Most "money-saving" vegetable

[Green Aura]

Can't you just move to somewhere less useful - we grew it for a while as a kind of decorative hedge, separating two bits of garden. We didn't get many spears from it to eat, they were very thin, but it's so attractive when it gets frondy it seems a shame to just chuck it.

And, of course, sod's law dictates that having moved it to somewhere where you can't get at it will induce the finest harvest you've ever watched going over

[jim]

Dear SusieGee,

Pity about that, I'm so sorry to hear it that shan't mention that we'll be chomping away on sprears straight from the garden at tea-time .... OOOPS! ( said I wouldn't mention it!)

Love and Peace
Jim

[Chickenlady]

Soft fruit has to be mine as I am a big jam and pudding maker - raspberries, strawberries, red and blackcurrants. Now that I have moved house I am having to start from scratch, so this year may have to wait for the blackberries to forage, or get down to the fruit farm and pick my own

[SaveSomeGreen]

I am finding soft fruit is deffo becoming the biggest saver.. small boy in the house now and don't want him on crisps and chocolate biscuits, he goes nuts for his 'boobries' though

[Henwoman]

Peppers, aubergines and spinach I find cheaper to grow, also beetroot, butternut squash, pumpkin, herbs of all sorts. Tomatoes too I suppose as I eat so many of them. Leafy salad veggies, as I live alone and if I buy a whole lettuce I never manage to eat it all, the hens end up with the last bits, whereas growing them, I just pick the leaves off that I want to eat and leave the rest growing. But, for me, as for lots of you probably, it's not the cheapness as much as the freshness and knowing what's gone in to, or rather not gone in to, growing the veggies.

[Jorieke123]

I'd have to say... mixed lettuce. I try to grow them all year round, in all different types/flavours/colors. We eat a lot of BIG salads (with goat cheese, nuts, bacon, whatever), and a nice bag of mixed greens will cost allmost 2 euros in our supermarket. For about 100 or 150 grams.

[PossibleBoris]

I have a contender - kale.

I wandered into Wilkinson's yesterday on my lunch break and saw there was a 75% reduction on a wide variety of seeds (I tend to buy them at the 'end' of the growing season for next year). Anyhow, a 28p packet of kale seeds cost me 7p.

[wabbit955]

cherries
softs fruits
and i think quince will be on my list brough a tree last year for£15 and all ready got me money back if all the fruit on it ripen
i love quince

[JessieMac]

I'm growing Sub Artic Plenty outside for the first time and it's doing really well and is about the only tom I have that isn't affected by blight after our rainy spring and early summer.

[stevetc]

Surely. red onions. . . although mine haven't done much yet. . .

Oh - my mate has fruiting bushes - like wabbit sez, that's gotta save a few quid. . .

[Big Al]

FWIW,
It depends on a lot of factors. If you live in the outer hebredies and can't grow anything outside then gro but then the reverse is true if you don't eat salad leaves.

For me it is everything that i grow. They taste better, have food inches rather than miles, are cooked fresh so no waste, provide a wide choice of fruit and veg, encourage wildlife in my garden and the best of all the neighbours think I'm raving bonkers for not just using T3$@O's.

One thing I have decided this year, for next years planting is to grow fewer varieties of crops but with a better planned garden layout.

[Flo]

Runner beans.

[mrsflibble]

PSB. £2 for 6 plants, stick in the ground and pretty much ignore for nearly a year....had a bumper crop this year, so much so we ended up getting sick of it and blanching and freezing a lot, and giving away a lot more! wonderful.

[MKG]

Not really a vegetable, I suppose, but the money-saving crop of all time, as far as I'm concerned, has to be the tobacco. I think I've got about four month's supply from the plants I've grown. Any smoker is welcome to work out the savings implied by that.

Mike

[Millymollymandy]

Would need to know how many you smoke a day to work that one out Mike. Well done that is amazing!