Gardening post: growing your own in a £20-seed vegetable garden.

It’s March: prime sowing time in the garden. We’re all worrying about costs and food prices and how we’re going to manage. I grow a lot of my own veg. Not everyone can, but there might be ways around that. Allotments are hard to come by, time and money are short, but if you don’t have a bit of garden, is there a neighbour’s garden you can use, or a friend who has time and energy (and you buy the seed for £20) or who has £20 (and you have the time and energy) or who has land (but no time or energy) and you split the £20? I’m sure there are ways to find somewhere to grow.

So would you like to produce some of your own food this year? If so, can I introduce you, then, if you don’t already know about them to . . .

Wilko seeds!

Cheapest range: Nine packets of seeds for £4.00. Number of food plants here if you nurture them lovingly? Well over 1,000, even if some of them are only radish size!

White radish 25p

Beetroot 25p

Cabbage 50p

Parsnip 50p

Spring broccoli 50p

Early carrots 50p

Cauliflower 50p

Onion 50p

Brussels sprouts 50p

(Pink radish 50p: optional extra)

Then: next range up

Savoy cabbage 75p

Leeks 75p

Swede 75p

Autumn carrots 75p

Chard 75p

Courgette 75p

Spring onion 75p

Winter squash 75p

Price for these: £6.00

Add 4 packs of peas or runner beans or French beans or autumn calabrese @ £1.00 and two packs of lettuce @50p = £5.00 = a total of £15.00

Add the £5.00 delivery charge = £20.00. (This is the kicker: there is a delivery charge with Wilkes. But amortised over those 23 packets of seeds, it adds 21p to the packet price, and they’re still cheaper than Lidl, who have the next cheapest. (Happy to be corrected on that.)

How many plants could you get from this? 

Well, there’s 400 seeds in that pack of purple sprouting broccoli. Over 1,000 in a pack of lettuce. Over 500 in a pack of carrots. In total, you’d be buying the potential for well over 4,000 plants, albeit there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears involved. And those 4,000+ potential plants contain a lot of solid carbohydrates and some protein as well as all the vitamins and minerals.

Even with the delivery charge, this is massively cheaper than anywhere else I’ve found, though I’m happy to be corrected on this. With what you’d get for £20 and some work, you could produce a lot of veg over the year. 

Yes you’d have to put the work in. Yes, you’d need containers (but they can be recycled) and soil (horse owners are desperate to get rid of muck, mind you). Yes this veg won’t come to anything unless you protect it from, mostly, flying insects and caterpillars, but then even old nett curtains work well as protection. (And you will need protection. The difference it makes is the difference between crop and no crop: I will never, ever, grow any brassica not under a net again.)

I’m not trying to push anyone into gardening who can’t or won’t do it. No blame or shame here if you think “no, it’s not for me” or know you haven’t time or energy.

This post sprang solely from “ah, Wilko has a mix of blue and white freesia corms” followed by “oh my goodness: those vegetable seeds at Wilko are cheap” followed by “I wonder what you could do for £5.00, or £10.00, or £20.00?” I settled on the £20, because it seemed to me to be the point at which it became worth it for the delivery charge: when the range of veg, and the seasons over which it would grow, and the amount you’d get, seemed worth the payment for delivery. 

And there might, of course, be a Wilko near you, in which case you have £5.00 more to spend on e.g tomato seeds, or a couple of packs of potato sets, or some chilli peppers to grow indoors, or some cucumbers.

Now is the prime time for sowing veg. (Maybe in a week or so’s time up north or in Scotland.) Growing things is a cheerful occupation (when you’ve done cursing the caterpillars). And it’s also a way of taking a stand against the apathy that affects us all when the winter seems to have gone on for ever, and the despair that affects us all when we look at the machinations of evil men (and women: looking at you, Home Secretary) and our apparent powerlessness in the face of poverty, hunger and war. Every seed sown is a scream of defiance against encroaching entropy – if you choose to look at it like that. And on a practical, rather than a psychological level, those seeds are all potential meals as well, not now, but later, and in the winter when we’ll need more money for heating

So what about it? I know we’re not in “dig for Victory” territory. But it might be worth having a go this year, if you haven’t before, or picking up gardening again if you haven’t. And if you don’t want to grow veg, they have some very cheap, easy to grow annual flower seeds: sweet peas, calendula, honesty, stocks, poppies, colourful mixes for pollinators. You could always grow something just for colour and to help the bees, and to give you a breath of scent by your door. 

There will be a political post in a bit: just bracing myself to do it. But it’s good to think of something other than death and destruction. When so many are tearing down, it’s good to be building up. 

“Broccoli Sapling (seed)” by Gamma Man is marked with CC BY 2.0.