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​Cheap Organic Pest-Control
​Don’t spend money buying slug or snail killer.  Some old-fashioned cheap methods like sharp sand, copper ribbon or beer in a saucer near the plants don’t work very well (and the latter is probably better drunk by you and not by the slugs and snails). 

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Instead, put down a few old wooden planks and leave overnight. Turn the plank over in the morning. If there are any slugs or snails about, then they should be under the plank.  Dispose of these predators as necessary.  I just squash them. 

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Do not move them away and leave them alive. They will just find their way back to your plants. They have tremendously honed territorial instincts, like built-in GPS or Sat-Nav in their antennae. 

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The wetter the conditions, the more likely the slugs and snails will appear. Repeat this process throughout the growing season, at least until the vegetables are quite well-established, large and sturdy. (For more insights into living with slugs, see our Thoughts entry, "Slugs".)
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Homemade Seedling Pots

Make your own seedling plant pots out of newspaper. If you can make a paper hat, you should be clever enough to shape newspaper into pot shapes. When the plants are big enough, just stick the pots into the soil. The newspaper is biodegradable so will eventually decompose.

​Scrounging Your Landscape Design

If you can find a sufficient quantity of old bricks somewhere, these make excellent and attractive planter boxes or raised beds.  You do not need to mortar the bricks.  Just lay them ‘dry’, and interlocking as in normal bricklaying.  Then add the dirt.
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​Barter is Better

Set up your own informal or formal bartering system, to trade any excess vegetables you have for ones that you don’t have, or other edibles.  Gardening friends or neighbours or allotment colleagues should suffice. 

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In my house in France, I gave my neighbour my excess Marmande (ie beefsteak) tomatoes.  (Hers had suffered from tomato blight.) I was rewarded with a return supply of white turnips, peaches and walnuts.  I gave another neighbour (who had a small holding) some courgettes (zucchinis) and cucumbers (things he did not grow). The next day he brought me some of his chicken eggs and a few of his own pork chops.

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