Monday, April 23, 2012

Summer Food Savings?

I'm always looking for ways to save.  Calling Rogers to reduce my services, making sure I'm getting all relevant discounts on car/home insurance, and pre-planning all meals to avoid purchasing more groceries than I need.

This summer I'm going to try to grow my own veggies.  I have a small-ish balcony (about 9' x 6'), but enough room to have a nice little veggie setup.  I've never tried to grow anything on my own, so next weekend I'll be visiting a couple of Ottawa nurseries to get some advice on what I need to purchase - I've set myself a $60 budget to start (rebate cheque coming next month from Great Canadian Rebates).

Here's what I've bought so far:

Dollarama sells 3 packages of seeds for $1.00!!!

As practice, I bought packages of basil and coriander about a month ago and so far so good.  I'm not sure at what point if I should move the plants to a larger pot, but I'll hopefully get some tips after the nursery visit.

Come mid-summer this is what I'm hoping my vegetable pots will look like!

 

Do you have any tips for me?  Any experience growing veggies on a balcony?

5 comments:

  1. I haven't yet but I've thought about planting veggies many times! My mom recently started a new garden on her deck. She has 3 kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries. I'm totally stealing, when everything is ready!

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  2. I'd love to grow strawberries and raspberries!! Do you know if she grew the fruit from scratch or had a starter plant? (I've seen them at Walmart).

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  3. Hmmm. My boyfriend tried to grow tomatoes on our deck last year and it didn't go so well - he forgot to bring them inside on the cold nights. Silly boy!

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  4. I started growing my little pot of plants too! So far the peas, some of the squash are growing, cilantro, green onion are sprouting! I am still waiting for the eggplants and daikon to sprout!!! :)

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  5. How are these going these days?
    I am fantastic at killing things and my spouse told me the grim reaper is better at keeping things alive, haha.
    I also attempt to balcony garden.

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