Where to get fruit and veg for less!

by Rachel Robson on 19 June 2009  |  6 comments
Tweet

Last weekend I decided to make the most of the sunshine and do a spot of ‘pick your own’. And as I got into the swing of things, I realised I was probably saving myself a few pennies.

Last weekend I decided to make the most of the sunshine and do a spot of 'pick your own'. As a child, I used to love picking my own strawberries and as I hadn't been for years, I thought it might be a bit of fun to re-live my youth.

But as I got into the swing of things, it dawned on me that by picking my own fruit and veg, I was probably saving myself a few pennies. After all, considering I was putting in some of the labour, it must be more cost-effective than buying my produce at a supermarket.

So I decided to do a spot of investigating.

The test

While I was at the Pick Your Own farm, I bought some broad beans, mange tout, raspberries and strawberries.

In terms of price per kilogramme, this worked out as follows:

Item                      Price

Raspberries        £5.79/kg

Strawberries       £3.79/kg

Mange tout          £3.79/kg

Broad beans       £1.69/kg

Now let's see how this compares with the major supermarkets Asda, Tesco, and Sainsbury's, using MySupermarket.com.

Asda

Item                      Price

Raspberries        £8/kg

Strawberries       £2.20/kg

Mange tout          £5.88/kg

Broad beans       £2/kg

Tesco

Item                      Price

Raspberries        £8.84/kg*

Strawberries       £4.23/kg

Mange tout          £6.62/kg

Broad beans       £3.98/kg

Sainsbury's

Item                      Price

Raspberries        £8.84/kg*

Strawberries       £4.38/kg

Mange tout          £7.45/kg

Broad beans       £2.98/kg*

The verdict

Having gathered the results together, I think it's pretty fair to say that my hard work definitely paid off at the weekend!

Out of all of these items, only Asda's strawberries are cheaper than those from the farm. So overall, I think I've made some pretty great savings.

Of course, I haven't included deep discounters such as Lidl and Aldi in my comparison and you may well find that these supermarkets offer even better deals. But equally, you may find that you get a better deal than I did at your own local farm. The particular farm I visited was rather on the large size and therefore more likely to have higher prices.

I also haven't taken petrol costs into account here. But then again, I probably would have spent the same amount on petrol driving to a supermarket as I did driving to the farm.

So overall, I think picking my own fruit and veg was well worth it - and of course, it was a lot of fun! What's more, everything I ate seemed to taste so much better because I had picked it with my own fair hands and it had gone from the farm soil to my plate in just a few hours. And of course I was supporting UK farms.

So I'm definitely go to be paying another visit to my local farm soon - particularly when it's cherry season. Mmmm.

*On special offer.