ciaocibai

Come join us in the wops. With Starlink everywhere is pretty liveable now I reckon.

I feel ya. It’s a hobby for us so we don’t mind the time, but we probably spend at least a couple of hours a week each in the garden.

Fair enough too. Probably depends on motivation as well - we grow our own for many reasons including a goal of self sufficiency and a better understanding of what’s in the food we eat so it’s not just economics for us.

We’ve obviously invested a fair bit in getting the garden set up, but once you can grow from seed (and especially saving your own seed) it might be just a few dollars for a few hundred seeds (depending on the crop) and some plants (beans, tomato’s, watermelons etc) that are super easy to save seed from. We’re even self sufficient for things like popcorn (and have a couple of kilos worth of seed left - some which we’ll still eat) so that makes a difference too.

Lastly though we just love gardening, and I really enjoy showing my kids the lifecycle and getting them involved in the process. They get to choose and manage some crops of their own, and always speak with pride when we eat the things they’ve contributed to.

If the plants I’ve mentioned I find they either stay growing for a long time (cucumber, courgette) or store very well (garlic, onion etc). We do multiple batches of onions and carrots still but the others I mentioned there usually just one. Brassicas, beans etc we do usually stagger though, as well as getting early starts in the greenhouse and with a seedling warming mat.

On the pest front my old man (who used to be a commercial market gardener for a few years) recommended derris dust for the brassicas. We haven’t used it (and there is mixed opinions on its health impact online) but that’s potentially an option. Insect netting is the best for us though.

We’re currently planting to build a fully netted area in our garden around 50sqm for that reason.

Garlic and onion store super well. We still have some 2 year old garlic which has done fine. Cool dark place and you are good to go. Potatoes can start to root up over time but still perfectly edible. In ground storage for root veg seems to do well for us as well (although some of our carrots end up a bit wonky looking) but wouldn’t leave potatoes in once the ground is getting too wet.

I think cucumbers did particularly well last year due to all the rain and just enough sunshine too. Cucumbers are heavy feeders though so we usually fertilise them every couple of weeks (with homemade fertiliser so it’s cheap).

With our brassicas once it’s white butterfly / caterpillar time we put insect netting over them. Mitre10 had some reasonable insect netting cloches which are fine to start with. We find them quite prone to bolting if they get too much Sun so also recommend planting them in a semi shaded area of your garden. Over summer the area we plant them only gets 3-4 hours of Sun a day and that seems to be plenty.

Another one for us is reviewing our insurance options at least once per year. This has probably saved us at least $1500/year so very worthwhile. Currently have house and contents insurance with AMP, car insurance with cove and tower (as they are cheaper depending on the car), boat insurance also with tower, life insurance with Chubb and health insurance with NIB.

I also find it varies from year to year so I go through and recheck. The multi policy discounts don’t really seem to make up the difference.

This year our old house insurance provider was going to put us up to $320/month from $200/month. I ended up getting the same level of cover through AMP for $190/month.

And just to add, apps like grocer and Gaspy are game changers.

Another big saving for us is stocking up on meat when it’s cheap - either chicken (usually at packnsave) or pork ribs (usually at Gilmour’s) - we produce our own beef and lamb. As such we’ve got 3 deep freezers, and I can’t remember the last time we paid even $10/kg for meat

I should really post up a picture of our vegetable garden - we’ve got a couple of hundred square meters of vege garden as well as a 30sqm greenhouse, and we grow everything from seed so we’re quite set up for it. We do live on a lifestyle block though.

I’d also be shocked if we only got 1kg of courgettes from each plant too. Last year we had 3 and couldn’t give them away quickly enough to keep up while also eating them everyday. Some with cucumbers. We’ve also got about 40-50 brassicas in the ground, and are on our 3rd year of our own garlic and onion supply, and aiming to survive on our own potatoes only this year as well - last year harvested about 100kg worth and this year aiming to 3-4x that. We’re definitely keen gardeners though so I know that’s not for everyone.

Wait so the NZ government is lying to me about our renewable energy sources? And my home solar panels are just faking the energy production? Or did you forget the world is more than just that place you live in?

I’ve got a small 3kw solar system with about 9kwh of battery storage and that manages about 90% of our yearly charging. Otherwise in nz I pay about 10(US) cents per kWh from 11pm-7am (about 20 cents in daytime) for my charging at home. Public chargers are generally around 40 cents /kWh but range from 50-200kw so can dump power in pretty fast (although my car maxes out at 50kw for charging).

Nz too apart from old people who still use acres.