EDITORIAL

- Jo McCarroll considers your feedback on whether you save by growing your own.

So in this issue you will find 35 different edible fruit and vegetable crops that, based on several discussions with some of my most expert gardening mates from around the country, I think you could grow at home to save money. Some are worth planting because they are easy-peasy to grow and highly productive and can be used as a basis for all sorts of meals. And then there’s some, like fresh herbs, that are not so much use as a meal themselves but worth having on hand because they require so little effort or space and give a radical glow up to the most basic and budget friendly ingredients. Others are straightforward to store so keep your family fed for longer, some need a bit of processing, such as bottling, preserving or freezing, but with a really quite small amount of effort will produce an abundance of food that can help you spend a bit less for months and months. Some of the crops suggestions are more suitable for certain regions, so you might not be able to grow them all. But I guarantee there’s something there you could grow, and probably something you aren’t growing already. There certainly was for me.

This story came about after I wrote in NZ Gardener’s weekly ezine Get Growing that I believed that, provided you had a secure place to live, a bit of space and a little bit of spare time, growing your own food could, realistically, help you save money.

Now of course, I have shared my thoughts on this issue in this magazine quite a bit, over the years, so my views on it should surprise no regular readers. In general it didn’t surprise many readers of our ezine either. There was loads of feedback almost all of it agreeing with me.

But there were a few dissenting voices too. Some people argued you could spend – a lot – setting a garden up. “I would argue that gardening is expensive,” wrote one woman. It cost to buy tools, she said, as well as potting mix and garden soil. You might need to purchase fertiliser, a compost bin, watering equipment like hoses and timers.

“Many friends have been turned off gardening because their plants fail for wont of knowledge,” she concluded. “I think it is an expensive (but enjoyable) hobby.”

Now I agree with one of this woman’s points actually, albeit not her main one. I don’t think gardening is expensive at all, or at least it doesn’t have to be. But I do concur that the lack of knowledge can make it more expensive than it otherwise would be.

I think you can achieve almost everything for free that you might spend money on, you just have to know how. You can make compost, save seeds and grow on from cuttings and divisions, graft your own fruit trees. You can build up your soil fertility with free organic matter and upcycle what you have rather than buy new. Take pots, for instance. You can buy them but I have also grown things in hessian sacks, old buckets and reinforced cardboard boxes (they break down eventually but last longer than you think). When people iterate all the things you need to spend money on in order to grow food, they are usually listing things they have bought that their grandparents wouldn’t have had access to, and frankly I suspect they managed to grow their own at home just fine.

But it’s absolutely true that “a wont of knowledge” makes gardening expensive. Because the most important thing you need if you want to grow vegetables well – to grow anything really – is good information. You need to know where you can go to get reliable advice that’s relevant to you. And – spoiler alert – I think if you are gardening in New Zealand, it’s NZ Gardener. Every issue is packed with tips, tricks and advice from real gardeners who are out there getting their hands dirty all over New Zealand. I hope the information they share has inspired you in your own garden. And I’d love to hear if you thought gardening was expensive and enjoyable – or just enjoyable – hobby. Let me know at mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz.