Is gardening really budget-friendly? I mean, by the time you finish buying all of
the stuff you need, do you really come out ahead?
We have two square-foot garden plots, each of them 3' x 4',
giving us 24 feet of garden space for vegetables. We also have a strawberry bed that is probably another 24 square
feet.
The first year we put in the garden was 2010, I think. I'm not sure, because we didn't write
anything down. This is unfortunate,
because this would have been when most of the major expenses like soil,
material to construct our compost pile, pipes to make the trellis, etc. would
have been purchased.
Potato seeds $5
netting, soil, zip ties, PVC $50
strawberry plants and Miracle Grow $20
two extra plant containers $10
four tomato plants Miracle Grow $10
total: $95
That year we planted strawberries, peas, lettuce, carrots,
chives, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, and basil.
The harvest was pretty sparse, but we ended up with 165
different items. For simplicity's sake
we counted by item plucked, not by serving, so a carrot and a single leaf of
lettuce or spar of chive count the same.
We would have paid $.58 per item.
That's not all that hot for a single peapod, but it's not too bad for,
say, an organic, vine-ripened tomato.
However, our 2012 expenses were just some seeds and tomato
plants: $10.68.
We harvested 1,139 items, not counting basil, of which we
got so much that we are still eating through what we froze, and this is
March. (Our 23 strawberry plants went
nuts, and we stopped counting at 792 strawberries. We also blended and froze some four drizzling over ice cream in
the winter.)
Anyway, our cost per item was .009 cents. If you include the extra $40 a summer in
watering expense, it goes up to about four cents. (We are going to be a putting in some rain barrels.)
My conclusion about gardening is that it is worth it if:
1. You enjoy it, and
therefore are not counting your labor as an expense.
2. You are at least
on a five-year plan. There is a lot of
trial and error that you only benefit from if you apply what you learned to the
next year.
3. You can taste the
difference between home-grown and store-bought, or you value knowing
exactly what has and hasn't gone into the production of your food.
If you are just doing it to be cheap, I'd skip it.
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