Like others, I already spent some money years ago for the initial setup or I salvaged certain gardening items from going into the trash. A lot of my tools were hand-me-downs from relatives, and I still use them to this day. I don't think I've ever bought a shovel in my life.

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.

Here is a link that might be useful: My blog about frugal vegetable gardening

(sheepishly) well, it made my panorama super tiny anyway.

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.

Jonathan
Great photo and you mentioned using 60000 calories. That is another non-financial gain. Awesome.

People WANT to believe they save money. It makes them feel good. I get that. By the time I buy all my supplies, give much away, learn by mistake, and eat more than I should...I save a ton of money. haha. The truth is most of us really enjoy the journey and the freshest great quality harvests. That is enough for me.

It is possible to save money, but for most, unlikely. Tomatoes are a notable exception, if you are a frugal gardener. But the minute you buy that new $500 rototiller...
-wc2k8

"People WANT to believe they save money. It makes them feel good."

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 :)

"It is possible to save money, but for most, unlikely."

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'm definitely in the save money camp. I grow enough in my 3/4 acre garden to feed myself at least $400 per month of healthy vegetables. The time and labor involved keeps me healthy and active so I offset the labor costs against medical bills and health club memberships. I produce enough seed to sell $1000 to $2000 per year which pretty much pays for my tillers, tractor, seed, fertilizer, etc

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.

Jonathan, first year gardening, great garden ! I love Utah, awesome quality of life, great place to live ! You're a happy guy !

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 ;-)

Yes, but only because I am canning 80 - 100 quarts of tomatoes yearly, plus another 40 quarts of juice. I spend about $100 per year to get the garden started. Another $50 for canning supplies. Of course I already have cages, tiller, etc bought many years ago.

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 .

I know we do NOT save money ... however, having fresh herbs all year is worth it. And, the SO likes growing and smoking chilis and he likes Armenian cucumbers. Tomatoes, too.

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?

Fusion_power, your garden is the size I grew nearly 40 years ago. It's lots of work, especially if you have a full-time job elsewhere, kids that are involved in school activities, and other normal daily life activities. BUT, it is so definitely worth it, isn't it!! I wish I had pictures of our garden back in those years, but sadly I don't.

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

" But the minute you buy that new $500 rototiller... "

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.

So, if you don't save money, will you stop growing your own produce? If you say yes, then definitely stop. That is not the reason most of us grow our own veggies and herbs. We enjoy making our own food and eating something that we know we helped make.

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.

RyseRyse,
There are many people on limited or fixed incomes. For them it is important to save money, and might be important to them to figure out whether they would be saving money after the initial startup costs. They might want to know which veggies are easy to grow and have high yields.
It is enjoyable, yes, but to some it may be also an important way to make ends meet.

For me, yes it does, but not so much directly pound for pound compared to buying supermarket produce. A few years ago I was thinking about the fact that when I was younger I definitely preferred fruits and veggies to all kinds of junk food, and that had pretty radically changed over the past 25 years or so. After a while I realized that it was because it's just not all that satisfying when you couldn't tell whether you were eating a peach, a zucchini, or a tomato if you were blindfolded, and that's pretty much the way I feel about most of what's available at the market. And that's why I started growing my own vegetables.

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 agree with allready mentioned benifits of gardening and will add. Is it a savings if i don't require medical treatment caused by DDT on Mexico fruit and produce? Is there no value in the peace of mind knowing I can grow it if need arises? And teaching my children the same? And last but certainly not least. How are savings calculated for people who use food stamps to buy what they are too lazy to grow for themselves?

I think this thread got distracted away from the original question that focused on if there is or can be a financial benefit to gardening.

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.

Jonathan,
You are right. IF Tomato cost $2 per pond in store and you spend $300 to harvest 50 lbs of tomatoes, you are not saving any money.
BUT:On the other hand:
What is financial benefit and what does one do with it?
Say you make good money and turn around and spend it to get joy and satisfaction : buy a nice car, wear nice clothes, etc. There is something in economics called "utility". That is what you get when you spend; It can be a young boys pocket money spent on ice ream or bubble gum. I am not talking about the basic needs here.

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.

i think if you WANT to save $ you can
its pretty easy to buy an heirloom tomato at the store for $2 and plant the seeds. most people have a shovel, or some such.

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.

Not really. I'm a small-time container gardener. I grow for flavor and freshness. I'm OK with that. :)

I can say for sure that I probably don't save money initially because I bought the grow bags, the promix, bark fines, etc, the seeds, cages, poles, whatever. I don't garden to sell my veggies, and although I do make sauce, I mostly grow tomatoes, cukes and herbs for the sheer pleasure of it. I guess growing from seed instead of buying plants saves money, but I admit, the grow lights, and equipment had a cost, but over time it's worth it. Bottom line, we all garden for our own reasons and gardening is a journey, wherever it takes us. There is nothing quite like watching something grow and bloom, except having kids, lol! And watching them grow and bloom, too! And you are outside getting the best therapy in the world. And, you get to exchange ideas on forums like this, which is priceless!
Sharon

Out of six children, I am the only gardener. I like to grow fruits and vegetables that taste better homegrown like tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, cukes....Stuff that takes up too much room, is dirt cheap in the Fall, or is bothered by pests, I can buy those at the grocery store.

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 grow my own tomatoes for less than $3 per pound for a nice heirloom at the local market. However I go without before spending that much for a tomato. I grow them because it's a passion.

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

I save money with gardening. Plus I enjoy gardening and know that my fruits and vegetables are fresh and chemical free! Gardening is great exercise, rewarding, saves money and you have a sense of accomplishment. I am a start-up blogger in the gardening arena and exploring different sites and I am amazed that all ages, men, women, and from all backgrounds have such a keen interest in gardening. I am looking for well qualified guest bloggers for my site. Let me know if you are interested! Me and my wife love gardening and enjoy visiting each day, harvesting, and eating fresh fruits and vegetables!

Most gardeners don't grow their own veggies to save money - they do it for the satisfaction of growing their own food. I can my tomato sauce because the store stuff has too much salt in it and also tastes like the can. You can't ever buy bell peppers cheaper than you can grow them and in the winter, on sale, they are $1 each!!!

I live in the NYC metro area, but a trip to the nearest market is 15 minutes by car, and the farmers market is only once a week in season. I use ethnic (Japanese) vegetables often, and they are more than 30 minutes away and expensive, if available at all. Being able to dash out to the garden for some shiso, a daikon, some mizuna mean big savings in time, gas, and money, plus enables to be a far better cook than I would if I had to depend on periodic shopping at stores. The biggest cost is failure, which is inevitable. Melons that don't ripen soon enough to harvest. Seeds that never emerge or get weeded (for me, eggplant, scallions, cucumbers). oPlanting too many seeds of one thing (for me, nasturiums). Not staggering planting. Not thinning. But this improves with each year.

All very good points! I love gardening myself, saving money is just icing on the cake!

Gardening is an adventure. You never stop learning.

Some amateur gardeners focus on growing produce that are expensive at the supermarket. I know this thread was originally focusing on vegetables, but let me bring up fruit. In many cases certain fruits are very seasonal and only sold at the supermarket during a certain time of year (cherries, apricots, mandarins, lychees). If you grow them yourself, you can enjoy these fruits over a wider frame of time. I have various varieties of fruit trees that ripen in different months. Berries are typically expensive to buy at the store, but easy to grow yourself. The reason they are so expensive at the supermarket is because they are more labor intensive to pick and much more perishable, so some types produce are actually best to grow yourself. Especially if you like fresh figs, it's far cheaper to plant several dwarf trees in your yard, different varieties to yield fruit over a longer period of the year.

Most has already been said. But what is the value of being able to walk through your yard and plucking a flavorful fruit or vegetable as a snack? I grow extra seed, and sell those plants, so my hobby/passion is offset in $$ only ever so slightly. But, oh, that fresh tomato is so much more tasty than anything you will find at the store. And that apple in the fall, each one is tastier than the last, as one tends to snitch those fruits a little before they are ripe enough.

I think you can save money if you use organic method (yes I know there are some people already disagreeing) by making compost using local resources like woodchips and leaves (such as from municipal piles, check out OneYardRevolution). Of course, it will take longer than buying compost and premade fertilizers.

With me when I started out, I wasted a lot of money on "organic amendments" like rockdust, biochar and wormcasting (which are good, but doesn't need to be purchased and shipped from across the country), sea minerals and all that crap. Now I just grow in compost and mulching. So I think it will take time, but it will pay off eventually, you get the benefit of healthy foods and stress relief. I think organic home grown heirloom tomatoes are priceless, I don't believe I can go to a 5 stars restaurant (okay I haven't been to one) and taste the same tomatoes as some I have grown.

Also hydroponic growing is one way to reap the rewards fast, and yes I know there is electricity and energy cost to produce the synthetic involves, but if you do it efficiently, it's still more sustainable than buying produces shipped from far away. You can grow some pretty good greens Kratky method without artificial lights or air pumps (see "mphgardener").

Also if you grow perennial and stable crops you can save a lot of money, things like malabar spinach, katuk, longevity spinach, Egyptian spinach are so easy to grow where I am, I never have to buy leafy greens ever since I started gardening, not once. The other thing I never have to buy are herbs, which grow real fast hydroponically.

But with all this I do admit land is required and that can be expensive, unless you find with local commune or a very good group of community gardeners.

My first garden save me money this year. I obtained free compost from the city and planted kale, radishes,onions, okra, carrots, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, zuchinni,squash and lettuce. I used recycled wood to create the garden bed and my only cost was for chicken wire and seeds. It is December in zone 6 and I am still harvesting kale and onions. The biggest money saver was (don't laugh) that I used a lot of the veggies as ingredients in the dog food I make. Organic veggies are expensive here so harvesting and freezing them was a big cost saver.

My garden was small and poorly planned and it still saved me money and it was fun. This month we created more beds and doubled the size of next year's garden.

This coming season I should save some money , as I won't be spending much money:

I've the equipment, beds are established, have plenty of seeds, fertilizer, stakes, cages ...

All I have to spend is on electricity for the CFL's , and water.

found a post by xentar_gw in another thread:

"It may seem cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy a mango, a papaya, or a bag of spinach than to grow similar things in an area where they won't normally grow outside, but every time I buy a bag of spinach, it lasts 2-3 days max before turning black. So, 80% of it ends up being wasted. I also spend anywhere from $5 to $15 on gas, depending on where I need to shop. So, running to the grocery store every 3 days ends up being expensive in itself."

I do it for taste. Produce is extremely cheap where I live but most of it doesn't taste right. The stuff I grow does, so cost has nothing to do with it if you couldn't buy it if you tried.

I probably do save money after the initial cost of setup. I produce several hundred pounds of fruit for about $30 in input plus water. I'd have to water any tree that replaced them so that's a wash. On top of that, several hundred rare chiles, fresh herbs and tomatoes & greens.

there are some up-front costs, and a bit of a learning curve,

but,if you take into consideration the nutrient level, then growing at home makes sense... most store bought produce lacks flavor and minerals

i bought a papaya 5 years ago. several hundred seeds. i have grown dozens of trees since then. $1.50 to $2.20 lb... a 5lb fruit isnt cheap, and mine taste MUCH better.

The title of this thread makes me laugh...haha. Other than a few folks that sell, and grow large quantities...money savings in not usually the point. Most of us gardeners are kind of spiritual about growing. We love a return....don't get me wrong...but the quality of the food and enjoyment we get is the draw.

Start up costs aside (building raised beds, seed starting setup, etc) I guarantee that I save a quite a bit of money growing my own veggies and preserving food from the garden. That is unless you factor in the cost of my labor and then I'd be in the red big time because I don't work cheap...but it is a labor of love* !

* Except when it is 95+ degrees outside.

What do you do with the money you save?

Albert in my family we don't save enough money to make too much of a difference. I budget money for my groceries so if I spend under I might buy my daughter a nice bottle of wine.

Where I come from, growing vegetables not only saves money but is a huge source of income. Tomatoes and pilipili hoho (capsicum) perform well and mature fast. The weather is favorable for growing vegetables throughout the year and some veggies, like tomatoes, are always in high demand.

I would like more advice from experienced vegetable and fruit gardeners on how to garden most cost-effectively. So far we've heard about ways to reduce the cost of inputs. Which crops are the most bang for the buck (and labor and space)?

We get ''most bang for the buck '' from leeks; stick them almost anyplace, do not worry about frost, that freedom helps make them efficient.

I know I'm not saving money in the short term. I've only had my community plot for three seasons, after a long break from gardening. My start up costs were "re-start" up costs. And still, I'm building soil, learning what plants work well in this microclimate, finding my way… I'm not taking the least expensive route. I have to say that the other benefits mentioned ARE a cost factor. We pay dearly here in CA for organic produce with the water shortage, and it's only going to get more expensive. But I know I am not gardening efficiently enough to maximize the space for production and savings. If I concentrated more on actively succession planting and intercropping, I would. I think over the long term, I will save money eventually. In the mean time I am content to save on therapy and anti-depressants.

We get a sense of relaxation while gardening. We spent money up front but the benefits from growing your own food to us is priceless!

Not tomato-related but I cut open my first lemon of the season--it was so sweet, flavorful & bright. Lisbon lemon & could be eaten like an orange if you wanted. Nothing at the store remotely compares, so if I can't buy such a thing without great effort, aren't I saving a heap?

North Georgia Gardener Yes, you are saving! Also, you know what you have and it is free from pesticides too!! You make the lemon sound so good, alas I cannot grow lemons in North Georgia. I don't have much experience growing citrus. Care to explain your growing techniques?

There are couple of factors in saving money when you grow your own :

1- grow things that are sold at higher price at stores. For example grow other sweet peppers than bell pepper or Jalapeno: Like cubanell, Poblano. I would not grow corn or zucchini anymore. You can buy them real cheap. Also forget about growing cabbage.

2- Grow something that you use a lot, regularly. Tomatoes are probably the ones. Okra is good, if you have real hot summer. Sweet peas, green beans. You can also preserve those if you get bumper crops.