• The Importance of my Victory Garden

    Published On: May 16, 2025Categories: Growing Food

    Growing food is not a hobby for me. Just as people planted ‘victory’ gardens during the war to stay healthy and fed, I do the same now. My income is not enough for me to [...]

  • Thankful for WWll cookery knowledge

    Published On: May 8, 2025Categories: Growing Food, Saving money on food, saving waste

    Today is the 80th anniversary of VE day. Spending a lot of time with my grand parents as a child, I automatically picked up some of the war time habits and knowledge in my food [...]

  • Growing from supermarket food

    Published On: April 30, 2025Categories: Growing Food, Saving money on food

    I apologise that I have not posted for a while but I have been sent a few curve balls recently, including my lap top packing in. I am attempting to write this on my phone [...]

  • Grow lettuce and save money

    Published On: April 3, 2025Categories: Growing Food, Saving money on food

    I don't buy lettuce. Instead I grow my own, inside in winter, and outside in summer.  I have always grown lettuce, even when I had a flat without a garden.  Lettuce seeds are so cheap [...]

  • Potatoes

    Published On: March 22, 2025Categories: Growing Food, Nutrition

    Apparently, the potato came to Europe in the 16th century from South America.  It was once a food only eaten by the wealthy, but is now is a common staple in many households. I don't [...]

  • Don’t rely on plug vegetables this summer.

    Published On: March 13, 2025Categories: Growing Food

    Here in the UK there is a distinct lack of plug or small vegetable plants.  Our local nursery usually has lots of peppers, tomatoes, beans, peas and sweet corn plants at this time of year.  [...]

  • The value of growing herbs

    Published On: March 3, 2025Categories: Growing Food

    I love growing herbs in my garden.  They provide extra nutrition, add so much flavour to my food, make lovely teas, are medicine, and add beauty (think gorgeous pink chive flowers or mini blue rosemary [...]

  • January gardening gifts and getting organised

    Published On: January 29, 2025Categories: Growing Food

    It has been a beautiful, sunny day today and so I thought that I would go outside into the garden and get some jobs done.  I usually don't go any where near the garden until [...]

  • Growing food without a garden

    Published On: January 26, 2025Categories: Growing Food

    Lots of people tell me that I am privileged and that they can not grow food as they do not have a garden.  Yes I know I am so lucky to have a garden   The [...]

  • 21 Garden jobs in Autumn

    Published On: September 25, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    We are officially into Autumn now and the last of my summer crops are finishing.  I am still hanging on hoping that some of my tomatoes may go red but I have harvested a lot [...]

  • Experimenting with Amaranth

    Published On: September 23, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    I grew a new crop to me called Amaranth. I had heard that you could grow it like Quinoa that I tried for the first time last year. I am always interested in things that [...]

  • Home made baked beans.

    Published On: September 18, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Recipes

    If we can avoid the supermarket and make things ourselves, we will.  This is especially true if they are made out of home grown produce.  Baked beans are really cheap from the shops but they [...]

  • Water bathing tomatoes

    Published On: September 7, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Preserves, Recipes

    At last I have built up enough tomatoes to make some sauce to use during the winter and so we canned some yesterday. Last summer was the first time that I had tried water bathing [...]

  • Is it worth making Courgette Flour?

    Published On: August 7, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Preserves, Saving money on food

    I had read about making courgette flour, apparently the Amish do it. It is gluten free and has low carbohydrate.  Since the shortages of flour in 2020 I have been interested in finding flour from [...]

  • Useless at growing food.

    Published On: August 1, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Wellbeing

    I had a message from some one saying that they were giving up growing food as they were useless at it.  Seeds hadn't germinated, pests had destroyed crops, things had been slow to grow. and [...]

  • Everything about courgettes (zucchini)

    Published On: July 20, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Recipes, Saving money on food

    I didn't start growing courgettes until about 9 years ago.  I didn't think that they tasted of much and they took up a lot of my growing room.  When I retired, my food budget drastically [...]

  • Gardening to cope with the changing weather

    Published On: June 18, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    The last few years have not been particularly good years for growing crops. This year has probably been one of my most unsuccessful years ever.  I am normally harvesting and eating most of my food [...]

  • Lemon Balm Pesto

    Published On: June 6, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Light Meals, Recipes

    My lemon balm is really doing well this year. I make hot drinks with it but I don't really utilise it enough.  It has a number of medicinal uses and so I am keen to [...]

  • Making a planter out of some pallets.

    Published On: May 16, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Saving Money

    A few weeks ago Mr S made me a raised, box tub out of some pallets that we had been given.  Previously he had made me a box out of some scaffolding planks that had [...]

  • Over coming a potato shortage and growing in containers

    Published On: May 1, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    It has been a very wet 18 months in the UK and farmers are already warning that there will be a potato shortage this year as many fields are still not ready to plant. Inevitably [...]

  • Rhubarb crumble.

    Published On: April 11, 2024Categories: Baking, Desserts, Growing Food, Recipes

    The rhubarb is loving all of this rain and so I am harvesting it a lot recently. Already I have made rhubarb gin, rhubarb brownies and a couple of days ago we made rhubarb crumble [...]

  • A new raised garden bed

    Published On: April 7, 2024Categories: Growing Food, Saving Money

    Mr S built me a raised bed that is quite tall to save me bending when I am gardening.  I could not afford to fill it with compost and so decided to fill it using [...]

  • Why won’t my seeds germinate?

    Published On: March 17, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    It is that time of year here in the UK and the sowing of seeds has begun in anticipation of a garden full of food during the summer.  There is nothing better than the feelings [...]

  • Is it worth growing food?

    Published On: March 6, 2024Categories: Growing Food

    I often get asked if it is worth growing my own food.  It does take quite a lot of time and effort, but it allows me to live on a small food budget and eat [...]