Saturday 5 May 2012

Frugal top tip #2

OK, frugal fans, hold onto your hats - this is a good un...

Flowers. I adore them. Tulips, daffodils, gerbera, peonies, roses, sweetpeas, hydrangea. Love them all. It's one of my secret indulgences to have a vase of fresh flowers on the kitchen table and another on the mantlepiece in the living room. They bring me so much joy every time I catch a glimpse of them or smell their sweet fragrance.

But boy is it a costly indulgence. It's not too bad if I stick to my beloved Aldi. Their tulips are pretty good but their display tends to lack variety and their bouquets can be a bit hit or miss. Some flowers last a whole week, others start to look a bit sad before I even manage to get them into a vase.

So thank goodness Aldi also sell seeds. Hurrah! So this year, I'm turing self-sufficient on the cut flowers front.

I've got sweetpeas* sown in about 4 different massive pots as well as over at the allotment.

3 giant pots contain a wildflower seed mix.

1 pot has cornflowers.

I'm also nurturing some cosmos and some snapdragons over on the allotment. (edit: the cosmos have succumbed to frost, but the snapdragons were alive and well when I last checked. Will sow some more cosmos this weekend - that's the great thing about grow your own. Just keep sowing!)

...and the cost? Under £5. For hopefully a whole summer of vases overflowing with cut flowers.

Cornflowers
The tender beginnings of glorious, fragrant sweetpeas


*I was sent some sweetpeas and a lovely planter from Febreze as part of the P&G Clean Up London campaign, but I'll blog about it properly when the rain stops long enough for me to take some half decent photos :)

1 comment:

  1. Ahhh, beautiful. My husband bought me a mix of roses, hydrangea and mullein from the garden yesterday and I'm looking at them as I type. I shared your post in the Britmums 'green' roundup this week, so I hope you find more traffic comes your way

    ReplyDelete

Come on in, the water's lovely.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin