As I mentioned in my previous entries, when I was 20s in Japan, my husband and I tried to save money every month. Even though we were able to save up pretty big money until we were late 20s, I made some mistakes. Today, I decided to share one of money saving mistakes I made with you.
Money Saving Mistake #1 : Growing Vegetables
Because I was trying to save money, I was very interested in any article related to money saving. Many articles suggested that growing vegetable saves money. At that time, we were living in an apartment with a balcony which got a lot of sunshine, so I thought it might be good idea to grow vegetable there. Because my parents also grow vegetables in a filed, I thought that I could do that as well and believed that it must be fun.
■ It Cost Money
At that time, we lived in Osaka, which is the second biggest city in Japan. My parents lived far away from our home, so we needed to prepare everything on our own to start growing vegetables. We bought some planters, soil, vegetable seeds, a watering can and etc. It cost much money, but I believed that it was investment.
■ A Lot of Work
Because our balcony got a lot of sunshine, watering was crucial to our garden. If we had forgotten to water plants, they would have dried up soon. However, we were very busy every morning. We needed to head toward workplace at 6:30 a.m., so we had to water plants before that. It was a lot of work for us. I was very tired to water them every busy morning.
■ Bugs Loved Our Garden
As our plants grew, some bugs came and lived there especially aphids. I didn't expect that happened. We needed to deal with those bugs. We sprayed milk on plants to get rid of aphids.
■ The Plants Grew Bigger Than We Expected
Our balcony was not only for growing vegetables for us. In Japan, people hang the laundry out to dry, so our balcony was the place for our laundry as well. Our balcony was spacious enough to hang the laundry, but our pants grew bigger than we expected and were really close to our laundry eventually. One day, I found that our bed sheet got a green stain after hanging it on balcony for hours. I noticed that the plants waved in the wind and touched to our sheet eventually. It was not easy to get rid of a green stain.
■ How Much I Could Harvest
It was time to harvest! We grew grape tomatoes, eggplants, okuras, cucumbers and etc on our balcony. We were able to harvest enough grape tomatoes and some eggplants, but other vegetables didn't grow well. We only harvest several okuras and cucumbers. Considering our hard work for our balcony garden, it was not a smart way to save money at all.
Even though I worked a lot for our vegetable garden, overall, I enjoyed it. My mother advised me to grow spinach plants which is in season in winter. She gave me some spinach seeds and some calcium fertilizers. Growing spinach was easier than vegetables I grew in summer. It's because spinach didn't grow very tall. I also enjoyed growing green onions. I bought green onions at supermarkets, and I cut the bulb and planted in solid. They grew up every week or so, and I was able to harvest it two to three times from each bulb.
Now, I don't grow any vegetables in the U.S. because buying vegetables at supermarkets is easier and save your time. If you
have a green thumb and love gardening, it's good idea to grow vegetables, but if you just want to save money, I think you really should think it
twice.
These are my entries you might like.
1. Why Couldn't You Save Money?
2. Start Saving Money In Your Early 20s
3. 3 Steps : How to Start Saving Money
4. Cost of Eating Out vs Eating at Home
5. 9 Ways to Save Money on Food - Grocery Shopping
6. 8 Tips to Save Money on Foods - Cooking
My entries related to money can be seen here.
http://itisapieceofcake2011.blogspot.com/search/label/money
My entries related to cooking can be seen here.
http://itisapieceofcake2011.blogspot.com/search/label/cooking
This is my entries related to my favorite recipes.
http://itisapieceofcake2011.blogspot.com/search/label/recipes
My entries related to Japan can be seen here.
http://itisapieceofcake2011.blogspot.com/search/label/Japan
No comments:
Post a Comment