Get to grips with what you have before starting on new projects. Don't get lured in by seed packets - think about sharing or swapping with friends.
14.04.10
One of the dangers of being greedy is that, by the very nature of greed, you want it all. You refuse to relinquish the opportunity to grow even one plant and want to try them all – raspberries (summer and autumn fruiting), rhubarb, blackberries, you covet your neighbours tayberries and loganberries, you want plums, strawberries and a ballerina apple tree. And that's just the fruit.
In blind denial of the actual size of your plot, your plans verge on the grandiose and you start to have ambitions that would make the Eden Project seem paltry in comparison. This gets even worse when faced with such a harmless thing as a seed catalogue (or website). It is all the easier to pop these little packets of promises into you shopping basket and not take into account the fact that each packet is more than enough to keep you in peas/ salad/ beetroot (delete as appropriate) for the next two years so why you need 3 of them is anyone's guess.
My particular weakness is for a bargain. There is nothing I like more than browsing the pound shops for garden related goodies. You soon find out that the old adage of 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves' works in reverse in a poundshop – focus too much on how much you are saving and you lose sight of the fact that many items at £1 still add up to many pounds. I have gone mad at the pound shop on many occasions: netting (both pea and anti bird – not sure of the difference), battery operated lights for the inside of my lock up, seeds, fertilisers, watering cans, garden ties, canes, hose heads and trowels that bend or snap (a less successful purchase among many good ones). One word of caution it is worth bearing in mind when not only the quality and whether you really need it but also check if you can get it cheaper at a mainstream shop – sometimes £1 for an item isn't such a good deal if it is 89p in Sainsbury's.
Among these delusions of grandeur, it is important to develop a sense of proportion and ask yourself which will I need most of? Chard is long lasting and a cut and come again crop so, unless you let it bolt, you won't need too many packets of seed as you will get more than enough to last throughout the growing season. Equally, my husband hates beetroot and despite trying to cook it in a variety of ways he won't budge on that so it would be crazy for me to sow too many of them as i can't eat that many all alone.
A word of warning to the congenitally greedy – it might be tempting to ignore recommendations to thin seedlings but that would be a false economy. I chose not to thin radishes and ended up with many woody sticks rather than swollen, ripe, pink radishes. What started out as a desire to grow more resulted in the waste of all the plants.
Finally, it is always very tempting to buy ready grown pots from nurseries but do consider your return on investment. A single Borlotti bean plant won't generate enough beans for a meal but will create enough beans to multiply next year's crop (perhaps I should have harvested them more often and they would have created more beans). A ready grown plant of tomatoes with fruit already formed looks inviting until you work out that it only has enough fruit to fill a punnet but costs three times as much as a punnet in the shops. Once you factor in your time and effort that tomato plant stop being so appealing.
B&Q bought Borlotti beans waiting to be recycled into seeds for next year.
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