Grow your own food and chop £1,300 from the grocery bill

Fruits of their labours: The Dunn family at their London allotment.

A salad may cost £1.50 in the shops but a packet of 100 seeds less than £1.

By Toby Walne
This is Money – UK
Oct 24, 2011

Excerpt:

Autumn is the ideal time for gardeners to prepare for the following year – and possibly knock £1,300 off the annual grocery bill.

Research from the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners has found that allotment holders spend an average £202 growing vegetables and fruit every year that would sell for £1,564 in shops.

With the cost of the weekly grocery shop rising by an average of 6.1 per cent in the past year, interest in growing your own vegetables is expected to soar – and allotments are the ideal place for most people to do it.

Susi Dunn, 43, of Clapham, south London, got an allotment plot in nearby Wandsworth after waiting five years. She and stockbroker husband James, 42, spend at least a couple of hours a week tending the £16.50-a-year plot with children Elizabeth, ten, Charlotte, eight, and Henry, one.

Read the complete article here.