How does growing your own save you money?

I keep on reading that growing your own vegetables is a good way to 'beat the credit crunch' (though how this helps you get a loan or mortage is never explained). This makes me realise that I've never actually sat down and totted up the net cost/benefit of my fruit and vegetable growing and poultry keeping. But then, decades of practice and parsimony passed through the genes mean I don't do things in the same way as many people. 

I suspect if I added up the cost of materials and food for the poultry over the years (even with all structures home made or free-cycled), I would be well out of pocket despite buoyant egg sales. But then, the birds produce about a ton of straw manure which makes vegetable growing possible in a very thin and porous soil, and it's sentimentally valuable to have many generations of ducks or hens you've raised yourself. 

If the your sole reason for growing food is economic, then here are some tips.

Don't spend too much on seeds

Most of the catalogues that spend a lot on marketing have very expensive seeds. In fact, some are so overpriced that the companies have a number of half-price seed sales through the year. T&M harass you with a lot of junk emails if you get on their list, but among those will be some half-price veg seed sales. I've bought about half my seeds from their sales in the last few years.

Some garden centres also reduce seeds by half at the end of the season, around June-July.

And some seed merchants are simply better value than others even without reductions. I buy a lot from D T Brown

Also consider some budget brands, though seed quality can be variable. I recommend those from Lidl which were only about 35p for small packets, c. 55p for larger packs of peas and beans. They have good range of largely continental varieties which personally I like a lot. (The one vegetable I'd insist on quality seed for are parsnips, which can be hard to germinate at the best of times.)

Don't throw away last year's seed packets

Most vegetable seeds will actually remain viable for a number of years (the exceptions are parsnips and lettuce, though I find the latter will germinate the following year with reduced fertility). I just planted a row of Forono beetroot with a sell-by date of 2003 and it germinated with as much vigour as if it was new. Opened seed does need to be stored well, in a dry, cool place.

Save your own seed

This sometimes happens by accident if you find a pea or bean pod that has escaped picking. Dry any of these off and then shell. Discard any that look too shrivelled or brown.

Don't buy seed potato or onion/shallot sets mail order

Self-evident; the postage will be astronomical and chances are you'll find exactly the same varieties in your local garden centre unless you live on mars.

Don't be tempted by gadgets

If you do end up with a seed catalogue full of weird and wonderful things, don't be tempted by any of them. The one exception is a roll of environmesh which is essential for keeping caterpillars of brassicas. All the others are a waste of money.

Don't buy lots of fertilisers or pesticides

If you're creating a vegetable plot from scratch, then the soil won't yet have been denuded of nutrients or have built up a lot of pests or diseases. Soil treatments are really for those who have been cultivating a plot for a long time, and need to return what has been taken out to stop the soil becoming exhausted.

Don't buy fruit bushes/trees from catalogues

The fruit offered by the glossy catalogues is very over-priced in comparison with smaller, specialist nurseries, plus postage will be astronomical. Also, all fruit is a medium to long term investment, and it may take a few years before you get the value of the purchase price back in fruit. Check out any local nurseries first. Buckingham Nurseries used to be the best value mail-order supplier of the more popular varieties of top and bush fruit, but I haven't bought anything from them for a while.

Some catalogues do offer good deals on strawberries though, I've bought them from Marshalls on a couple of occasions when they've had a good offer.

Don't create gluts

If you sow a lot of one vegetable in one go, then you'll probably end up chucking a lot of it away. Sow little and often, leaving gaps between sowings. Learn how to store things properly. If you don't have a cool place to store sacks of potatoes, they will germinate in mild weather and will have to be thrown away, so grow a mixture of varieties you can use through the season and a small amount of maincrop until you're sure they will store well (I've ended up storing mine in paper bags in the bottom of the fridge).

Pumpkin support

Last year the poultry run proved to be a very good support for squashes, so this year I'm encouraging a pumpkin variety to cover the wire. I would have expected something to set and start developing by this point in August for there to be any hope of decent, fully ripened fruits, but yet again the season has been disappointing. The biggest pumpkin I ever grew was in my allotment in Wolfson College. I remember going into college on August bank holiday to work, and finding someone had tried to steal the nearly-mature fruit. It was too heavy for them to move, so they had hacked out a slice. We decided to take it home and use it ourselves before the thieves came back for some more. It took two people to move and filled a small wheelbarrow. I doubt my current pumpkin will produce anything like this in time for this year's bank holiday.

Squashes

The squash bed around the 'duck sump' has become a jungle in my absence. I'm sure the irrigation helped them establish during the brief heat wave, but constant rain throughout July hasn't helped the fruits to set without rotting off. Some leaves showing mildew. Normally I'd put this down to being too dry at the root, but I suspect the drip from the duck bath plus the rain might have been a bit too much. Now the vines are attaching to fences and other supports, hopefully there will be enough air to allow some to set without rot from the blossom end setting in.

You might notice some sweetcorn interplanted between the squashes. I've done this before with some success. However, none of my sweetcorn is looking very vigourous this year, the later-planted ones not in the squash bed being the weakest.

Potato: Nicola - with no scab

A very clean crop of Nicola, about 1Kg from one of the later sown tubers. This year I treated the ground with sulphur powder at the rate of 15g metre before sowing. So far it seems to have done the trick, not a trace of any scab, though Nicola isn't the most scab-prone of potatoes but it does sometimes show some brown scarring where earth has attached in a lump. I'm even hopefully the early-sown ones might yield some large and clean enough for exhibiting at the Autumn show. I'll reserve judgement until I harvest some of the Rooster which were quite badly affected by scab last year.

Nicola is my favourite potato as it is so versatile. A salad type second early, it can be used early (after flowering) as a new potato, or left to attain a larger size as maincrop as it stores very well. It has dense, yellowish flesh with a lovely buttery flavour. It has smooth, fine skin and isn't as prone to scab in my soil as some varieties. It's slightly less prone to slugs than some, perhaps because it is denser. Larger tubers bake well too, though be very careful to look for any tiny slug holes before baking. I'm going to miss this variety; I'm not sure I can bring myself to use dithane to control blight.

It scores 3/9 for Blight resistance, 7/9 for scab and 8/9 for potato eelworm.

Tomato Blight

Another disaster. I had been growing bush tomatoes in the Growmate greenhouse. Unfortunately the design isn't blight proof, as water can enter in the gap at the top of the pyramid, and splash blight spores on to the tomato foliage below. I can probably find a way round by covering the gap loosely, but I won't be able to grow tomatoes in here next year.

Luckily, very little of the fruit had been affected by the infection and I managed to rescue a couple of pounds of tomatoes.

Blighted!

Returned from Wales to find all the potato crop badly affected by blight. Fortunately the infection was still on the leaves, and hadn't spread down the stems to the tubers (as far as I could see) so there was a hope of saving the crop. Fortunately I had been earthing up very assiduously which would help stop infection spreading to surface tubers.

The only way to save the crop was to remove the haulms at soil level and destroy them. I dusted the ground with some Bordeaux powder and slug pellets then covered the ground with at least 6 inches of straw (to cover the pellets from birds and act as a barrier to spores. I've just dug some Nicola, and this approach seems to have words.

This is the first time in more than twenty years of gardening in Oxford that I've had potatoes affected by blight, though outdoor tomato crops have always been affected from mid-August onwards. I had one plant affected last year, but the rest of the crop was unaffected. Sadly my favourite potato variety Nicola has little resistance to blight. The other bed of Rooster was also affected. I'm really glad I experimented with planting early, a couple of weeks before Easter. This meant the early tubers made a lot of early growth and the haulms were twice the size when blight struck; this certainly seems to have a more or less doubled the yield between the early and late-sown rows (though I didn't have time to weigh the crop unfortunately).

Now that blight is well and truly established in the garden, I will have to choose blight-resistant varieties.  T&M claim their maintcrop variety Sarpo Mira has 'unprecedented blight resistance'; I might give it a go and report back.

July

July was a horrible month. Not only because it was so wet but because I spent most of it at my father's side in hospital, leaving the garden and orchard completely untended, and nearly all the summer fruit unpicked. He died last week. Only now do I realise how much of my urge to grow fruit and veg was tied up with my relationship with him and his world; partly competitive, partly to provide things that he liked. I wonder how I will feel about it now, the amount of work that has built up, and the amount of produce that needs picking and eating seems an enormous burden at the moment. July is the one month one cannot afford to be away from the garden, growth is so rapid, disease so rampant and production so high.