I’m trying to win an iPad 2 in the iSave, iWrite, iPad competition from PlayPennies.com!
Money saving, we all do it at some point, whether it’s turning down the heating a bit, walking/cycling as part of the daily commute, or (my personal favourite) shipping the kids off to the grandparents for the weekend to save on the weekly food shop.
I won’t lie to you, I’ve done all of that and more and with the ongoing financial crisis in our house it doesn’t look like we’ll be stopping anytime soon. In order to try and get ourselves a bit of breathing space I’m dreaming up schemes on a daily basis to try and make ends meet. At the moment it’s a combination of eBay selling (not too bad), T-shirt designs (too expensive to setup) and getting a childrens book published (I think I’ve got more chance of a close encounter with Jessica Alba on a desert island, no offence to my other half).
The one thing I have had success with, albeit limited in terms of end product, is growing my own veg. From since I was 4 years old I’ve looked at neighbouring gardens in awe of the variety of veg being grown, from Old Mr Mac’s cabbages to Big Franks home-grown/made pickled onions to the towers of runner beans looming over my Granddads allotment. So after reading up a bit on the net I decided to turn my small suburban garden into Basingstoke’s answer to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's river cottage.
Task one was getting the garden ready. It was a battle of wills to convince my better half that I could make a go of this. She wanted flowers; I wanted the practical and useful greenery that I could use on my Sunday roast. Compromise was eventually arrived at and I installed two raised beds and a few pots and a weekly helping hand from my 4 year old Daughter and a couple of kids my darling minds (day to day this is one of the most satisfying aspects of the whole mini veg farm, the kids get to help with the planting and the harvesting, which in turn encourages them to eat various vegetables as they had a hand in creating them).
Once the garden was cleared of a couple of old conifers (cue lots of swearing, cuts and bruises due to the lack of the proper tools), and the beds were built (less swearing due to buying link-a-bords, but old wooden planks would be as good) I got down to growing. I’m in my second summer growing season now, so take my advice, don’t plant too much, I did and my first crop suffered for it. My first bed (1m by 1m) had cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and red onions in it (and far too many of each), Don’t get me wrong, we had a bit of each in terms of produce (ok, the onions were a complete and utter failure, and I got an extra caterpillar with my broccoli one Sunday dinner), but extra space between plants will get you better results, if you have some small plants over put them in pots or give them to your neighbours to try their hand at growing.
Our second bed contained radish, lettuce and carrots, and this is what really got my daughter and the other kids eating salad, not a lot of kids like the peppery taste of radish but they wouldn’t say no because it was grown by them from seeds. We also grew the following in various pots; sprouts (they grew extremely well and the children liked the tall ‘alien’ stalks); beetroot (again the kids love the striking purple stalks) and an orphaned courgette plant (it’s owner disappeared to Australia for a couple of months, during which we grew the biggest courgette in the world, tasted a bit woody mind).
This year I’ve been much more frugal in my planting, just two varieties of cabbage, radish, lettuce, runner beans (the flowers placate the other half). And I’ve hardly paid for any seeds! Why? Well the beans are a result of last year’s poor attempts, and through various promotions (Homebase, RHS, and the Sun’s potato competition) we’ve managed to get most of what we need to create a garden to rival my Fiancée’s Farmville attempt on Facebook (try saying that after a few ciders).
And with us only just being in May we’ve already had a load of radishes, some lettuce, and the gorgeous weather means it probably won’t be long before we get some tomatoes and strawberries. The potatoes are shooting up, the cabbage look strong and the only pests I’m having to deal with are my pesky cats, at this rate I’m going to have to issue ASBO’s to the blighters the number of times they’ve broken through the netting on one particular bed (I wonder if I could hook up an Ipad to flash up an image of a large dog to growl at them each time they attempt it?)
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