Gardening Economics

[jeffinsgf]

It's the first few years that are investment intensive. I spend less and less every year, and grow more and more.

[starsprouts]

I've been saving reciepts to keep track of what I'm spending, and I plan to weigh and keep track of the veggies that make it into the house (as opposed to getting eating right away in the garden--I highly doubt any strawberries will be weighed). I fully anticipate that we'll be in the red this summer. There are an awful lot of variables, though--organic produce from the supermarket vs. conventionally grown from the farmer's market, etc. There's a BIG difference between paying $5.99 for an 8 oz shrinkwrapped package of "naturally grown" (note, not organic...those cost more) bell peppers at the market and $0.25 for a small, conventionally-grown pepper at the farmer's market.

A few things I can get from my garden that I can't get if I'm buying all my veggies, at least around here:

• Really fresh, organic produce. You have to pick between fresh and organic, since there are no organic/natural growers within over an hou'rs radius.
• Convenience, at least in season. I ran out of carrots last night, and the choice was to do without or drive half an hour into town to buy more. No carrots for us!
• The exact kind of produce I want. I'm outside of a small town, and there isn't much variety. I'd say it's easier to find tropical fruit than it is to find parsnips, even at this time of year. If I want to get picky and eat a certain preferred variety, I'm out of luck. Most fruits and veggies at the market were bred to survive shipping and extended storage while still looking "fresh." The varieties I'm growing are for a mix of taste, beauty, and (in some cases, like onions) long-term storage.
• Teaching my son about food and biology.
• Making friends. I've hooked up with a couple other local newbie gardeners, also young moms, and it's really nice to have something in common that we can talk about. I also like taking fresh herbs and veggies to owners of a local store who lament the lack of organic, Monsanto-free options here. It makes them smile, with makes me smile.
• A less-stressed wife and mom. Some boards, soil amendments, and seeds are a lot cheaper than any therapist or drug! Since I haven't gone either of those routes, it's awfully nice to have a way to calm down after a long day. Right now, that's sipping a cup of tea, and even good tea gets expensive when you're drinking a cup or two a day! I love working with plants, I love being outdoors, and I need something to focus on that I find pleasurable. Yes, I find great joy in weeding. I've never understood why it's okay for one person to spend large amounts of money on music equipment, or another to have a huge DVD or book collection, or another to enjoy painting...but not for me to simply enjoy gardening. Why is gardening required to turn a profit or break even when other hobbies aren't? Not saying that you're requiring it, but other people in my life sure are!

My gardens also provide me with flowers all summer. I have been given a "real" bouquet of flowers exactly twice in my life, and I had to give birth to "earn" one of them. I pick wild daisies and keep them on the windowsill and table all summer, but the time and money invested last fall has probably already supplied me with several hundred dollars worth of cut tulips, daffodils, and other spring flowers. I'm planning on an entire bed inside the new vegetable garden area just for cutting flowers.

Really, I don't plan on breaking even for many years. I'm keeping track just to see how long it will take, but for curiousity more than anything else. I'm gardening with hopes of saving money, but I know I could buy conventional produce for cheaper than I can grow it, so long as I shopped sales and avoided many of my favorite things, which tend to be expensive. If I was going to super cheap, I could avoid raised beds and buy the cheapest seeds possible, but I've learned from past experience that raised beds make my life easier in many ways, and when I ordered my seeds months ago, I had the extra spending money to be able to patronize businesses I really liked.

[jeffinsgf]

My "economic" strategy has moved toward growing things that I like to grow that are either difficult to find or outrageously expensive and that we use a lot. For example, shallots. Both my wife and I like to cook and we experiment with new recipes all the time. Shallots are unbelievably expensive in the supermarket, but grow here in a raised bed exceptionally well. They grow so well for me, I'm seriously thinking about setting out enough this fall to sell them at market next year. On the other hand, I've grown dried beans the last couple years, because we like them and I was curious about how they would do and what the yield would be. Considering the cost of good quality dried beans at the supermarket, I doubt I'll devote the space to them this year or any time in the near future.

I grow peppers that I can't find around here. Serranos, Fresnos and Chile de arbol, for examples, never find their way to the farmers market, much less the supermarket. Looks like last year's supply of dried, canned and frozen will see us well into the harvest season this year. I honestly can't remember the last time we paid money for a pepper or chile...it's been at least 3 years. I did run out of garlic a couple weeks ago, and had to buy it. That just about broke my heart, but it won't happen again. Last October I set out more than twice what I set out the year before. Should harvest all we can eat this year and next year's seed stock, too.

Watermelon is an economic weakness for me. There's no way I can justify the space that the vines take up compared to the cost of buying the three or four melons a year we would eat in a normal summer. But, I've just never eaten a commercial melon that tastes as good as the ones I've grown.

Just my nature, but I would never even consider putting together a ledger sheet on my garden. In my mind, I'm slightly in the black. That's close enough for me.

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by martenfisher

You can't weigh the economics of gardening...

...Starts, seeds, and dirt is well worth it no matter the cost.

Wow...those are some pretty broad brushstroke statements that, while I can understand, don't really apply to my question.

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by Ezzrider

Well for me - there is no way the money I have spent gardening is cost effective unless you consider my piece of mind! Gardening is good for the soul and I can't put a price tag on that.

Seems to me that if gardening isn't cost effective for you, it might be time to figure out how to make it cost effective, unless your household entertainment budget has a column in it for your gardening.

I'm really coming at this from a very straight forward home economics perspective. I will acknowledge that I too enjoy working in my garden, but that's not what this thread is about.

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by bugpicker

I haven't been gardening very long and have not done any analysis on cost but I would think you would need to be able to amortize out the cost of building the garden, cost of equipment, etc., over several years. You will have and be using some of these things in years to come at no further cost.

I agree completely. I'd need to amortize the cost of the raised beds over the expected life of the beds (made of a type of cedar) & do the same with the tools if I wanted to do a really through analysis. I think the amortization schedule for the beds would be something like 15 years & the tools (depending on manufacture quality) between 10-20.

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by ADCarter1

Ever read the book "The $35 Tomato"? It's about a guy who starts a garden, tracks his expenses, and figures out that one tomato ended up costing him $35.

Not that it's stopped me from gardening. I agree with Marten. I feel good, I think I'm relatively sane, and I know where my food comes from.

Ah..the $64 dollar tomato. I think one of the take aways of that book was to limit your expenses. One chapter in there talks about how the author paid a landscape architect to help figure out how to create the space.

The fact that the author of the book brought in a landscape architect speaks volumes about the rabbit hole of fiscal mismanagement people can get into when they don't set a budget to limit capital expenditures for a project.

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by 2manband

I plan to turn a "profit" with my garden. I haven't tracked it on a "lbs of tomatoes" basis, but have some antecdotal evidence:

We do one big grocery shopping trip once per month, when we stock up on non-perishable and frozen items, and then weekly trips to get stuff like milk, lunch meat, and produce. On those weekly trips we spend about $25-$30 on veggies, and probably twice that during our big monthly trip. When the garden is in full swing (say June, July, August, Sept.) that number drops to about $5 to $10. So, it's about a $20 per week savings x 4 weeks per month x 4 months = $320. And that's with the old (small) garden. My new (larger) garden should allow me to do this, and freeze/can some stuff for the winter months. My cost to establish the new garden was under $100 for a load of leaf compost, some seeds, and some gas for the tiller. I use lots of salvaged and leftover materials for stuff like trellises, stakes, etc. So I'll be making roughly $220 by gardening this year. And that's before you consider the fact that our other grocery bills decline since we're eating more veggies and less other stuff during the growing season, or anything that we preserve for the off season.

Now on a dollars earned per our worked basis, I'd be a lot farther ahead to get a job flipping hamburgers, but the difference is that I actually LIKE working in the garden.

I don't know if I could grow a $35 tomato if I tried. I mean, at the end of the day, the gardening equation reduces to dirt + seeds + hard work = food
There's nothing necessarily expensive about that.

Excellent perspective and analysis! Thank you for really focusing on the question!!

[Jarad01]

Originally Posted by jeffinsgf

My "economic" strategy has moved toward growing things that I like to grow that are either difficult to find or outrageously expensive and that we use a lot.

Right! That's a sound strategy for home economics.

[TastyofHasty]

There was an old thread about using spreadsheets:
http://www.idigmygarden.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=30383