The easiest ways to start a garden and save on your food budget

Elien Lewis from Homegrown Happines. Photo / supplied

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's reducing one of your core expenses by starting a garden. Hosted by Frances Cook.

When it comes to cutting down your budget, the biggest bang for your buck comes from three core areas: housing, transport and food.

This is where stats show we spend most of our money, and so it's where we have the biggest potential for savings.

So starting a garden is a great way to become more self-reliant, and reduce your food budget.

Listen to the podcast episode here

But it's not easy, with many of us living in urban areas now, or just having the proverbial black thumbs.

Don't sweat it – everyone has to start somewhere.

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Elien Lewis from Homegrown Happiness.

We discussed how she got started gardening on a small urban section, the easiest and cheapest gardening methods, and what to do if you're a renter.

For the episode, listen on the podcast player above.

If you have a question you'd like answered in a future podcast, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

You can subscribe to this podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts app, or Spotify, to make sure you never miss an episode.