Save Money - Grow Your Tucker

There's something really satisfying about growing your own tucker - fruit and veg.



There's a real sense of achievement at a whole lot different points...

  • Sowing seeds - when they germinate and leaves appear
  • Taking cuttings - when they take root
  • Seeing them grow to maturity - you've tended these babies
  • Harvesting - its like finding little surprises, finding treasure
  • Preparing - holding the fruits of your labour
  • Cooking - ways to use your produce
  • Eating - enjoying the ultimate...this is what the all the work is for
  • Glut - preserved to enjoy at a later date
  • Surplus - giving away to family and friends
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  • Dry compost dug straight into garden, peels etc
  • Saving seed and start all over again
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  • Save grocery money
  • Superior taste than a lot of store bought fruit and vege
  • You can ditch a lot of chemicals because you're in control of the growing process
  • Learn patience while tending/ nurturing your food
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It all comes together in the end

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It doesn't take much to do little things to help your budget and if you do a few of those little things, now and again, it is pleasantly surprising just how those things add up...and how good you feel about it...

Over the last week or so I've been striking lettuce and spring onion to re-grow and collecting lemon, pumpkin and kamokamo seed for next season.

I have been doing this with produce that has already been home grown, so things I've had or were given to me as I've heard growers put stuff on produce so seed is not very viable.

I will not be buying all the gurus recommendations about stuff to put in my soil or on my plants...not going to try control Mother Nature, going to try do stuff in a non-invasive way. Looking at all the television programs and such - I figure it would cost heaps - so defeating the 'budget' mission. If I'm going to do budget - then may as well do it properly.

It hasn't taken long at all to build up a wee arsenal of strikings and seeds. Plenty for B and me and ours xxx...

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Chemicals

This stuff is put everywhere to handle uniformity of produce
  • Size
  • Yield
  • Preservative eg so bugs won't get at them
  • Reproduction eg seed in produce not so viable
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Imperfect Produce

I love spec fruit. If it's good enough for the bugs to eat then it's good enough for me to eat.
I reckon bugs and birds know if something is good or not to eat.

Superficial marks, pocked produce skin, bug or bird bites can all be cut from the fruit and vege if you are so concerned about that kind of thing.

Note: The song 'Big Yellow Taxi' by Joni Mitchell (1970) has the following lyrics:

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that D.D.T. now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please

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It doesn't matter to me if produce is not the perfect shape or size. I can eat it whatever the dimension. Like people really - all different - unless you go about getting yourself modified and all looking the same with that Botox (chemical) stuff for example, or silicone boobs.

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I think Mother Nature knows what she's doing. Some seasons the weather won't be ideal and produce 'fails' (wrong word). Like human Mothers really...they do the best they can.


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You just gotta be grateful for what you get and maybe the produce will be better next time. If your harvest was less than you expected the next good harvest will seem even better than it really is.

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Miscellaneous 

Grandson's teacher gave the class bean seeds two years ago. Grandson planted them here. He got a kick out of seeing them grow and we are still enjoying them.

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Years ago I had a great garden and the man down the road would mention as he passed that when my produce was ready, it would be cheap in the shops. He'd hang on the fence and babble on how it was too much work and why bother to garden at all etc. He never helped.

That man was always the first to ask me for produce when it was ready...even knocking on my door to tell me off because he'd seen plums on the ground, they were going to waste and he should take them.

Or that he remembered that I had cabbages in the far corner of the property and they'd be ready now, did I mind if he took a couple etc. True story.








Comments

  1. I love growing my own food, it makes the produce taste even better when seasoned with a dose of self-satisfaction! My husband and I grow or have grown in the past, some thyme, rosemary, lavender, chives, garlic, almonds, mandarins, capsicums, baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, oregano (I think), and some other things I've probably left off the list. It's tasty, it's fun and it gets up out in the garden - outside with Nature!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yummy! Great points Carolyn...and none/ less chemicals for me!

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