Personally, I'm sure I'm not saving money. I don't have ideal conditions. I don't have a lot of land, and the one thing that is most difficult to overcome, lack of full sun, limits the amount of food I can grow. Gardening is an activity that I just happen to love to do, so saving money on produce has not been a factor.

But I like to think that there are people who can save money growing their own food. Well, I have read accounts of individuals with a lot of love of growing and motivation who have done that, but I don't think they are the 'average' gardener.

So, what are your experiences? Are you growing to 'save money'? And do you think you are accomplishing that?

Fruit trees are a good bang-for-the-buck
the can provide food for many years.

For me, it has to do with vitamins and minerals which are almost non-existent in grocery veggies and fruits.
what price do you put on that ?

We are lucky to have the land and a sunny spot for the garden.

We barter wood from our dead trees for aged cow manure. I use paper pots to raise my seedlings and I save waxed OJ and milk containers to transplant them in.

It's really not about saving money though. What price do you put on vegetables grown without chemicals that taste really good, and being able to run outside and pick something fresh for supper?

Linda

So, you know, I wouldn't buy and eat 4-5 tomatoes a day, so I'm not really saving money -- but I do enjoy eating them all the same.

I have been gardening all of my life, so I have all of the tools, cages, ETC. So I save money, if I don't count the labor!

But it is a labor of love!

My biggest expense is amendments and when something breaks and/or when I splurge on something new like some expensive seed or a new gadget.

I save most of my seed.

Sometimes it gets someone out of a bind when they are short on money like another thread here. Linked below.

I also aggressively compost for my soil, save most of my own seeds, and can, freeze, and dehydrate like crazy. So very few trips to the grocery store for our house and from what I read and hear the grocery prices now days could put many in the poor house.

But thanks to our gardens and food preservation we can't eat like summer all year round and don't have to worry much about store prices for food.

So if new at it and it isn't saving you money now, stick with it. 10 years from now when prices are even higher it will be saving you lots of $$$.

Dave

Like any small business plan, (without a plan), one each of 24 products on a shelf will not cover costs.
Not much more effort to start from saved seeds from an exchange and start a compost pile...
And some healthy physical labor.
My neighbors spend i think 2800 now on lawn care and snow removal yearly. Not a blink.
We mow and do it ourselves and did flag a plow down once and got a quick driveway plow for a 20buck...once in eight years.
2800 is alot of garden fun and fruit trees, grapes, berries....
Just priorities, and the 30 meals during the winter just from the various ways i store and harvest tomatoes...so much better than any purchased grocery stock.
The first harvest of salad greens two weeks ago....priceless....

The other aspect of home gardening is "HOBBY". That is what it is to me, mostly. I like to be outdoors, get fresh air, exercise and watch my plants grow. I also do get crops and enjoy them. Some years I stop buying tomato products , I also can sauce for winter use.
So really it depends on the scale that one plants various veggies.

In most cases this has meant spending a lot of time and labor. I couldn't buy soil or build boxes so I had to focus on improving the soil that I have. I removed about 2 tons of rocks from my 40 x 16 foot garden plot(no exaggeration). Started relatively large scale composting with free manure and "donated" leaves and anything else I can scavenge. I use only hand tools some of which were given to me and others I purchased.

I built boxes and trellises out of entirely scavenged or reclaimed wood.

I started all of my own seedlings (except sweet potato slips) under shop lights in my basement.

This was tons of time and energy. I figure i have burned something like 60000 calories since last july when i moved into this house. and to think some people pay for gym memberships.

Even so, I spent ~$200 on seeds, seed potatoes, and slips; ~200 dollars on my grow lights setup; ~150 dollars on a drip irrigation system (I live in a desert); ~$75 on a low tunnel for season extension (not necessary. for fun). plus maybe a hundred dollars on hand tools and some money for fertilizer. I figure I am up to about $750.

Most of these expenses are one time or will only need to be made once every several years. I will always buy seeds but never again on so large a scale (I can save some seeds and I also planted many perennial herbs).

My garden is relatively large for a suburban garden. It should produce more than hundred pounds of potatoes, a hundred pounds of sweet potatoes, 150 pounds of tomatoes (which i will turn into sauce and pressure can), 50 lbs of onions 16 heads of garlic, 50 lbs of carrots, 25 lbs of snap beans plus unlimted salads in the spring and fall, pumpkins for eating and carving, summer squash and cucumbers in the summer, plenty of snap peas in the spring, and a few heads each of cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage.

I sold some of my extra plants. I may not totally break even this year. But by the end of year two there is no question that I will be ahead.

Here is my garden a few days ago (sorry. I used a cheap online panorama tool and there are some blurry spots where it stitched things together). The rows from left to right are salad, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes (replaced snap peas), onions garlic and carrots, tomatoes, brassicas (empty until the fall crop), and pole beans. the herb boxes and some flowers are in other places.

Usually my main expenditure now is seeds. I save seeds from my garden, but I like to have tons of variety so I purchase more seeds, probably more than I should.

Still, I only spent ~$25 on all of my gardening supplies this year and I have probably recouped my money from all the spring veggies we have already harvested. Still waiting for pepper/beans/corn/tomatoes to all ripen, but once they do, I am absolutely sure we will have eaten enough fresh, organic produce to far surpass what little money I spent earlier in the year.

I think the point I should have made is that gardening is a skill that shouldn't be lost. I could have paid for soil and compost and plants, I have the money (or i definitely could have made plenty given the time i have spent).

but the whole point for me is to see if i can feasibly grow my own food in my own soil and (eventually) from seeds i have saved.

lets see...
i buy a papaya i was going to eat anyway.
it has 500 or so seeds in it.''
in 12 months i have several trees producing enough fruit for me to eat one every day if i want to.

normally, i get about 5 to 10% of my diet from papaya.
more, when i have lots of trees !
not to mention the Mulberry guava and other fruit trees
(many more will start to produce in the next year or 2)

i have bought stuff in the past, but now, mostly i make my own compost, and aside from a little rock dust here and there, or a stamp to trade seeds online, but now, i spend almost nothing except my time, but i enjoy that :)

Given today's produce prices, I disagree, as long as one does not put a dollar value on one's time. I don't, because I enjoy gardening.
And with lasagna gardening/raised beds, expensive rototillers are not necessary.

There are all sorts of shiny catalogs with expensive stuff for sale, but you get that with anything you try to do. GW advice helps separate the snake oil from the real deals, and helps suggest ways to succeed without spending a bundle.

In addition, advice about intensive gardening means that almost anyone can be successful growing a significant amount of veggies even if they don't have a lot of room.

I would say that as for saving money, until now it has been a close run thing (and I'm cheap), but I recently got the hydroponic bug and my wife has started joking about $600 salads...

This year, I have the following growing:
6 rows of beans
2 rows of english peas
1 1/2 rows of potatoes
1/2 row of cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli
7 rows of corn
1/2 row of okra
1 row of cotton (for seed and fiber)
7 rows of tomatoes (about 320 plants)
14 hills of watermelon
14 hills of cantaloupe
6 hills of cucumber
2 rows of cowpeas
1/4 row of moschata winter squash
1/2 row of sweetpotatoes
1 row of peppers about 8 varieties
4 rows of peanuts

Rows are about 110 feet long.

Although I don't pay for manure and water (a great thank you to my hippy new age neighbors who have retired ponys and free water and let me enjoy the poop and the hose), I don't think I'll save much because up to now what has grown is mostly leaves ;-(

And bermuda grass :-(

But I save a lot : by being happy outside in my garden instead of wasting my hard earned money on useless chinese crap in the mall ;-)

Not to mention loads of fresh tomatoes to eat that now are sold for a dollar or more a pound at the markets.

You would be amazed at the amount of good casseroles you can make with canned tomatoes besides the usual chili, lasagna, spaghetti, etc.

In the end though it's about the fun and the superior flavor of home grown .

For me, it has to do with vitamins and minerals which are almost non-existent in grocery veggies and fruits. Care to back that up with some links to real chemical analysis?

The freshness of the produce, the ability to make sauces seasoned the way your family likes from your tomatoes, the cucumbers that you don't have to peel to get the wax off that is put on commercially grown ones, the ability to mix snaps and shellers to your preference in your blackeyes peas (cow peas) - I could make this a really long list - is priceless.

The exercise you get, the satisfaction you receive, and the lessons you can teach to young children as they watch the plants grow is extremely hard to replicate. Then, there is the sunflower house that you can plant for the children's summer play house........ Can you tell I am a dedicated gardener?

May all your gardens be abundantly productive.

Mary

Yes, I thought the same thing in 1988 when I bought a new rear tine tiller for $300!

I still use it....... It ain't purty but it gets the job done!

I can and freeze enough to feed us all winter.

The process is just so enjoyable that I don't know why anybody even tries to figure out what it costs unless you are a farmer or are growing for profit. Only then does it make sense.

So I find that when I grow my own vegetables that actually taste like food, I'm satisfied with a lot less other stuff in my diet, and that's definitely a big savings, not feeling inclined to buy frozen dinners, chips, etc..

Besides which, although I grow expensively (very small space, use real earthboxes and not knock-offs, etc.), the way produce prices are increasing around here is just plain insane and pretty soon it may actually be cheaper pound for pound, too.

I think the replies all universally agree that there are lots of fringe benefits. ie. my kids will try home grown vegetables, i am no longer vitamin d deficient, etc etc.

But I am wondering what the intent of the OP is... to prove that gardening is expensive... or to discover how it can be profitable.

In case of the former I think we are doomed to confirm his bias: I think most of us here love it. Who else frequents GardenWeb? and so we often spend a little more than we must or than we should because it is a pursuit worth paying for. I don't pay for cable. I pay for fancy seeds. and for low tunnel projects.

In case of the latter, I think we can all give advice to someone who wants their garden to pay real returns in a lower grocery budget for at least part of the year. The link shared earlier to the frugal gardener guy had some good ideas. My first compost pile was 4 pallets tied together and filled with manure, shredded newspaper, sawdust, moldy straw, and grass clippings. All of which are available free in nearly every town in the united states if you know where to look. I suppose I am assuming a person has a patch of ground. But you can even borrow some of that in a pinch. I bet you could get a few seeds from nearly any gardener in your town. I know I'd be happy to share my extra if someone asks.

I am confident that in most places in North America you can start and grow a productive vegetable garden that will give you hundreds of dollars of vegetables for less than 50 bucks a year. It will be lots of work. Just because most of us GardenWebbers aren't doing that doesn't constitute evidence to the contrary.

Finally, in response to the OP, there are lots of blogs floating around the web where they show their expenses and their savings to demonstrate that they are better off. Daphne's Dandelions and several of her affiliate blogs come immediately to mind. there is another called a hundred dollars a month or some such.

One can spend his money to go to a nice restaurant and wine and dine and one can spend it on garden supplies and enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables and get equal satisfaction that money can buy.

That is how I look at it to justify doing what I do. Otherwise I would feel foolish.

Obviously, if thats not imoprtant, and you do it for the exersice and enjoyment and nutrition which is better homegrown, then, it really doesnt matter much for many people.

to me, its a bit of both.
i can certianly afford to buy food, but i love my "ripe" fresh fruit.
guava, papaya, other fruits.
also peppers and TOMS
all taste better.
store bought produce is often grown ijn nutrient deficient soils

if you havbe ever eaten a papaya , ripe from a tree, its night and day to the ones you buy at the store, that has to be picked GREEN to be shipped from Mexico or Hawaii.

the difference in taste and nutrients are night and day
a papaya at the store is $2 to $3 a pound
$6 for an average fruit. i eat in 2 days just for snacks.

I must admit that I simplified my gardening as I got older. These days, I only plant what we can reasonably consume. The first couple of years I gardened, I canned over two hundred jars of pickles, relishes, tomatoes...some of it got used but some got tossed a few years later.

I don't see it as a money saving venture because I can certainly afford to buy whatever I need in the stores...I garden because I like doing it and it is rewarding to eat flavourful, fresh food.

I can't compete with a 106 oz can of tomato puree from Costco for $2.79. I don't know how they do it. If you figure two pounds of tomatoes reduces to one pound for puree it works out to about 20 cents per pound. I buy the puree and then make marinara sauce from it cheaper than I can grow it or buy prepared sauce.

Lettuce is a little different. We used to spend six bucks a week for lettuce, 3 bags times $2 each. A setup for lettuce costs me about $20 for an 18 inch container, potting soil, cage and shade cap. If it lasts five years that's four bucks a year for one setup. It takes about five weeks to grow out an 18 inch rosette and then a week or so downtime. That works out to about eight harvests per year. One eighteen inch head easily matches a bag of lettuce so I am saving about sixteen bucks a year less four for a total of twelve dollars in savings per container. And the lettuce tastes better.

Zeuspaul