Miss Thrifty

Slow Cooker: save on money and save on washing up was featured in the 239th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Darwin’s Finance.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: Staying Off the Car Payment Treadmill, by Tough Money Love. “I don’t understand the logic in borrowing money to purchase a depreciating asset”, notes Mr TML. Me neither.

When “cheap” and “Manolo Blahnik shoes” go together was featured in the 212th Festival of Frugality, hosted by Yes I Am Cheap.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: Composting on the Balcony: The Easy Way to Environmental Virtue, by Life On The Balcony. It can be done! This blog is dedicated to gardening tips for flat-dwellers.

Talking of gardening: Growing Brussels sprouts for Christmas was featured in the Make It From Scratch! Carnival, hosted by Out of Debt Again.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: All Day Beef Stock, by Making My Own Luck. I can tell you that if I ate meat, I’d be sloshing this over everything…

Image credit: Infrogmation.

I hope that you are all having a great Christmas break. Right now I am having a fine ol’ time sitting on my bottom, pushing Turkish Delight into my face and watching telly, so this is just a quick post to show you these:

Homegrown Brussels sprouts! I was very impressed when I saw them. They were grown by my friend, illustrator Erica Read, whose aptitude for crafty things extends to cooking and gardening, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I heard that Brussels can be quite tricky to grow. Also, you have to plant them up to 6 months before you can harvest the spouts, so some forward planning is required.

Erica said that she planted the seeds out at the back of her garden a few months ago and promptly forgot all about them. She remembered them in the days before Christmas, went out there, pulled back a big frosty leaf – and there were the sprouts, all lined up on their stalks and ready to be picked and eaten. Simples!

Her timing was perfect, not just because it was Christmas but also because, according to old-timey gardeners, harvest Brussels sprouts the morning after a heavy frost and they will taste especially sweet.

If it’s that easy, I’ll have a go at growing them myself next year…

Thanks to all who entered the competition to win a copy of On The Plot With ‘Dirty Nails’. The winner is after the jump…

Thanks too for all the great tips, which are going to prove very useful in the months to come. Here are some of my favourites:

Cut the bottom off a 2 litre pop bottle and use it as a mini-cloche (Kelly).

Save your old, laddered tights, cut them into strips and use them to tie up tomatoes, beans etc onto poles. They stretch much better than string and don’t cut into the stems as they grow (Claire).

Sow sweet peas and climbing beans inside the cardboard cylinders from loo rolls. Pack them into a recycled mushroom box and fill with compost. Any roots that grow through the tube grow safely in the surrounding compost, which makes them so easy to transplant (Lottie).

Buy organic seeds – you can then save the seeds to plant out the next year. Try to swap seeds and growing tips with friends and neighbours – it is worth knowing which varieties perform well in your local soil and growing conditions. In addition to the other comment about loo rolls, the middle of kitchen rolls or Pringle containers are great to grow leeks in (Andy Sowden). (more…)

It’s getting nippy, isn’t it? The tomato plants in our back garden were still laden with unripened fruit, and I didn’t want to waste it. So this evening I went outside and picked it all in (left). This year we have giant Moneymakers, cherry tomatoes, cherry plum tomatoes, Gardener’s Delight and yellow tomatoes. The cherry and cherry plum tomatoes came from the plant bargain bin at the local garden centre; the others were grown from seed by Frugal Grandma and given to us when they were a few centimetres high. The plant pots were scavenged and the compost came from the Morrisons value range. All in all, if you don’t count the water, the summer’s bumper crop has cost less than £1. I’m happy with that!

Although they didn’t have time to ripen before the colder weather came crashing in (thank you, British Summer), I’m rather proud of this year’s crop. Last year was a disaster: the plants went into the vegetable patch at the back of the garden, grew big and strong, sprouted tomatoes and then… the tomatoes all went bruised and watery on the vine before they were ripe. I don’t know the whats or the whys – none of the pictures of diseased tomatoes on t’interweb matched – but I guessed that it must have been something to do with the garden soil. (As previously noted, my garden isn’t exactly problem-free.) So this year the tomato plants all went into patio pots, and they were fine.

I already have a backup plan for next year. (more…)

I dare you not to be inspired by this greenhouse made from old windows. Apparently the windows were collected from local houses that were being torn down. (So it’s eco-friendly too!) The result is featured on the splendid MAKE:blog, which is fast becoming one of my favourite sources of inspiration for sumptuous moneysaving ideas.

Well, I say “inspiration”. I think I probably mean “aspiration”. I’d love to make something like this, but I’m not there… yet.

One of the shocks about turning grown-up is finding out just how expensive all this stuff is. Window boxes, I could cope with. But since we moved into a house with a bona fide garden, I’ve been regularly horrified by the bank account-draining qualities of spanking new garden gear.

Now I’m sure it doesn’t help that our garden was such a bombsite (complete with trenches, cratered knolls, piles of rubble and broken glass everywhere) when we moved in. The lovely people who used to live here used the back yard as a rubbish dump for ten years; I am told that when the house was finally repossessed, the council sent four skips to clear it all out. Bits of broken plastic toys still float to the surface when it rains – but at least the garden is level now, and has a lawn of sorts. It even has a shed, a composter and one of those rotary washing lines. Believe me, this Pooterish vision of suburban tranquility has involved much in the way of sweat, tears and rushing down the garden centre on a Saturday morning because something just has to be done, damn it. (more…)

I must apologise for the extremely late running of Friday Bargains. This is because I was out on the razzle when I should have been posting. It’s all come good though: I was moping around Morrisons at the weekend and… Well, I say “moping”; I cleaned up!

Lots and lots and lots of £1 offers at the mo. Not the rubbish stuff, either: there are plenty of goodies to be had. I picked up everything from fish to potatoes.

Best of all there was a stand of summer bulbs and perennials, for £1 a bag. I picked up bags of lupins, red hot pokers, aquilegia and hollyhocks. I love me a good hollyhock!

Frugal Grandma is currently on a month’s sojourn in Egypt (and is apparently having a very nice time, down amongst the sun loungers) but when she returns I shall be asking her for planting tips.

From my Frugal Grandma:

These African violets are more than five years old and the reason why they are thriving (they are past their best in this picture and heading towards their yearly rest) is because they have never had anything other than rainwater.   

Lots of people love these flowers, but lose them because they give them water from the tap or filter, which turns the leaves brown and poisons the plant.

Don’t write off UK Woolworths just because it has gone into administration. I was in there today, kicking off my Christmas shopping. Although there are no big SALE signs up, there are plenty of good deals to be had. There are lots of reduced items across the store, including electronics, books and toys. The place was practically deserted; don’t miss out on the bargains!

I ended up buying half-a-dozen amaryllis kits: the pot, bulb and compost, all boxed up and ready to go. They were reduced to £3.50 apiece and had also been put on a 3-for-2 offer, so I got six boxes for £14. I like amaryllis plants: they grow so tall and the flowers are enormous. I bought a couple of hardback books for my mum and aunt, and some more gardening stuff for my Frugal Grandma. All of these will make good openers on Christmas Day. (more…)

Yes, I know I’m really late to the party. I’d read all about Freecycle, which reduces waste by encouraging people to post their unwanted items online, and pass them on. But I hadn’t really paid much attention, because (a) Freecycle always popping up in those same rubbish “recessionista” features in the women’s pages. You know: those round-ups that tell us all to go out and stuff fallen fruit into our Lulu Guinness handbags, and take our clothes to “swap parties”. Also, (b) I’d presumed that Freecycle’s domains were eco-trendy places like Islington and Brighton, rather than my creaky Yorkshire backwater.

But lo! I looked Freecycle up, and it turns out that the little place in which I live (pop: 13,000) has its own, thriving Freecycle group. (more…)