Saving Money & Wasting Less

Lesson 3: Food

Growing food, and false economies

Growing food starts in the kitchen. If you have a window in your kitchen, you can grow some food, even if it's just sprouts! Any small container that allows light in at the top and water out at the bottom will work. The containers in which you buy sprouts are obviously suitable.

To grow sprouts yourself, you need to buy dried mung (moong) beans or lentils (usually available in supermarkets), or alfalfa seeds. Simply soak a spoonful (size depending on the size of your container) of beans or seeds for a few hours, then drain the water off and wash them twice a day. Keep the container on the kitchen windowsill, or somewhere else it will get light, and in just a few days you'll have a container of bean sprouts at a fraction of the cost of buying them. Toss them in salads, add them to sandwiches, casseroles or soups, and you have a very healthful, high protein addition to your diet, for almost no cost.

The kitchen windowsill can also be a growing area for herbs, depending on the amount of room you have available. A small container (say 30 cm or 1 foot long) can be used to grow some parsley, chives or garlic chives, and a small basil or oregano plant. Fresh-picked herbs are more flavourful than packets of dried herbs, and if you grow them yourself from seed, they cost you almost nothing, and you'll always have them handy right where you want them.

If you have a sunny area such as a balcony or patio, no matter how small it is, you can grow more food in pots or containers. On my small patio I have containers of lettuce, carrots, radishes, spinach, rocket, nasturtium and garlic chives virtually all year round. (The nasturtium do more than just look pretty - they also provide seeds that can be pickled and used as capers, and the flowers and leaves are all edible and add colour and interest to salads.) In summer I also grow tomatoes.

If you have a vertical space to which you can attach a trellis, you can also grow peas and other trailing plants, even on a small balcony. You can even grow dwarf fruit trees in large pots, such as cherry or dwarf peach.

If you have room for a vegetable patch, it's well worth the effort to grow some of your own food, especially if you grow from seed. Growing food makes you more self-reliant, and more aware of where your food is coming from. You can also grow varieties that you simply cannot buy in supermarkets. When did you last see a black tomato in a supermarket? Or a yellow or bright orange one? When did you last see purple peas or broad beans or purple-fleshed potatoes? There are dozens of varieties of most vegetables, but supermarkets want only those varieties that keep well for long periods. And they want vegetables and fruits that are big and blemish-free, and sometimes even genetically engineered to withstand pesticides.

If you want to grow the 'heirloom' varieties, there are seed savers on the Internet. See the seedsaver website for US/Canada and Australia/NZ for some examples.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of going out into the garden and picking a cucumber or a pumpkin you've grown yourself. And nothing tastes like a fresh-picked tomato, or a spicy radish, or a tiny sweet strawberry (900% tastier than the big glossy supermarket strawberries!)

The recommended book Back to Basics has excellent sections on gardening in a limited space, organic gardening, and everything you need to know about setting up a small vegetable garden. It is not difficult, and needn't take much time. You'll save far more than just money, and it's fun.

False economies

Cheap food can be a bargain if it's down the chain, in other words, if it's a natural, unprocessed product such as vegetables and fruits in season. But cheap food that's way up the chain (highly processed), may cost you a fortune later in life in health costs. Food is the very source of your life, and your health depends upon what you feed your body. Would you buy a cheap parachute if you were a skydiver?

Organic food costs more (if you don't grow it yourself), but in buying organic you will be supporting farmers who are farming in a sustainable way that is not costing the Earth. So, if you are saving money elsewhere, consider the benefits of spending some of your savings on organic foods.

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