Aren't you keen to make your garden pay? Let me briefly share a few top tips on how to reap the benefits of your garden and reduce cost.

With Potatoes you can expect to get at least 6 good sized spuds off each plant and probably more...

That's about 60 spuds for a 10 foot row. A potato bucket with 4 plants may give you 20 spuds. And home-grown short season 'new' potato varieties beat shop prices.

You can save more when you share your seed potato order with neighbours, friends and colleagues. Yes, why not get everyone gardening?

And I've long recommended DirectGardening to American gardeners for the lowest prices by a long long way...

That's because their website generates volume sales. And that's something for you to take advantage of - wholesale prices.

You get wholesale unit prices even with smaller quantities suited to back gardens and tubs... And you get an even better unit price the more you buy.

You have to buy them to grow and eat them so the price difference with culinary potatoes is small. But the biggest plus of growing your own from horticultural seed potato is the wonderful choice of variety.

And of course quality certified reduces the risk of plant disease that might prevent you growing future crops.
Find good seed potatoes here +

Grow your other vegetables and flowers now from packet seed. Especially in the U.K. the price difference between seeds and plants is huge. Remember that most packets contain enough seed to last 2 years.

With a little care and attention you can grow dozens and dozens of plants - flowers, vegetables, and herbs to plant out all from low cost seed packets. The potential to save on food is huge.

Garden Seeds at DirectGardening - Offers quality plants at great prices, take a look at what I mean!

Garden Seeds at Dobies - U.K. always offer good value.

Easy Seeds for Children are here at Suttons.co.uk Once again the massive choice of variety exceeds any other way of growing plants.

Buy online by mail order where the offers keep cropping up. You save on an outing to the store and the stuff you get comes direct from the nursery.

But when you combine your orders with other stuff that you need there's also more savings to be made on order value and postage and packing.

Find more at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
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2 - In The Organic Garden

And now seed potatoes - 'Anya' 'Cara' 'Juliette' have arrived and are set out to chit. I'm waiting to receive Minitubers of 'Foryfold' from Thompson & Morgan and they will be joined later by 'Vivaldi'.

Onions: I've sown my onion seed in trays of leaf mold + garden compost with bone meal. This year I've chosen a smaller quick growing variety to sow in succession as well as late onions to store.

I already have some onion sets overwintering in pots and I my Shallots and Garlic are coming up right now in the garden.

Carrots: I've sown an early carrot variety 'Amsterdam Forcing' in the greenhouse bed. Later this will be followed by a succession of carrot sowing outdoors. In shallow stoney ground try a stump rooted variety like 'Paris Market'.

Winter Lettuce: These are growing strongly in the greenhouse bed and winter sown spring onions are coming up now too.

Tomatoes and Sweet Peppers: I'm hoping to sow these today in pots. It's important to give the Sweet Peppers a good start.

Rhubarb: My 3 rhubarb varieties are growing up strongly. I'm sampling one stalk that broke off today. But first I'll work some dried manure into the soil around those I planted last year as they have smaller roots.

Flowers: I've ordered Winter Aconites and Blue Bells in the green to plant around my fruit bushes. The idea is to attract early insect pollinators. I'm also sowing other plants to flower early next year.

Green Manures: I like to follow green manures like Hungarian Rye by either planting out or sowing large seeds such as beans. But I'm going to cut down the Hungarian Rye to give 30 days before I sow small seeds such as lettuce as a catch crop - this is important.

Black Polythene: I'll be warming up some of my soil with black polythene before sowing and planting out.

Garden herbs such as chervil, parsely and sorrel are growing back well.

New Pond: My new pond is nearly finished. It's good to work on it while the ground is still soft. I did the main digging job in the fall after soil prohibits sowing and planting.

At The Home Of The Organic Gardener I've been very busy. Cooking with a good supply of fresh and frozen fruit / veg and lots of tasty herbs. It's really exhilerating and independent.

I usually have frozen: gooseberries, strawberies, blackcurrants straight after thawing at breakfast, but I still have plenty of fruit crumbles and vegetable meat pies in the freezer.

There's loads more to do... ... Please see my blog.

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