I understand your point but another thing to consider besides cost is quality and safety. I'm considering growing potatoes because they are one of the most heavily pesticide-ed crops and they do cost more when purchased organically.
I don't know if you plan to be organic in your garden but those prices are my comparison.
I have a small yard that I grow mostly tomatoes in but am adding green beans to shell and freeze because they are easy to grow (for me) and I like them.

If you only compare the price you will be discouraged from vegetable gardening because the economies of large scale farming (especially with imported products) will almost always beat a one-person garden even if you don't count your labor. But you will know where your food came from, what chemicals were applied and that you don't run the risk of e-coli bacteria.
Besides producing good food gardening is good for your health.

Naples, you mention some good points. I do plan to be fairly organic in my garden. If I factor in the prices of organic produce, it's usually higher.
I tend to be experimental in the garden. This can cost a lot and has led my husband to "suggest" that we not grow a garden at all, due to high failure rate. Ideally I could grow everything but I can only do so much, given my Montana climate, soil and current state of health.
My priorities have become likelihood of success and relative cost. "Look at this little handful of swiss chard. It cost me $3 and I can grow it without failure, so I think I'll grow some."
I don't think a truck farm can beat my zucchini price-a couple bucks for seeds and a hillside of rotting grass with some homemade compost sounds pretty cheap to me. But it's a bummer that I can buy a bag of frozen cauliflower for 50 cents but can't seem to grow it for any amount. Too bad I can't do it all, but at least I'm taking steps toward better produce.

I might suggest a planting of sugar snap peas. Not shell peas but the sugar pod kind. They love cool weather and can withstand some heat. Also they are expensive and the home grown are SOOOO sweet when picked fresh. Just good to eat out of hand.

I completely understand and love this philosophy. I have a concord grape and strawberries. It's almost a crime what they cost at the market. Considering that most people don't eat Concord grapes as table grapes, you'd think they'd be cheaper. But instead its the exact opposite. I guess its just that much easier to send them to the juicer than to pack and ship them to the grocer.

And have you ever seen the price of raspberries! That is my next project. My friend has raspberries growing with little effort and in clay soil too. So I'd recommend any of the berry fruit you see at the market that come in little tiny plastic containers.

Cindy

Yes, I just planted 75 strawberry plants in containers. A very good example. Raspberries do well in the general area but I haven't had much luck with them. It might be worth another try.

A recyclable grocery store item is spring onions, or green onions. When you cut the root ends from them...let them dry a day or two, then plant them under about an inch of dirt...they will come back, ready to reuse and put the roots down again.

I would think it would be wise to contact your county extension office and ask about which varities of veggies grow well in your area. They are there to help.

BEANS

I think beans are so easy to grow and you get a LOT back from them. Especially the bush bean type. So sweet and tender.

Jackie

Hi, I'm in central Alberta, which is more or less the same climate as you, and we have very heavy, slightly alkaline clay soil, so this advice should probably work for your garden.

I agree about the tomatoes. Between the home-grown quality and supermarket price, tomatoes are always the first thing to have in a home garden.

I would definitely plant peas and beans, though. Peas you can't get fresh at the supermarket and the home grown ones are *so* good. Beans are prolific, easy to grow, and very healthy. Both of these are good for your soil because they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. No need to dig or fertilize.

Carrots are a must for me these days, too. I know they're cheap at the market, but they're extremely low effort, requiring nothing more than a bit of thinning in the spring, and they're very productive. Coreless chantenays are also wonderfully sweet and have an excellent texture raw.

Beets are also a no-brainer. Just make sure they have water and they'll take care of themselves. They're very light feeders, so again no fertilizing necessary. They are delicious steamed whole, with a bit of butter. Preferably with the greens on top.

I've never had much luck with strawberries (yet!), but raspberries and saskatoons do well here on the prairies.

Spinach also seems to do well up here, and it preserves well. Harvest it just before a hard frost, soak the leaves in salt water for a while, rinse, and chop coarsely, then squish them tightly into a ziplock bag with just enough water to fill the spaces and freeze. We had spinach fritatta in April from last year's crop. You can also have them as green salads well after the first frost.

The only other comment I have is that peppers are quite difficult to grow out here, but you can do it if you grow them in containers in a cold frame. And they are definitely frugal. I can grow them for one fifth the price of supermarket green peppers and one tenth or less for red ones - if I put in a lot of work! If you like hot food, the smaller, hotter ones like cayenne are generally more rewarding, since the fleshier ones (bells) tend to be more finnicky.

Good luck!

I remembered yellow (crook-neck) squash growing up, so I insisted that it went in our garden last year. Along with some bush beans, I'd say that they were a huge bang for the buck. Not only were they in many of our meals, but we found some squash bread recipes online as well. We were constantly picking them most of the summer. There's nothing like going outside to the garden for produce instead of heading to the grocery store and wondering how long they've been there and what residues they may have. Not to mention the taste!

There were many lessons learned from our garden last year, the primary one being that timing is everything. We had the most prolific crop of tomatillos, but it didn't do us much good when the lettuce (tomatillos are a great addition to give some zip to ranch dressing for a salad) and tomatoes (for some reason, only our cherry tomatoes were productive, which weren't the easiest thing to make salsa from) weren't around.

Carrots were also a surprise. Pop in the seeds, thin (forgot about that step last year), and pull when you're ready. Although my wife prefers the "baby" carrots in stores, the larger ones have much more taste and she doesn't mind using them cooked with brown sugar and butter or for cooking (stew, roast, soups, etc.).

Cilantro (another salsa ingredient) also came and went quickly to seed, since we didn't plant them in stages.

I think planting in stages would have also helped our corn since we ate it once, and it was much too starchy (overripe) for anything we waited on.

Melons also struggled, maybe we should have thinned to one per plant to make sure the one got to a decent size.

Broccoli was amazing, but unfortunately, we only planted one that made it. Probably another timing issue, as it is more cold-hardy and needs an early or late start to avoid the summer heat. I would have loved to have been able to store more of it...

I would have to agree with those of you who have listed several things that are frugal. The only thing I am thinking about giving up growing is strawberries. I live in NE Oklahoma. I have raised beds full of compost and horse-manure amended soil. Our soil is black clay and we are plagued with bermuda and Johnson grass that grows into everything. The grass got in the raised bed and I just got tired of fighting it. You can't mulch weeds out of a strawberry bed, because the strawberries get mulched out as well. Maybe in containers for me. BUT, I have a freezer full of shredded zucchini and yellow squash from last summer's garden that I will probably not plant this summer because there was so much. I used a packet of zucchini seed and a packet of yellow squash, costing me 29 cents each, on sale because it was seed from the previous year. I don't plant 5 seeds in a hill like the package suggests. That's a waste. I plant one seed per hill and plant lots of hills. Then I water down immediately. If you wait for the rain to water them in it takes them longer to germinate. And if you soak them first, that shortens the time considerably. If a plant doesn't come up, I plant something else there, or transplant the ones that do come up into the blank spaces if they are too scattered.

We just ate the last of the "lazy housewife" beans I grew. I had paid $1.25 for a package of seed. Grew them the year before, got enough for meals through the summer and then let the pods fill out and mature. Saved enough seed to plant this summer. Unfortunately, I let them get away from me this summer but now I've got two pint jars full of seed.

last spring, I noticed the potatoes I'd bought at the grocery store were sprouting. So I cut them up, rolled them in a little dirt, let them dry, and then planted them in late March in containers on the back porch. When the temperature dipped below freezing, I'd bring them in. About in late May, I dumped the plants out of the containers and we had new potatoes, enough out of 4 kitty litter containers for about four meals of creamed peas and new potatoes (dh's favorite). I accidentally covered the stripped plants with dirt and compost and discovered they were continuing to grow out in the compost bin! About a month later, we had a bonus harvest. Tell me that's not frugal! ;) I've grown sweet potatoes from sprouted grocery store potatoes as well, but I wouldn't try it in the containers. That year, I had a big yield. I was told that grocers spray potaotes and sweet potatoes with a compound that retards sprouting, but it doesn't work! I just love how nature never gives up.

Tomatoes last summer just broke even because I bought heirloom plants. This summer it will be different because I saved seeds. Anything that is open-polinated (OP), you can save the seed for another year. Wash them, allow to dry out on waxed paper, then fold them into a labeled little envelope and stick them in a baggie in the freezer. They will keep this way for years. We truly enjoyed the tomatoes last summer, shared some with neighbors, and I canned 18 quarts. I don't like to can in the heat of the summer, as it's adding more heat into the house and we have to air-condition. So I core the tomatoes as they come ripe and freeze them. When they thaw, the skin slips right off. I prefer to cut them in half before I freeze them, they pack closer together that way. In the fall, when we are no longer air-conditioning, I thaw all my frozen tomatoes and can them or make salsa with them then.

I think the secret to frugal gardening is to find out what grows well in your conditions. Learn what others in your area grow successfully and find out what their methods are. Build relationships with them and trade seed. You might also be able to get free seed from your extension agency. Every year, I learn something that makes for a better garden the next year. So even if you have a failure, you can call it an "educational expense".

Ilene, it isn't just the grocers who spray potaotoes to retard sprouting. A common approach is for the farmer to spray the plants while they are growing in the field. Yep, spraying green plants weeks prior to harvesting to retard sprouting months later. All the more reason for us to either buy organic potatoes to plant or "spring" for the seed potatoes.

This year I will try a very early maturing variety - love those creamed peas and new potatoes, too!

Some of those potatoes will go right back in the ground and I'll see if I can harvest another crop in the Fall having purchased the seed potatoes only once! I realize that early-maturing varieties aren't as good keepers but we'll see how it goes. I believe that they can follow the early greens so as not to go back in the very same ground.

I've pulled new potatoes out from under plants which were then left for another month or so but never got much of a harvest out of them. Talked to a potato specialist who works for the State of Idaho (hey, I go to the source! ;o) about harvesting new spuds. She says that one may as well pull the entire plant since it sets them back so much to be disturbed.

Lots of folks make the mistake of not harvesting the spuds when the foliage dies back during the Summer. With irrigation, rain and time - the potatoes sprout again and become unusable. Even if more tubers develop on these new plants, the harvest is often limited if there's no amendments or fertilizers added for what is essentially a 2nd crop. I figure I may as well plant 'em in a fresh location.

Steve

I too am in MT in windy city. Are you in Great Falls or that area? I too get alot of grief from my other half about the results- but if he had his way, I'd plant 100 early girls that he knew he could eat right away!

No matter what, you should make your decisions of what to plant based on what you use. I plant a lot of tomatoes, with "cherries" in about 30 pots and the bigger sizes in the garden, plus I buy pepper plants and plant cilantro in flower beds- did I mention I make a lot of salsa? Green onions is big- over 200 last year, and still not enough! Zucchini at least 4 plants for constant use, and any leftover is shredded for winter casseroles or made into jam. Several plantings of snap peas for stir fry and snacking. Spinach and lettuce and radishes and the afore-mentioned green onions for summer salads. Cucs get eaten off the vine, and some even make it to the salads. Beets every other year or so, frozen or pickled to stretch. I also freeze tomatoes for later use- some years, I don't have to buy diced tomatoes all winter!

By the way, I feed a family of seven, plus lots of company- my brother and I often split who will grow what, so that becomes 12 plus. When I think of it that way, it becomes a lot more frugal!

Despite having a pretty large garden area, plus edibles in all the flower beds (hey, I don't have to move pumpkins in October!) I replant areas- for examples the early lettuce might get peppers later. Also, I let some of the lettuce and spinach go to seed, collect some, leave some, and have an early crop in March, and no more purchases of seeds. I do heirloom tomatoes mostly, and buy seeds (now to think of it!) to start myself in a month. What plants I don't use, I sell in June at Farmer's Market(I don't sell produce, as I eat it all!)

Except for heirlooms, I too skip some of the less expensive produce- for me, corn takes too much room, but tiny sweet carrots are a must!

Wow, this is a book- if you want to talk more about our windy gardening email me

Vir, Peppers are quite expensive up here in Maine... typically $3 or MORE per pound! Well worth it for me to grow my own peppers. Last years crop was wonderful for me. Out of 14 plants I think I got around 30 lbs of peppers? Considering that you can get sample packs of seeds for 35 cents each on some sites, it's quite inexpensive to start plants from seed...typically 10-15 cents per plant. Not bad initial cost considering the payoff of around 6-10$ in food per plant.

Mark-

Naples,

While my garden was only around 400 s/f this last year, I feel that the 40 qts of canned tomatoes..tight packed, 40-50lbs of peppers, 50 lbs of squash, 12 pints of pickled beets and nearly 25lbs of carrots were well worth the $50 cost in materials...organic compost, seeds, etc) Yes, I lost 2/3-3/4 of my beets to pests chewing the roots, but even so, I got a sufficient crop to make it worth my time. Add to that the pure variety of plants.. 6 different kinds of tomatoes, 4 or 5 types of peppers,etc. I'm spending much more this year...probably $400 on my garden, but it will also be 4-5x the size of last years garden, and I'm amending with 7 yards of good compost. I figure I got at least that out of last years' garden, so that savings is paying for this years garden. We'll see how it goes this year....

You might want to try some Revolution bell peppers. I don't know about prices in your area, but peppers have been quite expensive here. I got the Revolution plants this year because I've not had luck with bell peppers before and they were recommended. Well, I won't grow any other types from now on. Very, very prolific! Multiple peppers per plants and they just keep on producing. Also, much, much less expensive than the store or farm markets.