There are many reasons we start a vegetable garden: To exercise, to get closer to nature, to reduce our carbon footprint, to enjoy varieties of fruits and veggies we can’t find in stores, and sometimes, to save money on groceries. In my case, I’m a cheapskate and I love the benefit of saving money on fresh food. Plus, being out in the sunshine suits me well.
If you read The $64 Tomato, you learned that starting a garden can, if done wrong, cost you much more than buying the same produce in stores. Done right however, and you’ll be producing gallons of produce each season with minimal financial investment. Those fresh vegetables and fruit would cost hundreds of dollars at a grocery store. Plus, you’ll know that your food is organic and wasn’t shipped halfway around the world, adding to climate change.
And then there’s the flavor of fresh-picked anything. Supermarkets carry industrial produce that’s specifically grown to survive the long trip from farm to store. Flavor is usually sacrificed for firmness or because it’s picked far before it’s ripe (read Tomatoland for a great explanation of this). But there are so many varieties of vegetables you’ll never see outside of your garden – just flip through any seed catalog and you’ll see what I mean.
Make a plan and grow what you love to eat
If it’s your first garden, it’s important to make a plan to minimize your labor and to grow what you know will be eaten. Lean into vegetables and fruits that are expensive to buy in stores (like berries, tomatoes, peppers), or varieties that can’t be found in stores (heirloom tomatoes and lettuces). And grow only fresh herbs that you use often. Fresh potatoes, onions, carrots, and garlic are relatively cheap to buy and growing them is easy – but is it the best use of your space from a save-money-on-groceries perspective?
One of my pet peeves is throwing away any food I grew in the garden. Sure, it can be composted, but my hard work is in that food too. So plan your garden and grow only as much as you can eat fresh, frozen or canned. A good garden plan comes with experience, so go slowly your first few seasons and stick with what you love and what you’ll eat. Starting with a simple plan will make the work you put into gardening and harvesting more manageable.
Calculating the cost of growing fruits and vegetables vs buying them in stores
It’s amazing how much food you can grow in a small yard like mine. I grow an enormous amount in 5 raised garden beds, 1 tree, and along a fence. Four beds are 10′ x 3′ (3.5 meters x 1 meter) and one is 15′ x 3′ (4.5 meters x 1 meter). Maintenance is low because I have 3 beds dedicated to perennial fruits: blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. That leaves 2 beds in which I rotate tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, garlic, beans, marigolds, dill, basil, and parsley. Some years will also find celery in there or some other herb or plant I’m playing with. See my post on how to plant crops together.
I also have a small kitchen garden, about 3 ‘ x 3’ (1 meter x 1 meter), off my patio for greens and herbs (easy to fence off from rabbits). I use my split rail fence to grow raspberries, and I have a cherry tree. The crops listed below are my regular rotation, and over the years I’ve also thrown in cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, pole beans (instead of bush beans), celery, chamomile, cucumbers, sweet corn, heirloom kale, and more (not all at once). See our page on how to grow the most popular fruits and veggies.
Weather plays a big role in how much your garden will produce
Naturally, weather plays a big role in how much each garden bed produces each year. Even the most experienced gardener can be frustrated by 100-degree F (37 C) days in May that cause pepper blossoms to drop or a hot, dry stretch in August that slows your tomato yield to a crawl. And persistent rain creates challenges too. Sometimes the weather can completely wipe out a crop as it did with my cherries this year (a wet spring caused a fungal infection in the fruit). But under normal conditions, these plants produce enough fruits and veggies to feed 2-plus people (plus friends and neighbors) from May to October with some saved in the freezer or made into pesto, tabbouleh, salad dressings, marinades, jams, smoothies, or spaghetti sauce.
How much I spend on my garden
The general answer when someone asks me how much I spend on my garden is “not much”. If you want to factor in the cost of building my raised garden beds, the math is: $300 for cedar planks (all-in) and about $20 for hardware. They were built 10 years ago and are still standing. These days, kits are available online, but they’re pricey. It’s cheapest and more durable to find cedar boards at least 4″-8″ wide (10-20 centimeters) cut to the length you desire at your local home center and wall blocks like these to hold them upright.
And those who want to split hairs will say, “what about your time and labor?”. I suppose there’s an argument for that. But when you love doing something it’s hardly work. Also, my setup requires very little labor after spring prep.
How much my garden yields and how much each fruit or vegetable costs
Strawberries (June bearing)
5 years ago I bought 24 plants. They now fill the raised bed and must be thinned each year.
- Yield: Roughly 12 pounds
- Inputs: Homemade compost only; bird netting (shared with the blueberries later in the season)
- Cost per year: $0 (unless you annualize the cost of the plants which were about $18)
Tomatoes and Peppers
I grow 12-16 tomato plants each year (some end up in pots on my patio) and 6-8 pepper plants. I have my favorite varieties and try 1 or 2 new varieties every year. I start my plants indoors under T5 grow lights each spring to save money, because if I bought this many plants plants each year it would cost me a fortune. Plus, I’ll never find most of these varieties at a local nursery and it guarantees that I start with disease-free plants. See my post on starting plants here.
- Yield: 20-30 fruits per tomato plant, depending on variety. Large Beefsteak or Oxheart tomatoes may only produce 12 (but they’re huge). Cherry tomatoes produce 100 or more. Pepper plants are prolific and produce roughly 2 dozen peppers per plant depending on the size of the pepper.
- Inputs: Seeds, seed starting mix, grow lights, starting pots, fertilizer.
- Cost: The only thing I buy new each year is Jiffy Seed Starting Mix. Seeds are used over 3-4 years, T5 grow lights have lasted for many years, and plastic pots are re-used each year. Seeds cost $1.50-$2.00 and last about 3 years when stored properly.
Blackberries
I bought 1 blackberry plant about 5 years ago for $12.00 and it has now spread to fill the entire bed. The only hard cost after that was to build a trellis with four 7-foot metal stakes and coated wire strung between them.
- Yield: Hundreds of berries each year – an estimated 15 pounds
- Inputs: Trellis built first year, 2X annual feedings of homemade compost
- Cost: About $40 for the trellis in year 1 and $0 for compost annually
Beans (Bush type)
Beans are just about the lowest cost vegetable you can grow. All you need are the seeds if you’re growing bush beans. Add a trellis for pole beans. Succession planting at 3-week intervals yields beans all season.
- Yield: About 1/2 pound of beans per plant for bush beans, and more than double that for pole beans.
- Inputs: Seeds
- Cost: $1.50 – $2.00 for seeds
Blueberries
I bought 3 blueberry bushes about 10 years ago. They’re each now about 5 feet tall and produce enormous volumes of blueberries in a good year if the squirrels aren’t ruthless and chew through the bird netting.
- Yield: Hundreds of berries (minimum 15 quarts)
- Inputs: Compost 2X annually; yearly soil testing and adjustment to maintain a low pH; bird netting (shared with the strawberries)
- Cost: About $10 per year, including the sulfur to lower pH and the cost of bird netting over 3 years.
Cherries
I bought a very specific cherry tree about 10 years ago that is bred to flower about 2 weeks later than your typical cherry tree. This reduces the number of blossoms that get destroyed by a spring freeze. In a good year, the number of cherries is in the tens of gallons. In a bad year (disease), it might be zero. This is completely weather dependent, as we’re growing organically and don’t have a weekly spraying program as you would in a fruit orchard. We only occasionally use a sulfur-based pesticide to fight fungi, approved for organic gardening.
- Yield: 0-hundreds
- Inputs: Yearly spraying of sulfur-based pesticide to prevent fungus
- Cost: $40 (and the cost of the tree amortized over 10+ years)
Salad greens
I grow peas, lettuces, kale, chard, and herbs (sage, oregano, rosemary, marjoram, thyme) outside of my kitchen door in a small fenced-off area (about 6’x3′) to keep it safe from rabbits. I start some indoors in March to plant out around the last frost in April, so we can start eating fresh salads in early May. We keep eating through the first frost in November. I grow the peas on a trellis cobbled together from tree branches and things found in the shed (that’s the “rustic” look!, I explained to my wife).
- Yield: Greens all season
- Inputs: Seeds, starter medium, starter pots
- Cost: About $1 plus seeds.
Basil, Parsley, Dill
Basil and parsley are planted throughout the gardens wherever there’s space. We make tons of pesto as soon as the first basil plants are ready and then keep snipping leaves as we need them for salads and other culinary delights. I also harvest at least 2 of the plants to dry and use over winter. The dill grows wild. The parsley is used fresh as needed and harvested to dry and use over winter. These herbs are also excellent for supporting beneficial insects in your garden.
- Yield: More than enough
- Inputs: Seeds, starter pots, starter medium (basil and parsley only)
- Cost: Seeds + $1.00
So there’s the gist of it. Even if you only have small patio or deck to grow on, or even just the front stoop of your apartment building, nothing beats biting into a fresh tomato or pepper from the plant you grew from a baby. Growing fresh food can be done anywhere in any size space.
Good nutrition is necessary for all people and should be taken care of
Great way to save money on produce. I am beginning to do a vegetable garden in hopes that I have a great success with it. It’s great getting to us information from those who have successfully mastered growing fruits and vegetables