£6 Potatoes

I was reading a budget recipe book the other day when the author was saying how the cheapest way to buy potatoes was out of a tin. I'd have to disagree and say it's from a 25kg sack straight from the farm.

They ride up front with me...

Lots of the farms around here sell their potatoes on the side of the road and the ones we've had all seem good quality, large potatoes and all between £6-£7 a bag. In my book that makes them pretty good value, in fact it's hardly worth growing them. I'm only going to grow early potatoes this year and wait until I'm more "on top" of the garden before I try and grow too many main crop potatoes.

 

Does anyone else grow many potatoes or buy them in bulk like I do and instead stick to a few early ones? What other veg are hardly worth growing due to how cheap they are (I'd be tempted to say carrots here but they taste so much better home grown and work out about £2 for seed that will grow almost all you need for 6 months!)?

Viable Repairs

A few weeks ago I had to repair a garden bench for a customer.

Three of the slats had rotted and needed replacing, the other two were fine so they were left. I replaced them with oak, so I know that they'll last a long time.

That night when I got home and told my wife what I'd been doing that morning, she asked if I thought it was viable to do the repair. With my time doing the repair, sourcing the the oak, cutting and planing it to size and picking it up from the mill I should imagine that there will be little change out of a ton (I was there to do other jobs as well).

Now I know you can go down to B&Q or a garden centre and pick up a bench for much less than a hundred pounds but in my experience they don't last more and a couple of years before they fall to pieces.

Instead this customer had invested that money into their old bench to make it last much longer than that. Maybe in a few years I'll have to go and replace the other two slats but I'm sure that, in much the same way as triggers broom, this bench will last for a very long time and cost a lot less than buying imported benches and replacing them every few years.

We could do with some garden benches here on our little homestead but I'm reluctant to buy the ones mentioned above, so I think I'll start looking out for second hand ones in antique shops and in the paper so that I can buy one that can be easily repaired and made to last forever!