With the non-stop price increases at the supermarket, I thought it was about time we began experimenting with growing some of our own fruit, vegetables and herbs.

For Christmas my parents bought me a Herb Garden Kit which is essentially ‘a garden in a box’, complete with seeds and instructions. The idea being you follow said instructions and end up with basil, parsley, thyme, chives, coriander and rocket.

This set off an idea to grow some other things we use a lot of in the kitchen – namely tomatoes and strawberries.

Come summer every week I’ll purchase 2 or 3 punnets of strawberries and at £3-4 a go for some decent ones that quickly adds up. Likewise for decent tomatoes, and a whole box of tomatoes can disappear into one meal.

What if we could grow our own herbs? Our own strawberries? Our own tomatoes?

Finding Suitable Sites & Containers

We spent a good while wandering around looking for some containers that were both aesthetically pleasing, and suitable to the task at hand. Our outside space is quite limited with no grass so we would have to make it up as we went along.

In the end we settled for some ceramic-effect long troughs, and a ceramic strawberry planter. These were placed along the back wall of our patio area, which gets the sun from about 11am until 4pm. Not ideal, but the best we can offer with the layout we have to work with.

The Results So Far

They have only been ‘at home’ for around 20 days now, but they all seem quite happy. The strawberries more than the tomatoes if I am honest, as I think the tomatoes are feeling a little over-watered and under-loved in the recent storm we suffered. They seem to be bouncing back though.

Tomatoes - 3 varieties - 20 days in (click 2 enlarge)

Strawberries (8) - 20 days in (click 2 enlarge)

Initial Costs & Projected Savings

We didn’t buy the cheapest containers, and if we had, we’d have saved around £15. In the end we spent approximately £40 for the containers, and £30 for the plants. Initial outlay: £70.00

Given we can re-use the containers for other produce later on I’m going to discount the container costs from the calculation, which leaves us with £30.00 spent on the plants. To break even we only need 3 punnets of strawberries out of the 8 plants and maybe 4 containers of tomatoes to break even.

Seems like a done-deal to me to come out of this quids in!

Plant Care – Learning As We Go

After about a week of them being in their little beds, we got attacked by black-fly. Some organic spray sorted that out. Then the tips of the tomato plants started to go brown, which we later learned was most likely as a result of over-watering. Since we have cut back on the watering, they seem to be picking up again.

The strawberries have been mostly trouble free. So far…

Do you “grow your own?” Would you like to?

One of the horrors of modern living is the amount of food wasted on a daily basis, even in a small home.

Grandparents of people my age will extol how a loaf of bread and an egg could feed a family of five for a week during the rationing of World War Two  (minor exaggeration but you get my point) and yet we throw away 10 times as much food a week in 2012 and don’t think anything of it.

UK Food Waste Statistics

Before we delve into the topic at hand, let me scare you with some statistics:

UK households waste 6.7 million tons of food a year

That’s shockingly horrific. That’s almost a third of the total 21.7 million tons of food purchased each year.  (Better than the US mind you, who waste half of what they buy). While some is recycled into compost or animal feed, the vast majority (~85%) is sent straight to landfill where it decomposes, contributing to greenhouse gases and possible climate change.

61% of that waste is avoidable (4.1 million tons)

There are obvious factors in the total wastage a year that is unavoidable – there are only so many alternative uses for meat carcases, vegetable scraps and so forth. But 4.1 million tons of the waste is actual food that could have been eaten if only its storage or purchase had been managed better.

8% of food waste is still in date when thrown away

Even if managed properly, and despite all other points, 8% of food waste is perfectly good, edible food that is still in date. People simply buy too much for a particular meal, or do not want to eat what they have bought so simply throw it away rather than make use of it.

£10.2 billion pounds a year wasted

That’s the total figure of the amount of food that the UK wastes every year. That’s £420 per household, per year. That could pay your car insurance, or a weekend break for 2, or even kick-start your main summer vacation holiday fund. The US wastes $43 billion a year, or $590 per household.

Could any of this be reduced if we taxed wasted food?

Korea thinks so …

Korea is launching a food waste tax this year. This will be relatively easy for Korea to implement because the population already sorts food waste from normal domestic rubbish. The receptacles are being updated to contain RFID scanners, and special bags will be distributed to households encoded with their details. The more food waste you throw, the more you get charged for doing so.

The Korean Government’s goal is to reduce food waste by 20% in 2013 which would:

• save $144 million in food waste processing costs;
• save consumers $4.4 billion of food costs that wouldn’t be purchased and wasted; and
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent of removing over 243,000 cars from use each year.

Semantics is Taxing

I dislike the idea of taxing something to reduce consumption of whatever it is being taxed. In this case, it’s still a consumption but the consumption of landfill and local authority collection services to collect the wasted food. It suggests that if you have the money to pay the tax, then you should flaunt it.

A Tax

If you throw away 20kg of food a year and are charged £5 per kilo disposed of, that’s £100 a year additional taxes the government takes from your home. Multiply that across the country, and that’s a lot of additional taxes for sure. But it sells the premise wrong. It won’t compel to reduce waste; it will merely make the population feel taxed even more. It doesn’t adjust the mindset positively. As another negative connotation – taxes are unavoidable.

The other half of why I dislike calling it a tax so much is I already pay for refuse collection as part of my council tax. I should not be double-taxed for the same service.

Pay As You Throw

What if we call it “Pay As You Throw”, which is essentially what Korea are calling their system. It’s still a tax by another name, but it is starting to turn it around into something slightly more positive. It still doesn’t hit the nail on the head though in my mind; if you can afford to throw lots, then throw lots you shall. If you can’t afford to, then you won’t.

Fine Time

What if, we call it a Food Waste Fine. Taxes are unavoidable, but fines? Fines are what you get when you do something bad. If you don’t do something bad, you don’t get fined. This puts the control in the hands of the disposer.

You are right if you think all that is just semantics, because it is. The bottom line is you still pay to throw away food. But sometimes it isn’t so much the idea that matters, but how you sell it.

Bring it on

I’d welcome a food waste fine, because I already know I waste too much food. Besides the hole in my pocket when I buy the food unnecessarily however, it doesn’t directly affect me. I know it causes greenhouse gases when it decomposes (and when it gets made and transported because of me, too). I know I probably throw away enough each year to feed a starving family somewhere for 6 months. I know all this, but I still do it.

If I knew it was going to directly cost me twice though? I think that’d change my behaviour. Share your thoughts in the comments!

Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!”, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

This week I’m focusing on short, sharp tips that could save you hundreds of pounds over the course of a year while food shopping.

Never Shop on an Empty Stomach

You know the drill. It’s early evening, you are tired from work, starving hungry and find no food in the house. By some miracle you resist the temptation to ring the local Indian delivery folks, and instead shuffle back in your car to visit your local supermarket. You have nothing in mind particularly beyond getting home again, and as a result end up massively overspending. Your hunger did your shopping, rather than any conscious plan you may have had.

Eat before you go shopping. If you are not hungry when you go, then tantalising offers that are not already on your shopping list will likely be easily ignored. Which neatly brings me to my next point…

Write a List

Going shopping without a list is a disaster waiting to happen. You buy loads of things you don’t need, forget half the stuff you do, and get loads of “extras” on the side.

To combat this, work out a meal plan for the week ahead and everything you’ll need to buy to make it happen. If you are going to do some batch cooking in the week, see what you already have in the store cupboards before adding them to the list.

If it isn’t on the list – don’t buy it!

And leave the pen at home… adding it to the list afterwards is cheating.

Calculate a Budget

Much like having a list is important for not over-spending, so is having an idea of where ‘overspending’ would be in the first place. Everyone will have their own idea for a budget, but £50 per person per month is not unreasonable to aim for if you have the time to batch cook. That is my own personal food budget, and mostly, I manage to achieve that these days.

Slow Down & Scan

The items on the shelves at eye-level are the most profitable products. You see a jar of pasta sauce the moment you walk into the aisle and grab it, throw it in your basket and zoom off to the next item in the list.

You just fell for the oldest marketing trick in the book. Next time slow down and study the prices. Scan the entire shelf from top to bottom and look at the cost per unit calculations most supermarkets provide in the super-small-print on the shelf labels. If you take a moment to compare prices you can save upwards of 100% on the purchase price of some items.

Try Downshifting

Downshifting isn’t about suffering a cheaper product, it is about finding a cheaper product where you cannot honestly tell the difference between it and a more expensive brand. If you have a habit of always buying “Finest” or “Taste The Difference” or some other premium product, try a brand name instead. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try stores-own. You’ll often save pounds per product doing this and likely won’t notice a shred of difference when cooked.

Some premium brands and stores-own are even made in the same factory. The only difference is the packaging and the price.

Shop at Reduction Hour

My father makes a killing doing this. He very rarely goes shopping before 8pm, which is precisely when our local Tesco begins doing the final knock-downs on things that are going out of date the next day or so. It is not uncommon for him to come home with bagfuls of items at 10p here, 20p there where the original cost would have been pounds here and pounds there instead.

Anything that will not be eaten or turned into a batched meal gets frozen until it is needed and remains just as good and just as flavoursome as the full priced equivalent.

Never Turn Down ‘Free’

Quite regularly my mother will include me in meals she makes for herself, or my father will invite me out to lunch to catch up. Never turn down these opportunities, as it’s a great way to spend extra time with friends and family, and shave costs from your food bill as well.

Happy Friday, and Happy (Cheaper) Shopping!