The Cost Effectiveness of Growing a Garden

Growing your food is a healthy way to save money and enjoy fresh produce at home. When done correctly, even the smallest backyard plot can produce copious amounts of fruits and vegetables and possibly even a significant saving to the grocery budget.

However, it takes time, patience, and a small outlay of money to buy seeds, fertilizer, coverings, tools, and accessories, if you need them. All of which begs the question, how cost-effective is it to grow a garden?

Key Takeaways

• Growing herbs (mint, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) is one way to save money, as fresh herbs can be expensive. 
• If you live in an apartment or have a small backyard, consider square-foot gardening. 
• The National Gardening Association is a good resource for new and seasoned gardeners. 
• Heirloom and organic vegetables are often more expensive than other types of plants.
• Growing a food garden takes time, commitment, and patience, but the potential outcome in produce may lower your grocery bill.

What Are the Expenses to Garden?

The total bill for a do-it-yourself veggie plot will vary by the type of plant grown, the number of plants purchased, and the length of a growing season in your home region.

To calculate the true cost of starting a garden and maintaining it throughout the year, add together the following factors:

• Cost of plants or seeds
• Cost to provide nutrient-rich soil (dirt, fertilizer, and worms)
• Cost to protect and structure plants (cages, coverings, and fences)
• Cost to water plants
• Cost of tools and accessories (tiller, gloves, and spade)

The Real Return on Investment

The National Gardening Association reported that the average gardening household experiences a positive return on investment. Food gardening does have some risks. An infestation of bugs, a streak of unseasonable weather, or other nature-related problems may wreak havoc on your investment. But for most gardeners, the return on investment pays off. How much can you save? It depends on what vegetables you grow and how many crops your garden yields.

For example, one pound of organic tomatoes from Whole Foods costs $3.29 as of June 2024, but a package of organic, heirloom tomato seeds that can yield multiple tomato plants over time, costs $4.99. To put it into perspective: one tomato plant may equal 10lbs to 30lbs of tomatoes.

Another bonus of home gardening? Growing your favorite vegetables and fruits may insulate you from the impact of drought and diseases that slow down production in the fields and orchards of large-scale growers across the country that ship and sell produce.

Note

As much potential as a garden can bring to the bottom line of the average foodie, it helps to research where to obtain affordable plants and seeds for your garden. Seeds can often be purchased in bulk packets, too, to save on costs.

Ways to Save

There are ways to stretch your dollars and it is possible to start a food garden on a shoestring budget. Below are three suggestions to get you started.

Start Early With Seeds

At a few dollars a package (or less), gardeners can give their plants a home-grown start and spread the risk over several tiny plants. Picking the strongest from the bunch for transplanting outdoors will give you a comparable alternative to that expensive plant from the nursery.

Give Square Foot Gardening a Try

This popular gardening technique isn’t just highly effective at producing the healthiest plants with the smallest effort, it’s affordable, too. If you live in an apartment or have a small backyard, square-foot gardening is also a space-saving garden. The costs associated with a square foot garden vary wildly, depending on materials (garden box versus ground) and what you are planting, but a small square foot garden is 4 feet by 4 feet.

Grow Only What You Need and Like to Eat

While it’s nice to have an abundance of produce to share with family and friends, the upkeep of a larger-than-life garden could be too expensive and too much effort to maintain. Also, don’t plant vegetables and fruits that your family doesn’t eat. It may be cheap to plant rows of zucchini plants, but if no one likes zucchini, that’s a lot of wasted produce.

Consider just one or two of each of the plants you like most, and avoid planting rows and rows of veggies simply because you have the room. Food waste is a common problem for overzealous gardeners.

Is It Cheaper To Grow or Buy?

Longer-term it’s cheaper to grow select fruits and vegetables, as the cost of seeds relative to the output is a better deal than buying already grown produce. But there is a start-up cost that has to be factored into your decision, including buying not only the seeds, but all the components for the nutrient-rich soil, any structures you need to support the growth, such as cages or fences, and the cost of the tools that are needed to garden.

What Food Is Cheaper to Grow Than Buy?

Fruits and vegetables that are cheaper to grow than buy include tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, and herbs.

What Food is the Hardest to Grow?

Among the more difficult-to-grow foods, artichokes and sweet potatoes are hard due to climate requirements, onions are challenging for newer gardeners due to light sensitivity, and carrots require special soil preparation. 

The Bottom Line

In the end, the decision to create a food garden is a personal one. Don’t feel that it’s necessary to go 100% into a gardening scenario. Many gardeners grow things that are easy to produce like cherry tomatoes, carrots, and herbs, including mint, rosemary, thyme, and lemon verbena. Consider starting small your first season, and purchase trickier varieties of fruits and vegetables at your local farmer’s market.

Read the original article on Investopedia.