This is such a great question as I have pondered it myself while gardening. It is true I get so much more out of gardening than just the monetary cost, but in today's economy, every dollar counts in a young family like ours. In an effort to have more organic produce available at a "sustainable" price (LOL), I decided to try growing my own. The following are my challenges and what I've done. Hopefully it can help you: Poor soil = Raised Beds: We have clay marl in this area, not conducive to veggie gardening. So I decided to do a raised bed. Cedar lumber, railroad ties, and pavers (recommended for raised beds) are all quite expensive so I went on www.freecycle.com and craigslist.com. I was able to get 200 pavers / bricks for $20. Droughts in Central FL = Expensive Water: The raised beds help conserve H20 bc you are watering a smaller area more efficiently. I added soaker hoses I found in a neighbor's trash (really). Cost was zero. Mulch is free at a local park where the county gov't shreds it, puts it in a pile and you just have to bring your own container. I'm sure your county has a similar set-up. Soil: Now this was expensive. A 2.5 cf bag of garden or potting soil is about $10 here and the bed I have takes about 10 bags. So I scoured the net for Home Depot and Lowes coupons. I found several $10 off of $25 purchase. So I methodically bought my soil in $25 purchase increments in order to get the $10 savings. I spent some more on compost because I don't have a compost pile. I add calcium to my tomatoes by saving egg shells. Transplants vs. Seeds: It's nice to have an instant garden with transplants but inflation has hit them too. They are much more costly now. You can get seeds for 1/3 the price and have 20 to 50 more plants. Plus transplants often have diseases and pests from the nursery which you are INTRODUCING to your new 'virgin' garden! So, I buy the seeds and follow the french intensive/sq. foot garden method. Jiffy mix + pots works too but that was too costly this year. Pests and Diseases: Unfortunately, here in FL we have year round bugs, fungus and blights. I have tried very hard to go homegrown organic, but so far I have failed. I had to resort to buying Organocide ($15) in order to treat blight in my tomatoes. Today I found corn earworms in my corn and fruitworms in my tomatoes. A cursory net search revealed that the preferred organic control (a predatory wasp) is $90. Yeah, who can afford that? So, tomorrow I am going to buy some BT at $9 a bottle at Home Depot. It's not conventional pesticide, true....but I'd rather get the wasps! So far, the major costs have been pest / disease control. If you want to plant a garden on the cheap- you definitely can....just think outside of the box and ignore all of the glossy Lowes/Ace/HD ads...they just want your $$$$$$$...scour the net/eBay for coupons, check out freecycle and craigslist. You can even rent power tools for FREE from local libraries (check out swap and borrow sites). GOOD LUCK!!!!

Perhaps the clearest delineation I come across between gardeners can be found in the variation between how eager growers are to accept anecdote over science; or said in reverse, how diligent growers are in determining whether something can or should be taken at face value. How much we learn or how much we actually know about plants and gardening isn't necessarily related directly to the effort we expend to learn, or even to the effort we expend to gain what passes for experience. Experience is only valuable if we are learning from our errors and changing patterns so we don't make the same errors a second, third, fourth ..... time; and being bitten continually by the error half of 'trial and error' is actually one of the slowest ways to learn. It's not experience that has learning value if we are doing the same thing over and over again without improvement. I think experience is extremely overrated unless it's being used to validate previously acquired knowledge. IOW, learning by error and then changing 'something' in the hope of making things better is far less efficient than learning something from a reliable source and using our practical experience to validate that knowledge, or in some cases refute it as impractical for our application. Limiting our opportunities to learn to only those sources that are in accord with our personal views may increase the enjoyment we get from the affirmations we seek, but learning from a source that is concerned to the greatest degree possible with disseminating information w/o bias, puts us on the fast track when it comes to acquiring valuable experience, penultimately, and user-friendly knowledge, ultimately. I think it's pretty easy to take the measure of a gardener, at least on these forums, by considering how his observations and statements are qualified. The casual gardener is more likely to make broad statements and assumptions with little in the way of qualification; while the more analytical gardener understands that everything isn't always black and white, and illustrates the analytical side by thinking through his offerings to see if it holds water as a broad statement in all cases or if it needs qualification. As an example - the casual gardener might say, or accept on its face, the idea that because Mg is a critical part of the photosynthetic process, and that because banana peels or Epsom salts contain Mg, that adding either to your soil can only be a good thing. The analytic gardener understands it's not that black & white & qualifies the statement by saying it can be a good thing if the soil is deficient of Mg because they are both sources of Mg. Or, he might note that in the case of the banana peel, if there is no Mg deficiency, the excess may be (in the tiniest of degrees) a potential limiting factor that could be offset in other ways because of the addition of the OM. I don't think that analytic gardeners are necessarily better gardeners, but I think they have the potential to be better gardeners because they want to know 'why'. I also think that ambition has a LOT to do with how successful a gardener is. The diligent casual gardener will probably fare much better at harvest than the lazy analyst, illustrating that gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration; and the best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow. Al

Thank you, Butch. Lots of very good information here. I'll print this off and read it several times so I'll know what needs to happen in the soil for maximum root development. Don

People in England are really into gardening. Someone I work with is in our London branch. She just has a tiny apartment, Two of the windows have flower boxes in which she grows radishes and lettuce. At one time she and some friends had a little plot outside the city. She just marvels at pictures of my yard and how many vegetables and berries I grow. And it's only 1/4 acre! This past Saturday one of the local shows featured a local guy and his book that came out recently. It's called Straw Bale Gardening and the author is Joel Karsten. People from Alaska, Dubai, Saudi Arabia - everywhere have shown interest in it. It lengthens the growing season and is perfect for places like Dubai that don't have good soil. Joel grew up on a farm and moved to the cities and bought a house with really bad soil. That is what led him to come up with this idea. That and sometimes the growing season in Minnesota can be considerably shorter than others. Basically you treat a bale of straw with nitrogen for two weeks to condition it. Then you dig holes in the top and side and put in plants. The bale starts to decompose feeding the plants. In addition the bale is 35 degrees warmer than the temp outside because of the composting affect. You can start your plants earlier and tent on chilly nights. I ordered the book. I might try 1 or 2 bales this year seeing as our season is late getting started. I think I will plant tomatoes and compare the plants to my ones in pots on my deck. Tricia - seeing that your soil was damaged by Sandy this might be something you want to try. As soon as I pick up the book I'd be happy to share the info with you if you are interested. Two words ......... heirloom tomatoes!