I am looking to start a small container garden this upcoming fall. By small, I mean I would like to have a few onion plants and maybe an herb or two. However, I am a little concerned if the start up is really worth it. In my possession I have about 5 or 6 containers, soil, fertilizer, and access to water. I plan on reusing dish and pasta water to help nourish my plants. We usually buy around 2 onions a week at about .60 each. I would like to purchase more, but we are limited by our budget. I put onions in everything! If you have any experience, please help me with my gardening ignorance! -Would it be worth it to grow my own onions? -Can you freeze onions? -Should I include one or two other low maintenance vegetables to potentially save more on our grocery budget? Most of our vegetable intake comes from frozen vegetables which I have no problem with. I would just like some fresh vegetables as an affordable supplement. We are not picky about what vegetables we eat, as long as they are relatively nutritious. -Are there any other general tips to Thrifty gardening that you have found? If you have made it this far, thank you for helping a beginner!
I have a in house container garden. It defiantly saves on your food budget. Herbs are the best to grow. Little care and up keep are needed. The best things to grow are things like this. Onions do freeze, but came become frost bitten rather quickly, be wise to that. Tomatoes are excellent for this type of garden. One or two plants are plenty. Tomatoes can be canned or frozen and both work very well and last long. If the are allows, plastic gallon jugs make wonderful pots for your garden. A few small holes punctured in the bottoms and sit them in foil pie pans for drainage. I'm as frugal as I can be. I keep a small container for scraps for compose to use a fertilizer during the winter months also
Yes, I do think it's worth the effort to grow your own onions. From my own experience, onions are rather easy to grow. As for freezing, I haven't tried it. What I do know is that onions keep very well in the fridge. So far I have been able to keep onions in the fridge for up to a month without any problem.
We have a few raised beds close by in the yard. Onions tend to grow like weeds - you can start some in the fall and leave them in the ground, so they sprout in the spring, but safer yet is to go to your local hardware store in late winter and by onion 'sets' - a rubber banded bunch of tiny onions. Be sure to give them enough room. Tomatoes are a favorite in summer - there are a number of them that are actually bred to grow in containers. These are a 'bush' type that don't stretch out and wander all over. They like moderate water, but a lot of sun. Radishes are quick and easy, and will grow from seed in a short while. They are ready to harvest as early as 4 weeks, so you can plant them around some slow growing plants and pull them before they get in the way. Squash - yellow and zucchini - can grow in pots well. Try three seeds in a little patch in the center, so they have room to grow out. Sometimes they will trail out a little. Cucumbers are vines, as as many types of beans, though with beans you can find 'bush' types, also. Many varieties of veggies have been developed to grow in pots - just be sure to read the labels! And if you want to start with seeds, you can bring the pots into a protected area to start your seeds in late winter, as long as they don't freeze and have lots of light. All veggies like full sun and at least moderate water. In pots, they will need frequent watering, as the pots don't hold much moisture and the sun will dry them out quickly.
My husband grows tomatoes from the seeds of tomatoes we buy to eat - you can't get much more frugal than that. Lettuce and radishes also easy to grow, so is cress. You can grwo cress in margarine tubs on a wad of kitchen paper - just keep it moist, and within 10 days, you'll have fresh cress for sandwiches and salads. Cress is high in iron, so it's a good one to grow.
Thank you for this information! Making my own compost is something that I would like to get into as well. We eat lots of produce daily so I am constantly throwing away banana and orange peels, onion scraps, and the like. I feel terrible about it because I know that it can be used. Can you elaborate on how you make your compost? Thank you for these suggestions! I would never have thought that something could be so easy to grow. I am borderline anemic, so cress would be an excellent plant to have. Do you recommend any particular type of cress?
I have very limited growing space so tend to grow things that are hard to get in the shops, very expensive, or significantly tastier if home grown. Salad leaves are always great, they can be cut and come again, germinate easily and mature quickly. Radishes are amazing, I can't believe the hot and spicy ones I grow are the same vegetable as the ones in the shops! Pea shoots are super quick and you hardly need any soil since most of the growing is done from the energy stored in the seed, and you can use dried peas sold in the shops for eating which are cheaper than seeds. Herbs are great value as you only have to pick what you want, make a big difference to your food and save a lot of money.
You could use scraps of parsley, the stem of mint, rosemary etc. to start your container garden. Tomatoes and basil can be started from seeds. You don't need containers, you could use cans/ old pots and pans to grow your plants .. just poke holes in the bottom for drainage. You could recycle soda bottles for this project as well.. look up window farming/ gardening and you will see that this is an easy way to start your own little container garden.
Everyone has already suggested the plants I was thinking of so the only advice I can add to that is to think of the plants that you use the most in cooking and try growing those. You can start with just one or two plants and see how it goes. Make sure you read up on what the plants require as far as light and water so you are meeting those needs. As far as storing what you grow, either freezing or dehydrating are two of the easiest ways to preserve your foods. Most plants can be dehydrated in a regular oven. Good luck!
This thread is a little old so hopefully you were successful with what you tried. I've always had the most luck with tomatoes. Even in the ground my onions didn't do well until this past year. We had a nice crop of tiny red onions. I can't wait to get the garden going this year.
