Growing your own - the cost

Weather: Hot! Up to 30C with thunderstorms due this evening after three brilliant summer days.

This week's harvest: Two and a half pounds of shallots, two artichokes, 2 pounds of courgettes, a handful of peas, a handful of french beans, basil, one cucumber (small white), one huge Black Russian tomato (9 oz), parsley, mint.

At last summer - and the vegetable garden gets in to full swing. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to add up the cost of producing the produce I harvest v the equivalent in the shops and so far my sums have come up with a couple of interesting statistics.

Take the shallots - a dozen shallot sets set me back about £4.00. Yesterday I harvested my crop as the greenery had fallen over and they haven't put on growth for a while. On weighing the yield it was just under a kilo. Online from Abel and Cole (from whom I get a regular veg box) I costed a similar quantity of shallots for about £5.00... Theirs aren't available until October and it may be that I could have left mine in the ground longer but I don't think they would have gained much in size. This makes the saving very limited - if I cost out shallots at the supermarket (non organic) ...well they are around £2.50 per kilo.

My tomatoes will probably be in the same boat. With each growbag at about £5.00. The cost of tomato fertilizer, the special growing rings I bought last year, plus the seed....I'll be lucky if my crop per kilo will be much cheaper than those in the shops. Mind you you'd be hard pressed to find Black Russion or my Italian variety in the shops.

On the other hand there are the artichokes. Two brilliant plants, one grown from seed four years ago and the other an off shoot of the first one transplanted two years ago. We have had about a dozen artichokes - and I've left a couple to flower because they are in the flower garden and the giant thistle flowers are worth their place there anyday.


They have needed little care - just a mulch of my own compost in the spring and no extra feed. Abel and Cole have them listed at 98 pence a piece! Now that is worth growing! And as for Courgettes - the classic summer glut vegetable - Abel and Cole have them listed at £1.92 for 500g. I am picking that much a day at the moment and I have a list of favourite recipes gleaned over the years from Courgette and Mint Frittata to a lovely salad version in which they are steamed then allowed to cool in a herb vinagrette...and of course Courgette Soup, a freezer staple for weekend lunch times til Christmas (and beyond space permitting!)