Spring time: Do people really save money or reduce shopping by having a garden?

Maybe they don't gain money, but they gain good health since they're not eating pesticide & hormone-infested veggies which is all the grocery stores sell

what about the pesticides that float in from your neighbours spraying their yard? Guess I need a garden shack too.

Costs a ton? What?

A cheap tomato start is under $1, or you can grow from seed. A $1 bag of manure. Water. Maybe a $3 tomato cage. An indeterminate tomato will fruit from July until frost around here. You can get hundreds of tomatos..

Lettuce can be grown for almost nothing. $1 pack of seeds will last forever. You can start it now and have continual crops into early winter.

Gardening is really cheap if you know what you're doing. You can make your own compost for nothing....save your own seeds....use a rain barrell..etc. Total cost ends up at $0..

I grow potatoes, beets, corn on the cob, radishes, carrots, beans, snap peas, tomatoes, and watermelon. I have a 10 acre plot behind my house. I also have a 2 acre plot of just strawberry plants. I can or freeze anything that I grow and don't eat straight away, so that I can have it year round. I also harvest one deer and one elk each season to eat throughout the year. At the store, I typically just buy rice, noodles, sugar, and salt. It's a minimalistic culinary existence and it takes legitimate effort, but I feel close to the land and am as healthy now at 40 as I was at 22. To each their own, I suppose.

lol . . . agriculture, how does it work?

expensive tomatoes wrote:

Seriously. None of the stuff you grow in the garden lasts very long and it costs a ton. Sure, you have fresh tomatoes for a couple weeks, but there is practically no savings or benefit.

Why do people say you can save money by having your own garden? I find it to be just an expensive hobby.

Maybe I need to grow potatoes or something? What's the secret or is this just a myth?

laughing out loud is right. Comparing a farmer with thousands of acres to a guy with a 100 square foot backyard. Good one.

I spent $60 last year on plants, cages, fertilizer, potting soil and so on. Considering that a organic red bell peppers cost about $3 each, I broke even on bell pepper alone.

Plus, freshly picked tomatoes taste better than anything you can buy in the store.

I've got one small apple tree. Yield is roughly 500 apples per year. By far the best apples I ever had. Cost of 500 inferior apples from the store? $500

Almond tree: $300 worth per year

Lemon tree: $200/year

Orange tree: $200/year

Cherry tree: $80/year

Pomegranate: $80/year

Total gain: $1,380

Total cost is just from watering and a bit of compost: Less than $200/year

I built a raised/square foot garden for the little woman. (It doesn't need any weeding and is very productive) The larger the garden the more you save.I don't think it saved money (at least not the first couple years) but the food tastes excellent and it was fun for her.

expensive tomatoes wrote:

Seriously. None of the stuff you grow in the garden lasts very long and it costs a ton. Sure, you have fresh tomatoes for a couple weeks, but there is practically no savings or benefit.

Why do people say you can save money by having your own garden? I find it to be just an expensive hobby.

Maybe I need to grow potatoes or something? What's the secret or is this just a myth?

It is always hard to understand a passion that you don't share.

I feel like where you live is probably really important to the premise of this post. Have you looked up which crops thrive during which seasons where you live? Might want to start with something really easy for your climate.

I have a 64 sq ft raised bed. I don't remember how much the materials cost, but it was over $100 for sure.

In it I grow bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, and spinach. I also grow tomatoes on my front porch, and have 4 blueberry bushes.

I get enough peppers for a summers worth of grilling and salads, a few dozen eggplant, and I get a couple of salads out of the spinach each week(though last year was bad for spinach for me). I get more cucumbers than I could ever eat and end up giving some away and pickling a bunch (delicious and easy). I eat a handful of blueberries a day just right of the bush and full a bowl weekly to bring inside. I also get well over 100 cherry tomatoes, probably a few hundred but I've never counted.

I don't do it for the cost savings, though I've certainly saved hundreds of dollars. I do it because it's nice to just be able to walk out to the garden and grab something for dinner.