Growing A Garden

With food prices continuing to rise, I know that many families are looking for ways to stretch the grocery budget without spending more money. One great and increasingly popular solution is gardening. Gardening is a great way to beat some of those atrocious vegetable prices and have some fun learning something new.

I have honestly never been much into gardening, mostly because of the bugs and getting really dirty and such. But recently we started a small vegetable garden in pots on our back patio. Using pots helps to cut out most of the weeds and also to keep everything contained. Pots can also be moved to another location easily if need be. Starting out we planted tomatoes, basil, cilantro, and strawberries. Yesterday we added some parsley and oregano. I will also be getting a bell pepper plant from my sister soon. We planted some marigold flowers as well, because they help to keep tomato bugs away.

Since we only have 3 family members right now, we often run into the problem of buying a pre-sized bunch of cilantro, or a package of tomatoes, etc., and having some of it go bad because we couldn’t use it all soon enough. Part of that is lack of good planning to cook with all that I buy, but part is also due to the pre-sized portions. Having our own garden will eliminate that problem since we can just pick off as much as we need. If we have extra, we would love to bless family and friends with it

One last idea…getting your children to help out with the garden will be a great educational experience for them!

For more Frugal Friday ideas check out Crystal's site here.