>>So do people tell you that it is cheaper to buy it than to grow it and how do you respond? Yes, they do. They are not, however, always correct. I grow fresh berries far cheaper than I could possibly buy them, and I can have them when they're not available fresh at any cost (I have everbearers that produce 2 crops or sometimes even are true day-neutrals that trickle out their crops; farmers prefer single-croppers because of their harvesting overhead). Cane fruits and strawberries are, by the way, quite cheap to grow; the cost at the supermarket is due to the fact that they are difficult to mechanize their production, expensive for the farmers to harvest, and hard to ship intact. I am also cost-conscious. I always ask myself how I can keep my costs down, build my own productive infrastructure or do without, recycle, and make use of out what would otherwise be wasted. For example, I always grow some nitrogen-fixers in order to save on fertilizer costs. I try to salvage the minerals in kitchen scraps by composting them. We're going to have chickens next year to convert our scraps into valuable eggs and, um, fertilizer. I plant a high ratio of semi-permanent crops, because it gets labor-intensive to till the soil every year. My fruit trees, berries, artichokes, asparagus, perennial herbs, and rhubarb don't need annual tilling. I use the best hand-tools I can find. Cheaper to buy and operate than mechanized tools, and more effective and longer-lived than shoddy tools. My produce requires far less processing and handling than its commercial counterpart to reach my table. Pick, pick, waddle over to kitchen sink, rinse, and it's at the point where the commercial produce was after days of processing and transport. So, they are not always correct that it is cheaper to "just buy it". But savings on fresh produce is not the only objective, as many of you have already pointed out. There are crops I want but could not get fresh at any price, but can grow, there is a quality factor to consider (my produce is fresher and my fruit is fully ripe), and the garden keeps me off the streets and is cheap recreation.

@tsheets - I posted a few months ago on a couple of the different hab/fatali recipes we were fooling around with, including some cookies. Here's a link to that post: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pepper/msg0913133225559.html The recipes in that post use habs, but we mostly use fatalis in our desert dishes now, when we have them available. The absolute best thing we ever made with fatalis or habs were fatali-almond caramels. I haven't poste pics or recipes for that, but I will one of these days. We can only have them 2 or 3 times a year, because we eat all of them until they are gone, as soon as they're done, and that isn't good for the waistline.

I work part time for a very successful couple that pays anything that they can, business or personal, with their airline rewards credit cards. For their business it does include most vendors that they deal with. Why do so many of these businesses take cards and pay the percentage? Becuase bad checks and bad debt in general can easily take a big chunk of the profit. They pay off their credit cards every month and never pay interest. They travel ALOT plan well ahead of time. Not only are they getting the miles, but with the float time they get waiting for each credit card payment they let large amounts of money sit in their money market account. I know most of us won't get they amount of benefits these folks get, but if you can get some benefit, why not? I'm looking into rewards cards that I can get directly through my bank and pay on-line from my checking at least once a week. We have no credit card debt now, and won't ever let that build up again, but if I can work it into some benefit for me I will try.

There are some here. Here is a link that might be useful: Sayings