Thread: Fighting the rising cost of groceries

Originally Posted by waynep

Ace, re your short growing season, did you think of putting up a hothouse ? You could knock one up pretty easily with a frame and plastic. I don't have one but am thinking about it.

This is our practice to try and keep costs reasonable ;
1. go to the markets once a week and buy all fruit, vege, fish and meat. Much better quality/choice and half the price of supermarkets. (You probably do not have the big markets where you are, but there might be a Farmer's Market ?)
2. grow as many of our own veges as we can.
3. cut down on expensive meat cuts and try to have 2-3 non meat meals a week
4. "make our own" cleaning products the olde traditional ways using baking soda etc which are more environentally friendly anyway.

We're also looking at making our own preserves, just like the old folks used to do, and drying our own fruits. The plan is to go to the markets and buy cases of the produce when they're in season and preserve and dry them. All this is still only a plan.

Yeah mate i have, in fact i put one in at school 18 months ago, they work really well for getting germination rates up, and do extend the growing season somewhat but a decent frost still penetrates the plastic and affects the plants. Light frosts arent a problem, but we get some nasty frost around here. I have found that i can get tomatos and stuff like that growing a couple of weeks earlier than people can outside but thats about it. We bought one of those $25 ones from the Warehouse to get seedlings up earlier then when the weather warms up we plant them into the garden, it means that we can get a few extra weeks of tomatos and other frost sensitive plants.