Thrifty: Growing your own Veg #1

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This is a bit of a different post but I am so excited to tell you about my newest hobby. As most of you may be aware I am really wanting to bring more ‘lifestyle’ into my blog. I enjoy writing about beauty and fashion but would love to add abit of diversity! I enjoy the ‘outdoors’ and something I have always loved doing is gardening, so when Debt Free Direct who run the blog Making money go further asked me to prove how much money I would save by growing my own vegetables I knew I had to accept! Between now and May is the ideal time to start sowing your seeds so if any of you are interested I would urge you to start now. Wilko’s have a fantastic range, and they are super cheap too!

I chose so many vegetable seeds I’ve lost count. I chose the easy ones like tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, watercress and the ones that are a little more difficult like rhubarb, hot chillies, onions and more! I even opted for sweetcorn! I researched like crazy and have learnt so much, it is actually quite interesting; nothing like a new hobby! At this present moment which is around 10 days after sowing all of them have successfully germinated. Now the real work starts with rearing these little beauties and hopefully in a couple of months I will have a lot of veg to show you all.

How great would it be though to just go out into the garden and pick out some fresh veg. When you go into the supermarket the majority of the fruit and veg are from the other side of the world and have had so many chemicals sprayed on them to ensure they don’t go off in transit. When you think of it like that its hardly ideal. I think growing your own veg enables you to know exactly what has been put on it of anything.

I personally am always on a tight budget so organic vegetables for me are a no-no. But hopefully if/when my own vegetables grow I will have an endless supply!

Last year we had an accidental harvest, quite a funny story really. We gave the pet rabbit strawberries and tomatoes to eat and he always leaves the seeds and fast forward about a month later and we had plants! The fruit that came off them was amazing, and they didn’t need much care. The tomato plant died hover from the frost but the strawberry plant is still going strong!

You don’t have to have the biggest house/garden to grow veg, the windowsill is another great place and pots don’t take up much space either. And if you are on a really tight budget use old yoghurt containers when sowing the seeds, just make sure you poke some drainage holes on the bottom and place them on a warm surface like the washing machine. Another great tip is cover the top with cling film so the heat stays in and water when the solid goes dry, for me this was everyday, sometimes twice a day. Then once they germinate take the cover off and give them as much light as possible and then put them into bigger pots!

I will be replanting these into larger pots later on in the week and will also try and get them used to the outside temperature as that is where they will be going. I have so many good gardening accessories too from Wilko’s and will show you the set up in the next post. 

This is another great way if you are limited on space and money - the bottle tower planter!

I hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully feel inspired about growing our own veg in order to save money. Let me know if you have any tips and also what you think of the idea!

*Making money go further (Debt Free Direct) provided vegetable seeds and gardening accessories in order to write up this post. All opinions are my own.