this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Home gardening at scale can definitely be cheaper than store bought. But as you've said, most people don't have the space.
Yeah you'd probably get more than 1KG per plant. They grow so much so fast.
I must be doing something wrong. Half the time I only get one cucumber from a plant. Sometimes I'll get a good plant and get three cucumbers. Never more or faster than we can eat though. But I'm only planting a couple of plants.
Do you manage to stagger or store a lot of it so it can last you through the year?
And do you have a good way to deal with pests? One issue we have is caterpillars in the broccoli, so we tend to only grow it over the winter.
Garlic and onion store super well. We still have some 2 year old garlic which has done fine. Cool dark place and you are good to go. Potatoes can start to root up over time but still perfectly edible. In ground storage for root veg seems to do well for us as well (although some of our carrots end up a bit wonky looking) but wouldn’t leave potatoes in once the ground is getting too wet.
I think cucumbers did particularly well last year due to all the rain and just enough sunshine too. Cucumbers are heavy feeders though so we usually fertilise them every couple of weeks (with homemade fertiliser so it’s cheap).
With our brassicas once it’s white butterfly / caterpillar time we put insect netting over them. Mitre10 had some reasonable insect netting cloches which are fine to start with. We find them quite prone to bolting if they get too much Sun so also recommend planting them in a semi shaded area of your garden. Over summer the area we plant them only gets 3-4 hours of Sun a day and that seems to be plenty.
Thanks for the tips! Do you try to stagger your planting to stop them all being ready at the same time?
If the plants I’ve mentioned I find they either stay growing for a long time (cucumber, courgette) or store very well (garlic, onion etc). We do multiple batches of onions and carrots still but the others I mentioned there usually just one. Brassicas, beans etc we do usually stagger though, as well as getting early starts in the greenhouse and with a seedling warming mat.
You know, it sounds like a full time job 😆
I feel ya. It’s a hobby for us so we don’t mind the time, but we probably spend at least a couple of hours a week each in the garden.
I'm amazed it's only a couple of hours a week! That would be well worth the time investment, I'd think. Especially if you enjoy it 🙂