The Year-Long GRS Project: How Much Does a Garden Really Save?

To me, it’s less about saving money, than about taste. If you’ve ever eaten a tomato from a walmart or grocery store, you know how incredibly bland and tasteless they can be. That’s because most store-bought fruits and veggies are picked BEFORE they are ripe (especially tomatoes, bananas, etc.) This is to give them maximum shelf life, etc. Unfortunately, it also makes them taste like crap. At the very least, grow your own tomatoes – you’ll really see a difference!

As an avid gardener, who has just moved to a new location out of town so I can start gardening again, it has definite health benefits. I also love having pickled vegetables and other things from the garden. I will definetly be keeping up on this series of posts and let you know of my own gardening exploits this coming growing season.

I find this post very interesting, in fact I offer to provide you the equal set of info from my Oakland, CA garden. We have been at this for four years now, blog is out of date, but we continue.

We’ve been canning and making our own cider, wines, etc. for four years and I FINALLY feel like we’ve got the hang of it. I swear by the same cookbook Kris uses for canning and I think that’s important to remember…sure you can only consume soo much….

…But there’s really no limit to what you can preserve. We no longer buy gifts at Christmas or holidays. We make our own gifts and we endeavor provide as much as we can from own our garden or purchase locally.

I know some people aren’t interested in the care, but don’t forget to talk to neighbors. We have many who aren’t interested in picking the fruits and nuts that are growing in their yards. It’s fun to process them and share, and if you like to cook it can be addictive .

J.D., I admire what you guys are doing, and as a gardener I’m not certain that I ‘save’ a large sum of money, but I gain much more:

-working in the yard exercise
-something to tackle as a team with my husband
-good quality food that I can control
-interaction with my environment

This is something I had planned to track this year too, so I look forward to reading more.

Jeri.

My husband and I are planning to begin a vegetable garden this year and am very much looking forward to your future comments on how you fare in terms of costs.

Frankly, the cost is only an incidental factor in our opinion, since we (like many others in this posting) love real tomatoes.

I’ve grown flowers for years, but I’ve been unsure of my ability to properly handle a veggie garden. However, there’s so much great info available now through postings of this type, I’m inspired to take the plunge.

Looking forward to more of your postings on this subject.

Thank you!

JD,
Let me recommend that you avoid the hybrid tomatoes. If you have BAD disease problems this year, then do it next year, but this year go to http://www.totallytomato.com/ and grab some of their heirloom varieties. The local greenhouse will only have a half-dozen comparatively bland tomatoes with much of the sugars and acids that make a tomato GREAT bred out of them in the interests of disease and pest resistance.

You can also get some FAR BETTER garlic online than you can simply by planting the “California White” cloves from the supermarket. The CA White is just bred for size, not flavor. Try a Leningrad or Ojo Roja if what you want is GARLIC that makes no apologies, takes no hostages. ISTR thatyou live in a warm area, so find a long-season onion and a long season garlic. I am in a cold area, so I need to use different varieties.

Hi – I was reading a few posts where people are concerned that they will have all of this produce and it won’t be economical because of not being able to consume it all. A few tips:
-trade with friends who have produce YOU do not grow.
-Can, can, can, can, can, and when your done can some more.
-when your done canning – freeze, freeze, freeze, freeze, and freeze some more.
- when your done freezing invest in a food dehydrator and use that – you can’t be dehydrated tomotoes in your soups or pasta.
-there are many many ways to use your produce so as not to waste it – be thankful of your bounty and just think how delish it will be when it’s out of season in the middle of winter and you are reaping the benifits of your home grown nutrition!

I love your blog.

I like the idea of calculating the cost of industrial food production Vs home food production.

I don’t know how the farming subsidies work in the US, but here in the UK we pay a huge amount of subsidies to the EU for farming, funded though our taxes. This was to encourage post war food production. However as large numbers of farmers are also voters in the EU, there has been a general reluctance to scrap subsidies. Not helped by the supermarket chains being able to sell us “cheap” food.

Subsidies have also had the effect of reducing the effectiveness of 3rd world markets as EU farmers are paid to overproduce, and the EU produce is dumped onto their markets. So we pay further taxes to provide aid to the 3rd world.

If you have agricultral subsidies then the tax ( and any charatable donations) you pay for 3rd world aid and the subsidies themselves need to be taken into account.

JD, the wife and I, pressed for time, resorted to buying sprouted tomato, pepper and herb plants today. We also got ‘extra’ asparagus roots from the same produce stand (they grow their own and the corn there is cheaper, fresher and better than anywhere else.

We spent $39.11 including seeds, many of which will get planted alongside the freeway fence (climbing beans) as our contribution to Guerilla Gardening. http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

We got a pretty good deal on the legume seeds at 99 cents for a heaping 1/2 cup full. A heaping tablespoon of black-seeded Simpson lettuce seed was also 99 cents.

I only really need maybe 30-40 pole bean seeds this year (this year we will be planting mostly tomatoes) so the rest will go alongside the freeway fence.

Although most seeds can be saved from year to year with good results, most garden plants will also provide more than enough seeds to replace themselves, so I would encourage your readers to consider urban gardening with any leftover seed and plants, particularly in areas where poverty has taken root.

How ya doing on that garden, JD?

I’ve got $32.78 in my garden so far and have pole bean, pink shell bean and crowder pea seeds (an experiment) left over to share.

I’ve already shared 1/2 flat of tomato plants. (a half flat was only about 98 cents less than a whole one … and we know a family on a tight budget with a good-sized garden … so, for 98 cents, we bought their tomatoes for them. And got a lot of ‘warm fuzzies’ for ourselves.)

So, two families are going to be eating very well indeed from the original $31. (I bought broccoli plants afterward.) Others will benefit through the season from the excess.

I already had grapes, three kinds of garlic, strawberries, mint(s), dill, sage, basil and chamomile in the garden (all either perennials or self-seeding).

To that I have added 3 kinds of legumes, two kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of peppers, arugula, black seeded Simpson (both loose-leaf salad greens) and asparagus roots (got roots 2/$1.00 at a local farmers market).

Basically, since I garden organically, my cash outlays are done. If I get nailed by fungal wilt in the fall beyond what my compost tea can combat, I’ll have to apply lime. That will set me back about $5. Since I use compost heavily, there is no need to lime the soil. If I get slugs, I’ll have to spring for a 5# can of cheap coffee.

The compost heap has been perking along at a happy 130 deg. F. for about a week. I’d like to see 160-170 … but 130 is actually a good temp. if I can sustain it.

Other than that, I’m down to just the expense of water until time to harvest & preserve.

I’ve begun (just barely!) a blog on the topic of urban organic gardening. It’s at (oddly enough) http://nmwoodworks.com/gardening

It’s still -very- rough around the edges, but if you don’t mind a little saw dust, you’re welcome to stop by for a quick visit while I build it out.

Being a retired sailor, I found that I didn’t have a clue as to how to grow my own veggies. Fortunately, I found some old Victory Garden books from the 1940′s. Basically, gardening for dumies. Last year we spent a total of $30 on our garden. Results: enough vegetables to feed a family of 5 for a year. Excess food was donated to the local senior center. This book can be found at the http://www.victorygardenstore.com It has saved us thousands in food costs.

Your a real inspiration. I think this is an awesome idea. I’m going to try and do the same with my fall veggies. Just to see how things turn out. Thanks a million for sharing!

Hey guys,

I was just wondering if it would make sense to also factor in the value of the real estate of the patch of land used to do the gardening on. Here in The Netherlands, space is at a premium – frankly I’d have to move to have much of a veggie patch. So how about using some sort of factor for the average price of land per square foot/meter into the equation (possibly spread out over time)?

Just a thought – I love the project!

did you calculate the hours you invested of your own time into your garden?? when calculating the cost of the garden, you really should calcluate your own time especially since you are saying you are saving x amount.

I know you garden for fun, but this article is about profit..

For a good place to get some of the seeds for starting your garden project, it’s as easy as a trip to your favorite produce market.
We buy the things we like and when preparing them, pull out and SAVE THE SEEDS. Place them on a paper towel or paper plate and let them dry for a couple of days. Then take the seeds and put them in an envelope until ready to plant. This saves you money on buying seeds and gives you seeds for things you already know you like of that variety.
We did this just this year, but got a late start. The pepper plants are still producing like crazy and I’ve taken several dozen to work to give away because we just didn’t realize how much extra 6 plants would produce.
These plants are growing in 16x16x8 inch concrete blocks, 2 plants per block, that I painted (on the outside only) and then filled with potting soil. You can do any number of veggie plants this way and once in place, are re-useable year after year.
Next spring, we plan on more variety from the 10 ‘pots’ already in place and may add 2-4 more to finish filling the space along the back porch wall.

Tips on two of your poor performers:

Asparagus – don’t give up on it. You should get harvest’s of decent size starting year 5. This year, 2009, will be bigger than 2008.

Potato – instead of planting in the ground, plant them in a tire, and then when the bush is six inches higher than the width of the tire, stack another tire on top and fill it with soil. The stems will become roots and sprout more potatoes off of them. You can stack three or four tires this way for each plant, and get a great harvest using much less square footage.

Here is how i see it. Gardening is a hobby that you enjoy so the hours you spend doing it are saving you money you would spend on another hobby like golf or fishing. That’s why I would never include hours spent in the garden in my calculations. As long as you break even you’re ahead of the game.

Many commenters acknowledge that gardening doesn’t necessarily make good economic sense, then mention the other benefits of gardening which of course are many. People who enjoy gardening shouldn’t feel the need to defend it against the economic argument, but it’s a useful exercise for a site like this to make the clear distinction between “I like it” and “it saves money”.

It’s only valid to compare the cost of the veg you grow with the organic store-bought version, if that’s what you would buy if you didn’t garden. The valid comparison is between what you grow, and what you would buy if you didn’t grow. I don’t buy organic produce because it’s too expensive so in my case the comparison is with the regular stuff at the supermarket.

Similar with herbs. Without the garden we might spend say $150/yr on herbs. I thus cannot save more than $150/yr on herbs, no matter how many herbs I grow. And that is the ideal case not factoring in other costs. When you get into canning and freezing, that hardware is another cost that will take lots of volume and seasons to recoup. The economics of scale favors larger production.

I have two rain barrels and though they are a good idea their economic benefit is minimal I think. Without water pressure it’s difficult to get the water where you need it. Water is heavy. I built stands for mine to provide some pressure from height, but it’s not enough. Should I buy a pump? How many tomatoes could I buy for the cost of a pump? The barrels are a supplemental source of water only.

Square foot gardening is something everyone with even a small space can get into. We use a “pot method” to plant our favorite fresh veggies. The pots are lined up along the back porch and we have 5 kinds of peppers, 2 varieties of tomato, beans, zuchinni and cucumber all growing nicely in a small amount of space. The cucumber vines are running up a trellis set over the two pots so they are space regulated and it’s easy to find and pick the cucumbers. The zuchinni plants are getting really huge and I’ll have to relocate them for more space next year but they are producing already. Once in place the pots are easy to maintain with minimal effort and you can mow/weedeat right around them.

Is it too late to plant tomatoes? If Not, what are the best kind to plant in the deep south of Texas, if anyone knows? My mother and father had a garden when we were growing up, too bad I never took the time to learn more about it. I would love for my grandaughter to know what a real tomatoe is suppose to taste like.

Strangely I´v now have desided to grow my own tomatoes just to se if there ever can be any money in it. All thanks to this site! THANK YOU! As if didn`t have to much to do already!

Greeting from Mr Swede