My Thrifty Kitchen Garden in June – 5 ways to save money

It’s almost halfway through June, which is just ridiculous. We’ve had rain, sunshine, rain, rain and more rain so far, which means that every day is a growing day. And once the hot summer sun returns, everything will explode and I’ll be out early morning and late evenings trying to retain some semblance of order.

veg plot in June

This year has been an interesting one so far, particularly since I forgot about the packets of annuals that I threw down at the end of last year’s growing season. I never usually have any luck with my slightly chaotic, slapdash method of chuck it in and see what happens. But this year has been different. The likes of larkspur, scabious and calendula have popped up, thriving alongside the usual self-sown suspects such as pink and purple toadflax, hollyhocks, lychnis, honesty and foxgloves. These are all plants that will continue to grow in number year on year, as I collect their seed and scatter them throughout my borders. Self sowing annuals are one of the thriftiest way to fill space, feed the pollinators, and delight the senses.

In recent years I’ve been looking at ways to gradually reduce costs of maintain, even growing my little kitchen garden. The self-sown annuals have been amazing; they thrive because the conditions are right, which requires very little input from me (win, win).

I’m all about saving pennies where I can. So here are five super-easy, basic ways I’ve been achieving low-cost growing at the Smallest Smallholding:

Make my own compost
I’m nowhere near 100% reliant on my own compost production, but I’m taking small steps to cut down the amount of money I spend on feeding my soil and improving soil condition. We have three large compost bins that house of all our green waste, and a lot of kitchen waste too (I’m vegan, my other half is mostly veggie and we have a lot of fruit and vegetable peelings!). The art is getting the compost mixture ratio right – dry/brown and wet/green in equal parts, and plenty of turning to aerate and give worms easier access to the good stuff.

Leafmould – a great soil conditioner – is also easily made from the ash, damson, dogwood, elder, apple, cherry, acer and sycamore leaves that fall in autumn. I pop them in reused compost bags turned inside out, leaving them for a few months to rot down into a crumbly consistency. Eventually we will create a dedicated leafmould bin as our paper birch trees grow and we have more leaves to compost!

french lavender


Softwood cuttings
Lavender, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage and marjoram are all herbs that I can easily take softwood cuttings from. Late spring and early summer is perfect for taking the young green growth. The same can be done for any woody shrub like orange blossom or hydrangea. I’m surprised I didn’t take this approach much sooner as propagating cuttings is such an easy way to save money and nurture an incredible number of new plants to maturity.

Take cuttings earlier on when the shoots are turgid (full of water, hydrated). Make sure the cutting is taken from a lateral branch that isn’t flowering, and take around 10cm cuttings above a node (you can shorten them later). Keep the cuttings moist. Strip off the bottom leaves, leaving at least two sets of leaves on the cutting. You can also strip away a little of the softwood bark around the cut point.

Potting compost for cuttings can be a mixture of soilless mix (eg equal parts sand, coir, perlite/vermiculite), and after dipping and coating the cutting wound in rooting hormone, place it in a pot and wait for the magic to happen. Some plants can also be steeped in water to allow cuttings to root (like tomato shoots or geraniums) – just make sure you change the water every couple of days. Once roots appear, you can pot them onto into soilless mix, eventually potting on to more fertile growing medium.

blackberries


Brambles aren’t always bad news
We actually let about three or four established wild brambles grow like espaliers in our garden. I try and grow them as laterally as possible, and allow them to flower and fruit. The pollinators adore their easily accessible flowers, and we use the fruits in autumn for pies, crumbles and cakes, freezing whatever we don’t use.

They do require frequent clipping as they’re vigorous, almost thuggish growers, but other than that they’re pretty easy to handle. We also make sure to leave some berries on the plants for the wildlife – it’s only fair! You can cut them right back down to ground level in winter.

Making my own mulch
We use grass clippings to mulch the raspberries in late winter and early spring, chip the copious number of buddleia cuttings to make chunky mulch around the greenhouse and in the little wildlife area, as well as general homemade compost for mulching around our veg and flowers. Mulch is magic; it suppresses weeds where they need suppressing, helps the soil to retain water in dry spells, aids drainage in relentlessly wet conditions and also leeches some goodness back into the soil below. Mulch, mulch, mulch should be one of your gardening mantras.


Seed collection
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve become a seed collector, squirrelling away little envelopes and packets of seeds for scattering in autumn and spring. Poppies, larkspur, nigella, hollyhock, lychnis, honesty, aquilegia, calendula and tagetes all happily grow from saved seed in my flower borders.

And providing you don’t have F1 varieties of fruit and veg, you can also seed save from many kitchen garden favourites, such as raspberries, strawberries, nasturtiums, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, beans and peas.

It’s quite straightforward to save seed from tomatoes, chillies and peppers, as the seeds are simply collected from the ripened fruits and stored. Peas just need to be left on the plant until the pods are hard and dry. Beans, brassicas and squash are a little trickier, as they can be pollinated by bees that have already pollinated plants from neighbouring gardens or allotments, so you can end up with a plant that’s a mixture of a couple of varieties of the same species. For now, I’m just sticking to the easy wins!

How do you save the pennies in your garden? Let me know!

 

 

 

 

 

How to use pea sticks to grow peas

Early pea flowers

It’s pea-growing season! Peas are avid climbers, and if you want to make supports for your climbing peas from pea sticks, then I’ve put together a handy guide. It’s quite easy really – but there are a few tricks that I’ve learned that help. I purchased my locally-grown hazel pea sticks from Wasseldine in Bedfordshire. They’re grown and expertly coppiced within a few miles of my home, and I went to pick them up pre-bundled. So a relatively fuss-free start! The pea sticks were cut at an angle at the bottom, making them easy to push into the ground.

I recently laid a new no-dig bed, and decided to grow peas there as it’s a great spot with lots of sun, and the pea plants will help fix nitrogen into the new veg bed too.

How to Use Pea Sticks as Plant Supports

Here’s my quick how-to on how to use pea sticks as plant supports:

1. Firstly, you need to make sure your ground is level, and you’ve marked out roughly where your two shallow furrows/drill trenches for your pre-soaked peas – or pea plants – will go in. 

2. Next, separate your pea sticks. If you’ve bought them in bundles like I did, they should have been coppiced roughly to the same height. If not, don’t worry – there will be plenty of opportunity to trim them up later, and lots of twiggy-ness is good! Stick each pea stick in the ground at an angle, leaning in towards your second drill trench, placing them roughly a foot apart. Don’t worry if there are a few bare patches between the main stems of the pea sticks at this stage.

pea sticks

3. Repeat alongside the next drill trench, once again pushing the pea sticks into the ground at an angle so that the tops of the pea sticks are woven into each other like a long ‘X’ shape, but with a little more room at the bottom. The twiggy parts of the sticks should mostly hold the opposing and adjoining pea sticks firmly together. Weave, weave, weave. But if there’s some wiggle room, and you have surplus pea sticks to hand, you could always weave in some horizontal hazel sticks in too, or alternatively bind some of the tops together with twine or string.

4. Trim out any twigs or branches on the outer sides that stick out too far, too high or too horizontally. You’re aiming for a vague arch ‘X’ shape overall. Don’t discard your prunings though!

5. Your next task is to fill any gaps at the bottom of the pea sticks (where the stems are thicker and the branches more sparse) with smaller leftover twiggy pieces that you just pruned, or have to hand. The peas will really appreciate having the extra support for scrambling as they establish and grow. 

6. Finally, it’s time to plant in your peas or pea plants around a foot apart. Line the drill trenches with compost and water well… but don’t plant yet! Plant more on the inside of the pea trellis base – the plants will grow upwards and towards the light, and being placed in this way will give them a little extra cover from being munched by birds!

7. Give your peas a final watering in. Established plants that have been planted in might sulk for a week or so, but should eventually establish themselves and start clinging onto your magnificent natural framework that you’ve created! 

I still have another bundle of pea sticks that I’ll be using for sweet peas, mina lobata, and some other annual climbers this year (I haven’t decided whether I want to try thunbergia, morning glory, or both… or more!), as well as thicker, sturdier hazel bean poles from my climbing french beans as well. 

The naturally-sourced sticks should last a couple of seasons at least, especially if they’re packed away and stored over winter once the plants have died back.

 

Polytunnel plans – a longer growing season

Seedlings

It’s become abundantly clear that I am in desperate need of maximum growing space, in particular a polytunnel, if I am to realise all my growing goals for 2019. This year, I’ve managed to achieve more than I’ve done collectively in about five years, with preparing new plots, clearing, sowing, planting and restricting. Of course, it’s all great work and I love being proactive yada yada yada… but I fear I’ve outdone myself already. I’m really stuck for growing space.

About three weeks ago I sat one evening, pen in hand, and scribbled out some rough drawings of my veg patches, filling in the rectangular plots with all the fruit, vegetables and herbs I plan to grow this year. I’d already bought and sown umpteen packets of seeds, and I was keen to figure out what was going where, so I had my crop rotation, companion plants and It soon became apparent that the seedlings currently occupying every corner of my greenhouse, conservatory and windowsills – safe undercover as we wait out the risk of a few last frosts in the coming month – don’t all have a home to go to as yet.

I’ve already grown more than I have space for, even with my brand new no-dig bed. The only solution is that I’m going to have to pull my finger out and get a polytunnel up before early summer.

Polytunnels and Peppers

I have an allocated space for the polytunnel; it’s an overgrown patch that needs levelling before I can put something in situ, just enough to take a tunnel about 10×8. That’s enough space to grow some tender, heat and humidity-loving plants like tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and salad leaves. But crucially, it may also give me a shot at growing and harvesting the romano peppers that are currently germinating in the warmth of my conservatory.

Pepper

This will be my 12th season of growing my own fruit and vegetables, and in those dozen years, I could count on one hand the number of peppers and chillies (capsicums) I’ve managed to harvest. Peppers are notoriously slow germinators, and need sustained warmth and a long growing season to thrive and fruit. I’ve read that they need anywhere between 21-29˚C at a constant.

So my lack of success with peppers is likely down to conditions – capsicums need a long growing season and our climate here in the UK doesn’t offer the longevity. It then goes that the only real solution is to start by sowing as early as possible under protection, to prolong the growing season as much as possible, and then only “planting out” – effectively by “planting under” the protection of a glass/greenhouse or polytunnel.

Cayenne Peppers

Growing Sweet Potatoes in a Polytunnel

I’ve also always fancied growing sweet potatoes. They’re pretty much a mainstay in vegan cooking, full of fibre and nutrients, and also delicious. Which is the main point, really. Sweet potato slips are readily available to buy in the UK, but conversely, the UK climate is not exactly what we would term “optimum growing conditions” for this heat and humidity-loving plant. They need near enough constant temperatures between 21-26˚C to thrive, so are best suited to growing in a polytunnel, training the sprawling stems upwards to save on space. 

sweet potato vines

You can also cover the soil in permeable black liner or weed suppressant matting to help warm the soil even quicker, and retain moisture levels. Sweet potatoes pretty much grow and harvest like a good old ‘spud’ potato, needing lots of fertile, well-draining soil to thrive underground, where the tubers swell and multiply. It’s only the potato vines that need extra space, and training them in a circular fashion or up a trellis helps to minimise their growing space, especially in a polytunnel. 

But before I even think about getting carried away and ordering more slips, seeds or plants, I’ve got a huge polytunnel patch to prepare. I’m planning a ‘polytunnel prep party’, where I basically invite people round to help me clear, level and prep the site in exchange for food, drink and good company. Even with help, I think that’s enough to keep me more than busy this month!

This post was written in collaboration with Premier Polytunnels.