Veggies, Herbs and Spices the Frugal Way

My veggies are finally helping us with the grocery bill. Every few weeks I have been planting some more, so that we continue to have fresh veggies and herbs.

In September, I spent a Home Depot card from Gather to really get my garden started, and in January my husband had received a gift card, which I was able to get some herbs and some soil for. Besides this I have not spent anything on the garden. The pots are all from freecycle and a lot of the plants are planted from seeds from the veggies we buy.

I bought this pepper plant in September, but I lost the battle against bugs the first time around. It was still alive though, and now it is finally giving us sweet chili peppers.

This is a cucumber plant and some basil that I have planted from seeds. I will soon have to seperate them.

I bought this rosemary plant for my garther earnings last September, and it is still going strong.

This is my oldest son's coriander/cilantro that he planted from seeds a month or so ago. They are coming up slowly, but steadily. If you let some of the coriander grow, it will eventually give you new seeds that you can plant.

 A chili pepper plant, which came from a pepper we bought at the store. I planted it last spring, but last summer and spring, it was not doing too well. Now it really seems to be flourishing though. The first time I used a pepper from this plant, I planted a few of the seeds in the soil, so I have a few more chili pepper plants coming up.

 I had a basil plant here from September, and I thought it was done providing me with basil. I therefore got a different kind of basil plant in January, and I also put down a few seeds, so now I have three different kinds of basil going.

A Parsley plant from September. It has long roots, and it keeps giving me parsley.

I bought this aloe vera plant in September, and it is great to have, when we get bug bites and hives. It already made a second plant, and I gave this to my husband's aunt.

 A few weeks ago I bought some grape tomatoes. They were locally grown and tasted delicious. Here are the results. I still have a few more of the seeds to sew in a few weeks.

 My husband found this huge ceramic pot for me. It was given to him by one of the people in the apartment buildings he manages. I planted five tomato plants in it, that I had grown from seeds (from tomatoes we had eaten), and they are really producing lots of tomatoes for us.

 I have about 15 tomato plants of all kinds and sizes, and below you see a days harvest.

Below you see three tomato plants and a cucumber plant that I have planted from seeds. My sons love to give me seeds, whenever they eat their vegetables. At the moment we have some watermelon seeds that need to be planted. These will make a great experiment for the boys and I. At the moment we have an experiment going with a mango pit and two lime trees.

This is a oregano plant that I got last September. It wasn't doing too well, so I repotted it, and put it out in the sun. This helped tremendously.

 This is a pot with several tomato plants at the front of our house. They have had a rough time, as the caterpillars took over. Fortunately the tomatoes fought back and now I am finally getting flowers. One of these plants did produce a small green tomato, but my two-year-old son decided it was just too tempting to let it sit there:)

Below is one of my favorite chili pepper plants. I planted it from seed last  spring, and it survived the three months we went to Europe. It has kept producing peppers ever since, and I love it when they turn red. It is actually in the process of changing leaves at the moment, and if you look at the bottom you will see I have a few more plants growing.

These jalopeno pepper plants were also planted from seeds from a jalepeno, which I used in my cooking. A month ago the plants had about ten delicious green jalepenos on it. Then one day, when we returned from my son's scool, two huge caterpillars had gone through all the peppers and eaten all the leaves.

Fortunately the plants have recovered, and as you can see the peppers are on their way.

We also have pots with scotch bonnet peppers (very, very hot) , peppers and more tomatoes growing little by little, and since we are in S. Florida our season is year round. My sons and I love tending to the plants, and it is amazing how many tomatoes they eat now that they can pick them themselves.

We eat a lot of carribean and Indian foods in our family, and the herbs and chillis are really great for us. I would never be able to buy all of these fresh herbs at the store, but it is such a treat to be able to go outside and pick whatever I need.

Every time it rains, I put out my sons' water buckets to collect rainwater, and since the rainseason has begun, I really don't have to water the plants much.

Besides using seeds from the fruits an veggies you eat, you might be able to make your garden even more frugal by getting free compost at your local recycling center.

We live in a rented duplex in an urban area, but we do what we can with what we have.