I doubt that I ever realised how much of our food used to come from our garden as a kid. My Dad used to grow us lots of things from potatoes to peas and runner beans to radishes as well as many things in between.
He started me on the growing bug young too, and I’ve done so most of my life. Having an allotment for nearly a third of my life and now with a garden of a similar size to that growing space much of our food comes from there.
We’ve had a bit of a break during the period upto and after moving house when we were winding down one space and not yet getting the new space ready.
Just before I came in to write these words, I was transplanting cabbage plants from their seed tray out into the garden proper and into the soil.
I’ve also just been thinking about our grocery list and what we don’t need to buy from the store this week because we have lettuce and a few other things.
The impact on the grocery bill is a visible one though, even if it is a bit of an illusion. The price of our grocery shop might be lower this week than normal, but I have had to buy seed and compost and many other things. Some of this is spread over the years or acquired at low or zero cost, but ultimately there are associated costs with growing your own food. Probably it is cheaper than just buying from the store but there are other things to think about and the fact that prices in supermarkets are probably artificially low when thinking about what the actual cost to farmers and growers is, so maybe if the true price were paid there would be a greater saving.
I guess as a kid my concept of exactly where different things came from was pretty limited, and certainly I had no sense of the cost of things. There was always something to eat, even if sometimes it was something that I’d profess to not liking. My sense though is that the differential in price was probably greater and the savings value of home grown food was greater.
Finally there is one other thing that is great about home grown food and that is the taste. It will always been fresher and tastier than anything that you can buy anywhere else.
Thanks for reading.