.

Well, your 1 - 4 certainly sums up why most of us do it. But your 'financially no' bit above certainly did not apply to the old guys I remember from my childhood. Money was tight in our neighbourhood, and I used to enjoy hanging around the working men (and it was usually men) who after a day's work spent summer evenings working in their back-gardens/allotments. There was no rushing off to buy things in garden centres which I don't think even existed then. Pea and bean sticks were gathered from woods and kept. Compost was made...and manure gathered (horses still delivered milk in the 50s and 60s). Seeds were collected from beans/peas deliberately allowed to 'pod up'. Potatoes were 'chitted' (is that the right expression?) to make more from a few seed potatoes. In general, the cottage garden was a pretty vital part of a family's nutrition. There were also bottlings of fruit (this done by wives) and preserving of eggs. The flower gardens were often pretty good too. No bought bedding plants in serried ranks. Mainly shrubs from begged and exchanged cuttings and annuals from seed saved from last year.

If all this sounds a bit rose-tinted, I do remember the post-war austerity years where in rural and semi-rural areas...even suburbia... the produce from the garden, grown at little expense (though with much labour) was probably essential for some families.

My father spent most of his time practising the violin rather than gardening. So it was mainly in a nearby village which I and a friend cycled to in school holidays that I saw and joined in these horticultural practices. And the raw competitiveness of the Annual Show had to be seen to be believed.

[umslopogaas]

#28 ardcarp, I remember a lot of what you describe. You are right, there were no garden centres back in those days, and people grew tons of veg because it really made a difference. I particularly recall the spuds.

I was lucky enough to be a small child playing in a large (five acres! but four of them were paddocks) garden, with a very large veg. plot which was dug by our gardener. Every year, half the veg garden was given over to spuds and the rest to onions, parsnips etc. My dad was a fairly hard headed business man (actually he was a solicitor, but he certainly knew the value of money). We grew veg because it was worth it, not because we wanted to be "organic" or any such affectation. The success of the harvest wasnt just academic, it mattered to the family finances.

And the spuds! We had an old outbuilding, within which was a pit, covered with boards. This was for storing spuds. Every autumn it would be filled with spuds and my mum would then gradually empty it throughout the winter and into the spring. It invariably ran out at least a month before the first of the new crop came in. I suppose she then had to go and buy spuds until the mid 1950s new crop came in again.

And yes, "chitted" is what your seed potatoes would have been. You put them somewhere warm until they sprout, then they are chitted and you can plant them out. You can of course plant them out anyway, but if they are chitted they are all at the same stage of development and will all (hopefully) develop in synchrony.

Fortunately I have no experience of Annual Shows, but I am sure you could have as bruising experience as you could wish for if you want to take on my local lot.

[ardcarp]

I particularly recall the spuds.

Off topic I go. But the spuds I love best of all are those grown on the Ile de Batz in Brittany. Seaweed is gathered at low water and piled into huge heaps which compost down over the winter. This is spread on the small fields which are given over mainly to spuds. And they really are the best I've tasted. The economics are those of the smallholder as is still quite common in France.