Staples
World wide the cost of wheat has soared, along with so many other cereals, what was once a terrible milestone, the £ 1 loaf, is now a distant memory. Of the list of foods above you can produce everything except bananas and beef. And if I had room for a bigger polytunnel I am sure I could copy Bob Flowerdew( apart from the ponytail) and grow my own bananas.
Now, growing a meal’ s worth of food a week might save you some money, but not much in the short term. What you save by not buying in the shops is quickly spent buying seeds and compost and if you keep hens, somewhere for them to live and feed, and if you keep a goat for milk – then you might as well, in certain circumstances, simply give money away – it would be cheaper in the long run.
But, that said, in the short term, it depends what you are buying in terms of food.
Only once( and I am going again as soon as I can) have I been to Fortnum and Mason. I wandered in one day when having to attend a meeting or other in London. It is just like a fairy land of food! I was completely mesmerised by the produce and quality of the food. BUT, and it’ s a big but, the food you grow yourself is better in quality, fresher, more nutritious and tastier; better for you and in money terms, the most exclusive, expensive food on the planet.
You cannot buy tomatoes that were actually growing on the vine one minute and on your tongue the next, nor fresh eggs that are still warm in your hand before they sit upright in the pan. Your own food is spoiling food, because once you have tasted it, you will never want to go back to the stuff they sell in the shops.
But let us stick to the one meal a week idea, for now.
What space do you need to grow a meal a week?
Well, it depends on what you want to eat – good answer, that! But it’ s true. Let us look at the staples – the vegetables for a Sunday Lunch. A big family can eat five pounds of potatoes at a sitting, and this would mean you should grow 26 potato plants. To do this in conventional terms you need three ten foot by three foot rows. Alternatively you could have 12 containers placed around the garden, the path, the shed roof, anywhere really. I grow potatoes in two foot by two foot boxes, the type you get from the supermarket to keep children’ s toys inside. Twelve of these would give you an equivalent number of potatoes.
Cabbages can be grown in pots. We eat at least a cabbage a week, and usually we have around 50 or so large pots with cabbages that grow happily to balling size and are just as tasty. If you wanted to grow these in the ground you would need the same area as potatoes mentioned earlier.
These simple examples give you the basic idea that you don’ t need to grow too much really to get a meal a week. There is more to it than just growing a certain number of this or that. For example, with very little effort you can be self sufficient in all your salads. You can fit them in anywhere; why not line the walls of your house, the garden walls, the edge of the greenhouse with pots of pots, each with one variety of lettuce or another? All you need is to sow a few seeds in the pots and thin them out. It doesn’ t really matter what the compost is like – you can always add nutrients by adding liquid feed.
The same goes for radish, salad onions, and a south-facing wall will usually allow you to grow cucumbers. From May right through to October, there is no need for you to but a salad, and they take little caring and cost next to nothing.