How much of your food is GYO ?

[Alison Adams]

Not sure where to post this, Im sure Mods will move for me if needed :-)

I am wondering what I could/should expect in terms of how much of our familys fruit and veg we can grow in our new kitchen garden, which is about a half allotment size. it doesnt include the shed or a few fruit trees which are in the main garden, just raised beds with a few soft fruit bushes around the sides.

I know it depends what type of crops you go for and how you space them. This year having started too late for some spring sowings, we have decided on things that are expensive in the shops, significantly tastier eaten fresh, or hard to get in our village store - so early/salad potatoes, asparagus, raspberries, strawbs, salad leaves, red onions, shallots, parsnips, coloured carrots, runner and french beans are it for now. We are now making the space for autumn & winter veg like cabbages, caulis, leeks, swedes.

Its partly a hobby that I dont want to 'cost justify' but I think once the initial investment in raised bed materials, topsoil (both necessary due to our atrocious ex-quarry rubble), a few tools etc is sorted, it may be a signficant cost saving as well as tastier, healthier seasonal food for the family.

So - have you ever worked it out either by cost savings or volume how much you get from your garden/lottie/containers ?

[Hans Mum]

This makes interesting reading

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...9-a_34244.html

and Mrs D also did the same for last year if you want to search it.

[Alison Adams]

Hi Hans Mum - thats a great link. And thanks Mrs Dobby for sharing it.

[marathon]

Last year i kept a record of what we spent and harvested and was amazed at how much we saved it was near on £800 was I took cost out which was under £50.

This year is already my best so far as I now have to PT (which didn't cost me anything) I've been harvesting loads of beans,peas potato's,courgettes, beetroot, spinach, lettuce, spring onions and carrots for the last few weeks.

I homecook everything, I'd say 90% of veg and fruit is GYO. My shopping bill, for my family of 5 is never more than £35 a week. We also keep chickens and the eggs I sell pay for their upkeep.
I work from Feb as thats when I start sowing again

[bluemoon]

This year I spent about £100 on seeds (but most packets will last at least two years), £40 on seed potatoes and around £100 on allotment rents. We're also about to buy a petrol hedge trimmer at around another £100, so around £350 for this year, next year with fewer seeds to buy and no hedge trimmer, it will be less. We are almost completely self-sufficient in veg and eggs though. £350 equates to about £7 a week and even in this expensive year that is considerably less than I'd spend on fruit, veg and eggs, which would be between £25 and £35 per week at supermarket prices. So a saving of roughly £900. I also have enough soft fruit to make jams which are so expensive in supermarkets (the fruit not the jam) that jam making would be impossible if I didn't grow my own. Last year we worked out that we got £300 worth of raspberries from the 20 raspberry canes we planted a couple of years ago. Naturally I'd never have bought those quantities so GYO gives you the scope to do more.

[snohare]

I'm not organised enough to quantify the savings I make, and up until this year I have only really been going at about 1/3 of the profit I could reasonably expect - that's at best ! Now however I have all the soil, tools, seeds, coldframes etc. This year, I'd expect it to be 2/3. Anyway, the difference for me is that even on benefits, I can afford to use the bus at present, and buy the occasional newspaper, biscuits etc.
Given that I am on an extremely expensive gluten free and dairy free organic diet that is probably three times the cost of a normal diet, if I didn't grow these vegetables I wouldn't be able to do all sorts of things - every spare penny would be soaked up by my grocery bill. Multiply that sort of saving by the number of people in your household, and that is how big a difference it makes. So you will probably find pretty soon that the purse strings are relaxing a bit. For me though, the big advantage is the improvement in health, which is utterly dependent on how well I eat. Occasionally I have to eat non-organic supermarket food, and it is noticeably not good for me.

[Alison Adams]

snohare, certainly sounds like your experience with GYO is a life changing/enhancing one. I dont expect mine to be so radical, but so far, I dont see any downsides - other than the state of my fingernails which will never be clean again and are a bit embarrassing when in my other life (IT lecturer) I know students are wondering which coalmine I have just come from !
Mostly, I will enjoy sending my 7yo son out to the garden to collect the ingredients for our dinner then serve it a few minutes later. As the adverts say, thats priceless.

[bluemoon]

Just realized I haven't included the cost of chicken housing, chicken runs and the chickens themselves in the above total, so the 'profit' will be considerably less this year than I'd thought. It still all tastes better and is far fresher and healthier which are things you simply can't quantify.

[shoreham_steve]

You can't put a price on freshness, flavour and health.
Not to mention how chuffed you feel dishing up your own veg to your family. That feeling can't be entered on a balance sheet ! Lol.
As a rule of thumb, I'd say I spend very little and eat quite a lot.

[bluemoon]

Also forgot to count the most important bit... the wine-making.

[Flummery]

I've never priced it up. That's not what I do it for. In the summer and autumn just about all our stuff is home grown (except any meat and fish of course) and the rest of the year our diet's supplemented by home frozen foods and jams and chutneys from home grown. We now have our own eggs too. I do it for the freshness, the flavour, the lack of chemicals and of course, the smugness factor!

[Alison Adams]

I love that so many of you produce enough fruit and veg both in quantity and variety to feed your families a healthy seasonal diet. We wont have quite enough space for that, but I think we should do well from our patch once it's fully underway.
News stories about health, obesity etc often say that post-war diets were very healthy, partly due to the 'Dig For Victory' type approach to everyone doing some GYO and little if any processed food. Maybe allotments should be available on the NHS !

[Snadger]

The biggest problem I find is trying to do away with the glut and famine syndrome.
If I aim to get at least a few fruit/veg/ herbs or cut flowers for the house each week and try as many different storage techniques as possible to extend the harvest, that's about the best I can do!

[westwiltspatio]

My goals are much more modest - I now have more growing space than I've ever had before, and it consists of a small paved patio to put my pots on. (Previously have grown stuff on balcony - crap year, got nothing, or bay window). So not a great deal of space, and limited to what will cope in containers and deal with the occasional weekend's abandonment with no watering. I also have no room for a freezer, or lots of jars, so growing to preserve is not an option either.

So I know we're not likely to become completely self-sufficient in anything, but if I can get something fresh out of the garden for most meals during the summer, that will be enough. In terms of things paying for themselves, I haven't kept count. But I suspect stuff like courgettes and cherry tomatoes pay for themselves quite quickly - definitely last year's courgettes paid their way. I'm still experimenting to find out what crops are most productive under my conditions.

I don't like buying airfreighted mangetout peas or French beans, so we wouldn't eat those if I wasn't growing them. So there are also things like that which don't replace anything in our diet, but add to it instead. In the same category come luxuries like the strawberries, or raspberries. Those probably add cost to our budget, but are worth it for the extra enjoyment.

[Sue]

I can't really quantify my savings as once I had an allotment and got the hang of growing things I found it changed my diet completely. Being on a fixed budget there is the luxury of eating lots of fruit - and I mean lots - couldn't afford to buy so much fruit or salad stuff. And especially if you don't mind a repetitive diet ie lots of soup in winter and salads every day in summer you can eat very cheaply from the garden/allotment.

Then there is the fact I have started eating more veg, I ate more cabbage last year than I had in my entire life and this year am growing things I have never liked ie parsnips and brussels sprouts partly due to overcoming my dislike of cabbage and partly because it increases my veg intake. They'll always go in a veggie curry if I can't get on with them.

So I think for me it is the widening of my diet, which I certainly couldn't afford to do and the challenge of dealing with 100's of courgettes, cucumbers etc which leaves you eating far more veg than you would buy from the shop.

The last benefit from allotments especially is getting on the network and getting swops and gifts, fruit from abandoned allotments, invitations to eat all the apples you want etc. Priceless!

best wishes
Sue