Save Money by Growing Garlic in Your Garden
Growing fruit and vegetables is just one way to help reduce your cost of living
With the cost of living rising, many of us are looking at ways we can save money on our everyday purchases.
Gardening has a bit of a reputation for being an expensive hobby — but it doesn’t need to cost you the earth. If you grow fruit and vegetables in your garden, on your balcony, or even in a window box, it can save you money on your grocery bills!
Garlic is a staple ingredient in our house. Pasta sauces, chillis, roast chicken — you name it, and I probably put garlic in it.
A standard loose garlic bulb comes in at around £0.25 depending on where you shop, and organic bulbs can cost around £0.33 or more in the supermarket.
It’s recommended that you buy garlic bulbs specifically for growing from a reputable seed or gardening supplier. These will cost you around £2.50-£3.00 per bulb depending on the type you choose and will give you around 12 cloves to plant. You can of course try using cloves from regular, shop-bought garlic, though the results might be mixed as you can’t be sure of the growing conditions required for that particular type of garlic. If they’re not organic, they may also have been chemically treated in some way which could impact how well they grow.
Separate the cloves in your garlic bulb and plant them out 15cm apart around 2.5cm below the surface. Make sure you plant the cloves the right way up! The flat piece (that was originally attached to the bulb) needs to be at the bottom, with the pointy end at the top — the pointy end is where the shoot will grow.
Garlic likes a cold snap when it’s growing which causes the bulb to separate into cloves. When you plant garlic in the autumn, it’s usually ready for harvesting in the summer the next year.
In your first year of planting garlic, the cost per bulb once you harvest them will work out roughly the same or a little bit more than you would typically pay. The trick is to set aside a few harvested bulbs for replanting later in the year (in the UK that’s around October). Then, next summer, you will be able to harvest your garlic for much less than you would have paid in the shops. You can do this indefinitely each time you harvest for as long as you grow healthy garlic plants.
