I was advocating in my last post owning and digging an allotment. However, you could fore go that expense and simply start on your own garden. Growing your own food can be really easy and you can even grow stuff that will help protect the rest of your crop.
Rhubarb leaves can be boiled and the resulting liquid, once cooled, used as a 100% bee friendly pesticide (as long as you don't spray it directly on to a bee). The stalks of said leaves can be cooked and eaten as stewed fruit, crumble or fruit tarts. The leaves themselves, once boiled, go on the compost heap. A word of caution! Never pick rhubarb that you or someone in your family has not planted! Wild rhubarb is poisonous all over and can kill an adult human if ingested.
Beetroot, although not to everybody taste, if planted next to cabbage or lettuces, will cover their existence with their smell and help keep away butterflies and their resultant caterpillars.
Marigolds will do the same thing as beetroot and can be picked, boiled, strained and their resultant liquid used as an anti-fungal on both plants and people. You spray it on effected plants and in cases of Athlete's Foot, use it as a foot bath on humans.
Sunflowers, although not a direct effectuate, draw in song birds in the winter by providing seeds and those song bird will come back in the spring and summer to collect the pests you don't want eating you crop to feed their own young. However, it is a good idea to cover soft fruits such as raspberries and strawberries with netting during the summer and autumn. Birds like soft fruits just as much as we do.
For the bees you want to attract to pollinate your crops and make them grow then the best hedge is an even mixture of rosemary, lavender and sage. These can be hedged really easily by cutting back three quarters of the years growth in October. This will result in a slow growing hedge but one that is super thick. The cuttings, in the case of lavender, can be dried and placed inside clothing drawers and wardrobes to keep away clothes moths. Rosemary and sage can be used either fresh or dried in cooking and make for excellent roasts when you sprinkle them over the meat.
Rosemary blooms in the spring and provides food for the early bees. Lavender blooms in the summer and in a good flower year, will literally hum with bees. Sage blooms in the autumn and feds the bees that are up late.
I understand that some of the crops I'm suggesting up above are not to every bodies taste so, if there is not any one in the family who likes them, then my suggestions would be a little table at the end of the drive and an honesty box. It might not make you much but it is money you wouldn't have if you didn't try. The boxes can always be bolted down and locked if you are worried about theft.
The up swing of all the hard work that it takes to make a cottage garden work is two fold in my mind. One you don't have to pay for a gym membership, you will have plenty of wait lifting in the back garden. Two you will have food on the table that you will know 100% where it was grown, what is in it and what was sprayed on it. Considering the side effects of some of the pesticides they use now, I say a reward like that is well worth the effort.
What is more it sticks two up at the industries that would take everything from our planet until she has nothing left to give and put nothing back in it's place. I'd say that growing your own food, also grows a future where the little man actually has a say in what is important in this world. Who doesn't wanted that?
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