£1 Garden Challenge

[Amaranth]

This is a challenge to see how much you can grow from £1 of seeds or tubers.

You could do the £1 challenge garden three ways. You can get all of the seeds and tubers yourself, or you can work with a group. For the greatest challenge, try finding everything your self. Or if you’d like more selection of foods, working with a group will likely get you more diversity especially if the only options in your area are the 20p seed packets. Another advantage to working with a group is that you and your fellow challengers can enjoy seeing how far each gardener can go with their £1.


1) Buy all the seeds or garden materials yourself. Use 20p packets, seeds from bulk seed or spice bins (sometimes a few p worth of seeds is plenty), a potato or two, a clove of garlic, a single cherry or grape tomato for the seeds, a single stem of an herb from the farmers market and propagate it, etc. Sometimes there are mixed flower packets which include flowers with edible, medicinal, or craft uses, so that can be a way to get 30-40 different items for a few p. Also look for bulk seed sellers in some areas who will sell a fraction of a spoonful of seeds for a very small amount. Depending on what you choose, you may be able to propagate them during the growing season to help increase the number of plants you have. For example tomatoes can be propagated from cuttings and radishes will set seed for several more crops.

Disclaimers: Sometimes the bulkbin items have gotten too hot along the way and won't germinate. So do some germination tests before including them in your garden. Using uncertified potatoes can bring disease into your garden. Occasionally uncertified garlic can cause trouble with disease as well. Some potatoes or garlic are treated to prevent sprouting.

2) Buy and Barter Do the challenge with a group with each person getting a £1’s worth of items and sharing them with each other. You could easily do this with 5-20 people. Each person who wants to grow beans will likely want their own whole packet as there are usually barely enough beans to get one person started. You can let one or two bean plants set ripe seed in order to get seed for the second planting of the year. This way you can likely get a lot more diversity. On the other hand, a packet of tomato seeds often has enough of that variety for 10-20 people.

3) Buy, Barter. and Snowball Do as for #2 and also accept whatever else comes your way as well as passing along extras to others without direct bartering. Also save seed from your spring plantings for a fall planting. In my experience, this is how most groups of gardeners operate, and how things usually go in most allotments. Then continue to swap seeds, cuttings, produce for more items or varieties of items. Make cuttings, save seeds, and see what you can snowball your original £1 into.

It’s been calculated that a good gardener with good soil could produce well over 500 kilos or a 1000 pounds of vegetables on this challenge. Do you think you could you put together a diverse garden from frugal seed resources in your area? How many pounds/kilos of food could you likely produce? One thing that is worth doing though it may lower the final weight a bit is to get good nutritional diversity among your selections. Some garden items are unexpectedly high in certain nutrients such as garlic or parsley. Having some red-orange foods, some green foods, and some starchy foods is also good for balancing out what you have for the kitchen.

Please share tips here about places that are having 5 packets for a £1 sales, places that have bulk seeds, or if you are starting a group to do this challenge in your area and want to meet up for a seed exchange.

[the.fee.fairy]

sound good!


i wish i was better at growing veg - i've failed every year so far!!

[Shirley]

Veg seeds for 20p a packet? Where?

Do you mind if I copy this and post it onto the Neeps forum? There could be a few of us there that would be interested in taking part in this kind of thing.

Will be spending a lot more than £1 on our veg seeds though lol

[ina]

Quite honestly - I can't be bothered to put so many constraints on myself. I find it difficult enough to get everything in the garden done at the time it's supposed to be done - if I had to constantly think of not spending money, too, I'd never get anything done! Of course I don't waste my money, but there's a limit to what you can do in the time available...

[Busy Bee]

Veg seeds for 20p a packet? Where?

That's what I was thinking!

If you were on year two or more of growing your own veg then you could save a bit of money by saving seeds. But by buying a pack of onion seeds for £1.20 or whatever you are already making huge savings, and I don't know if I could really be bothered doing with less produce because I restricted myself to only spending £1 and at the end of it having to fork out to buy everything I didn't grow.

[Helsbells]

I am really beginning if this person is doing a reality tv show, this is the second post I have seen of his challenging us to do something. The other one was about what 12 items we would have in out pantry.
Are you for real?

[Amaranth]

We've had this same challenge on other garden forums and lists for the last several years. I thought people here might have fun with it if they live in an area with the 5 seed packs for a pound sales or bulk seed bins. (Andy that started the forum even used to be on one of the lists--he might still be and just not have time to post.)

And people here are really skilled at SSish things, so I thought that some might be quite successful with the challenge.

[wulf]

You could always take note of the progress of a particular £1 worth of investment, while still growing other crops beyond that.

Wulf

[Enormous Sage]

You can get "value" seeds from places like B&Q, the radishes I bought last year worked very well indeed. They're about 30p a pack.
I think they're just random leftovers from big seed companies put together in the same packet. They had all sorts of veggies in the value range.

My first attempt at veggie growing cost around £1 (sort of - cheating big time!)

I used a bag of sprouting potatoes I found in the cupboard (which I'll say were "free" since they were going to be thrown away), some pea plants that a neighbour gave me (which were free - I gave him some peas in return when they grew) and a pack of spinach seeds I bought for 99p.

The beds cost nothing to build, since I used some planks that were lying around in one of the barns, the soil I put in it was dug from the pile of waste soil the builder dumps on the farm and even the garden tools were abandoned ones I found at the back of the shed.

I ate a lot of potatoes, spinach and peas that year. :)

[possum]

I would love to know in NZ where you can get $1 seed packets from, I collect a lot of seeds, mainly from any fruit an veg I have hat to buy an loads from the herbs that I grow. The only time I have found them cheaply is from a car boot sale from ukranian who obviously collected their own seed.
I do like the challenge of having an area of your garden that only cost a pound though

[ina]

You can get "value" seeds from places like B&Q, the radishes I bought last year worked very well indeed. They're about 30p a pack.

As it would cost me about £15 to get to anywhere like B&Q - that's not much of an option, is it! I think the transport is often left out of calculations like this. If you have to buy your seeds via mail order/online, it will automatically be more expensive.

[possum]

Ina, another forum I am on which is NZ based has a seedbox. This is a box that gets posted from one member to another (assuming they want it), the idea is you take something out and put something in, some people add seeds that they ended up buying two of by accident, others put in seed that they have collected from their own plants, it works very well, you often have the choice of seeds that you are unlikely to fiind in any catalogue. You could think about teaming up with the other UK lot on here to start up the same, that way the only thing you have to think of is postage.

[ina]

Postage would probably be the cost of several see packets each time... Anyway, no, I don't really need anything like that - I know enough people locally with whom I can swap seeds. Just buying it cheap is not an option; and I think that is often forgotten when somebody sets up yet another "challenge" like that! If you live out in the country and have to drive 30, 40 miles just to get to a cheap shop, it makes it very, very expensive.

[possum]

Postage would probably be the cost of several see packets each time... Anyway, no, I don't really need anything like that - I know enough people locally with whom I can swap seeds. Just buying it cheap is not an option; and I think that is often forgotten when somebody sets up yet another "challenge" like that! If you live out in the country and have to drive 30, 40 miles just to get to a cheap shop, it makes it very, very expensive.

In the case of this NZ forum, the cost of postage was about the same price as a packet of seeds, or two at the most, there was no limit how many you could take out, just that you had to put some in return, either loads of one seed type or a couple of others of smaller amount.
btw I also live in the middle of nowhere, so know the problems of getting to shops.

[Amaranth]

Shirlz, you are welcome to post this at Neeps. Please use the version below though to help clear up some of the questions that usually get asked.

Anyone else is welcome to use this version too as long as you post here to let us know where to find additional discussions and participants.

******************************************************
How much can you grow with £1 in garden seeds and tubers?

Over the past several years on other forums and lists people have challenged themselves to see how much they could grow from £1. I thought people here might enjoy the challenge to see how much you can grow from £1 of seeds or tubers.

You could do the £1 challenge garden three ways. You can get all of the seeds and tubers yourself, or you can work with a group. For the greatest challenge, try finding everything your self. Or if you’d like more selection of foods, working with a group will likely get you more diversity especially if the only options in your area are the 20p seed packets. Another advantage to working with a group is that you and your fellow challengers can enjoy seeing how far each gardener can go with their £1.


1) Buy all the seeds or garden materials yourself. Use 20p packets, seeds from bulk seed or spice bins (sometimes a few p worth of seeds is plenty), a potato or two, a clove of garlic, a single cherry or grape tomato for the seeds, a single stem of an herb from the farmers market and propagate it, etc. Sometimes there are mixed flower packets which include flowers with edible, medicinal, or craft uses, so that can be a way to get 30-40 different items for a few p. Also look for bulk seed sellers in some areas who will sell a fraction of a spoonful of seeds for a very small amount. Depending on what you choose, you may be able to propagate them during the growing season to help increase the number of plants you have. For example tomatoes can be propagated from cuttings and radishes will set seed for several more crops.

Disclaimers: Sometimes the bulkbin items have gotten too hot along the way and won't germinate. So do some germination tests before including them in your garden. Using uncertified potatoes can bring disease into your garden. Occasionally uncertified garlic can cause trouble with disease as well. Some potatoes or garlic are treated to prevent sprouting.

2) Buy and Barter Do the challenge with a group with each person getting a £1’s worth of items and sharing them with each other. You could easily do this with 5-20 people. Each person who wants to grow beans will likely want their own whole packet as there are usually barely enough beans to get one person started. You can let one or two bean plants set ripe seed in order to get seed for the second planting of the year. This way you can likely get a lot more diversity. On the other hand, a packet of tomato seeds often has enough of that variety for 10-20 people. If you live in an area where the best seed prices are 1.29 per packet, if you get 30 people together you could divide out 23 packets among everyone and still be under the £1 per person.

3) Buy, Barter. and Snowball Do as for #2 and also accept whatever else comes your way as well as passing along extras to others without direct bartering. Also save seed from your spring plantings for a fall planting. In my experience, this is how most groups of gardeners operate, and how things usually go in most allotments. Then continue to swap seeds, cuttings, produce for more items or varieties of items. Make cuttings, save seeds, and see what you can snowball your original £1 into.

It’s been calculated that a good gardener with good soil could produce well over 500 kilos or a 1000 pounds of vegetables on this challenge. Do you think you could you put together a diverse garden from frugal seed resources in your area? How many pounds/kilos of food could you likely produce? One thing that is worth doing though it may lower the final weight a bit is to get good nutritional diversity among your selections. Some garden items are unexpectedly high in certain nutrients such as garlic or parsley. Having some red-orange foods, some green foods, and some starchy foods is also good for balancing out what you have for the kitchen.

Please share tips here about places that are having 5 packets for a £1 sales, places that have bulk seeds, or if you are starting a group to do this challenge in your area and want to meet up for a seed exchange.

Frequently asked Questions:

1) Does the price of postage count in the £1?
No, but to keep that low as well have everyone send seeds, return bubble envelope, and postal costs to one person. Then let that person divide and label the seeds and send them back out. Plan by email as to what each person will buy, or have the central person buy all the seeds if s/he lives near the seed seller and have all the participants send the £1, packaging, and postage costs to the central person.

2) Does the cost of petrol count in the £1 of seeds?
No, but get the seeds when you are traveling to get or do other things. Or ask others to get seeds when they are already going to that town. Or meet at a location to exchange seeds that most of the people would already be going to or near.

3) May I post this to another list or forum or in my allotment newsletter for more gardeners to try?
Yes, and please post a note in the SelfSufficientish Forum or the Creative Living Forum under this thread, so we can read the followup there as well.

4) I want to grow more than £1 plus I already have soft fruit on my allotment and apples and cherries in my garden. How can I participate?
Just make a list of which crops are part of your £1 garden and note the harvest. Or if it would work for your garden, just use one section of your allotment for the £1 garden.

5) May we add other challenges to this for our local group?
Yes, some people like to have a cuisine theme, or see who can get the first ripe tomato, or the first onion over a certain weight, or to put at least one of their items into a show. It's also fun to have a £1 meal where everyone brings a food they have made mostly from ingredients in the £1 garden. Other things people like to do are to try to get a certain percentage of their food from the garden each day or to see how many days of the year they can eat something fresh or preserved from the garden.

6) May we save seeds and replant those?
Yes, and some items can be replanted in the same year. Others can be used the next. Some such as carrots, parsnips, or alliums will usually not produce seeds until their second year.

7) There are certain seeds I could plant to get a greater weight of produce. However I would rather my £1 garden be more balanced nutritionally. Will that affect my totals?
This one is hard to predict. In a perfect gardening year the traditionally higher weight vegetables will likely produce more. In a garden year with a variety of ups and downs, the more balanced one may come out ahead due to some crops doing better in the varying conditions than the traditional high weight crops. When posting your totals you can also mention that balanced nutrition was important to you and point out your success with more diverse crops.

8) What are some tips for getting the most out of the garden?
a) If you have limited growing space, grow plants in seed trays so they are ready to plant as soon as space is available.
b) Consider whether it's worth the space to try and get a few more vegetables from a plant at the end of its season or whether it would be better to remove it and plant something new.