In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food. It does, however, take a significant time and effort commitment. Very few plants are simply plant-and-forget[1]. As usual, when you go to the store, you pay for the convenience more than for the product itself. Nonetheless, even when you consider time & labor, home-grown food probably comes out cheaper because a significant amount of the convenience markup comes from transportation, which gets eliminated entirely.
Even with the work it takes, I would strongly recommend it. Remember, the true cost of the time and effort you put in is the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead with your time. For a large chunk of the population, that's TV or facebook (farmville, ha ha). Plus, there are intangible benefits beyond the retail value of the food itself. Personally, I find it immensely rewarding to eat food that I made myself from seed to plate. It tends to taste better too--foods in the grocery store are bred for fast harvest, lower soil requirements, long shelf life and durability during transportation. It should come as no surprise that they converge in most discernible attributes towards wax and cardboard. Meanwhile, the tomato seed varieties you can pick up at your local nursery are bred to optimize salad, pasta sauce, gazpacho and lasagna.
[1] Unless you live in Hawai`i. Seriously, you can throw a stick at any bare patch of ground on that island and come back to a tree in a few years. Lava is nutritious.
Well, the 100 square feet of tomatoes (about 75% cherry tomatos, which are very easy to grow, blight-resistant, and can be used in sauces, the rest slicing tomatos) that have taken over my backyard from 6 plants I set out this spring, right next to the blackberry bush that I stopped pruning 5 years ago and produced 10 gallons of berries this year -- those have worked out well for me with little time or money. I spent $50 on a truckload of compost to top-kill my lawn 3 years ago, and have spent a maximum of 1 hour a week in the garden in the summer since. I'm in it for the big payouts, not for consistent results; last summer was a bust and this one is a boom. For a kitchen garden, that works for me.
I've also had very good experiences with asparagus that just kept coming up every spring with no care beyond being mowed as part of the lawn in summer to keep the weeds down -- but I didn't start those plants.
Also. the article is wrong about homegrown carrots tasting like store-bought. The taste is much more concentrated and intense, and many more varieties are available to grow. But they can be a pain to grow.
That one hour does not count time spent processing (picking, cleaning, cooking, storing) the yield from the garden, which has been at times this summer, 1 hour per day.
I think by saying "just money", you've pulled quite a trick. Not only do you implicitly dismiss the opportunity cost of one's own time better spent elsewhere, but you also assume away the problem of having enough land to develop, the capital cost of this land, the opportunity cost of not using it for other things, not to mention the risk costs of weather and disease - there was a pretty bad potato famine back where I come from 150 years ago, you might have heard of it.
If you're going to bring opportunity cost into the equation, don't forget the physical and mental well-being that comes with gardening. That hour of daily digging, squatting, etc. might very well offset a daily hour at the gym or reduce physical issues associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Also, the satisfying act of gardening might very well reduce one's need for drugs and therapy for mental problems, which, sadly, are all too common today.
>In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food
Not necessarily - thats the point of the article
Even in just cost of seeds and fertilizer you can't grow wheat more cheaply than iowa or saskatchewan.
There is a story about a well know homebrewer who wanted to try to grow and malt his own barley for brewing. The story goes that after the wildlife were done with his barley patch and losses during winnowing he had managed to turn 50 pounds of seed into 20 pounds of barley.
I would think that the hops are the determining factor in cost and taste of beer. there are just so many varieties of hops and there is a shortage right now because of the subsidies in other industries pulling farmers away from it to focus on corn. (I think it's corn but it has been a while since I read it) The owner of sam adams brewery had a hop subsidy to small brewers at the prices he could get to help foster the microbreweries around.
I don't think he was doing it to necessarily save money but to have more control over the process, or possibly to create a under-modified malt suitable for decoction mashing. None the less, he turned 50 pounds of seed into 20 pounds of seed.
There are 50+ types of specialty grains, each with distinct flavor and color contributions to the beer. In a more malt forward style like a scotch ale the grains certainly do provide a lot of the flavor profile, and there are at least 100+ strains of yeast for that matter.
Actually hop prices have dropped to half or less of their highs during last years shortage. Disclaimer, I work part time at my local home brew shop to support my brewing hobby with the employee discount.
We grow (among other things) our own wheat and spuds, which take a lot of hard work and can be bought for cheap. However, even the best "organic" (a term the USDA has diluted to the point of being almost a joke) versions from the best food stores in the area simply aren't in the same class as the stuff we grow.
The taste, texture, and flavor of organic home grown food can be so much better than the industrial food we're all mostly familiar with. You don't even have to be a "foodie" to notice. I can only eat about 1/2 of our home grown spuds when compared to store-bought ones, even if they're the same variety. Ours are so much more satiating than store spuds, that we eat far less per meal. I assume this is due to higher nutrition per unit weight/volume.
It's not really fair to compare home grown stuff with commercial agriculture, as they are two totally distinctly different products.
Growing herbs was one of my best decisions (lifehacks?) of the summer. I have found basil to be the most rewarding and robust herb to grow. Although my friends have a mint plant that keeps on coming back.
You also don't need to be living in a rural or suburban area to grow herbs. I live in Brooklyn and have herbs growing on my fire escape, as do many of my neighbors. If you're lucky enough to have outdoor space, a good trick is to take tires and fill them with dirt to grow crops. Friends of mine have been successful with tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.
I'm an advocate of urban farming and I'd love to hear from other people growing food in an urban area. I'm dying to try Window Farms (http://windowfarms.org), which looks like a great project and has built a robust community around urban farming.
One more thing: cat people, grow catnip! It's ~$1 for a bag of seeds and keeps on coming back. Much cheaper than anything store bought.
EDIT: Currently growing basil, rosemary, cilantro (barely), chives, mint, catnip, parsley. Would love to hear what has been successful or any advice since I'm kind of new to growing.
A warning: A friend gardening on a fire escape in Brooklyn came home from work one day to find all of her plants gone. It turns out it's illegal to keep things there and they can be removed without warning.
Regarding mint, it's super robust and will expand if allowed to. You can also surround other plants with mint, because most pests don't like the flavor (that's probably why it evolved that way) it will act as a barrier. Ants, mosquitos, cockroaches all don't like it. I grow Pineapple Mint because it looks cool. :)
Mint is for intents and purposes unkillable - the undead of the plant world. I've found that thyme and oregano are also really tough. They shrug off a Minnesota winter like it was nothing and claw their way through dense weed cover.
Another unkillable plant I like is horseradish. It's deliciously spicy fresh from the garden and it simply won't die. Be careful if you plant it in a garden: it spreads like mad and it's really hard to stop because it grows underground.
This all reminds me I need to go tour the back of my property and see if the wild raspberries and grapes are fruiting yet!
Good to know about growing on the fire escape. Before growing herbs I had no idea that there were so many varieties of mint: spearmint, orange, chocolate, pineapple. Will you bring the mint indoors during the winter or let go dormant and come back next spring/summer?
I live in SF now, so I leave it out year round, maybe brining it in on the coldest nights. In NY though, if they are in pots or raised above the ground, I wouldn't let them freeze. If the roots get frozen they may never come back. Plants in the ground don't get as cold usually so they will be better off. (Your mileage may vary, I'm still learning this myself!)
I've had great success with Peppermint and Aloe vera. Both plants are useful, can take a lot of abuse, and doesn't require any green fingers on your part.
- Peppermint can be used to make tea, mojito, as flavour for ice cream, or you can just chew on the leaves as a snack.
- Aloe vera juice can be used to relieve itching from sunburn or insect bites.
- Need more plants? Just break off a bit of your old aloe vera or peppermint and shove it in some wet soil.
I have a roofdeck in Chicago where my wife and I grow quite a bit. This summer we planted two each tomato and tomatillo plants, 2x brussels sprouts, green onions, a few serrano pepper plans, and many herbs including rosemary, mint, basil, chervil, cilantro, etc. Oh, and a raspberry plant.
We make our own simple syrup out of dextrose and the mint, which we can mix into liquor or tea as needed. Sometimes I'll throw some mint leaves (torn in a few pieces each) in with my tea when brewing.
I grab a bunch of mint, scrunch it up, drop it into a pot, and pour boiling water over it. Leave it to steep for a few minutes and then serve however you like it.
I have a kettle with a separate infusion basket. You just put the mint leaves in there and cover with boiling water. You can also mix it with tea leaves.
I've got a small orchard of 8 fruit trees [1]. I've found that if you want to grow your own food, the time investment for fruit is the lowest per unit product. I'd estimate that I spend less than 5 hours per year on my trees, total.
Maintenance consists of pruning in the fall, culling fruit early in the season, fertilizing occasionally, and periodic spraying. For pruning, decide how much you think you ought to cut back, and then cut twice that amount. Do not skip the spraying. People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests.
A given type of fruit tends to come ripe all at once. I'll be harvesting my peaches, say, over 1.5 - 2 weeks. For soft fruits like peaches or plums, you can't keep them very long. You've got to preserve them or give them away. So plan your crops accordingly.
If you want to do this, now is the time to start planning. Even more than tomatoes, you need to time it right. Trees need to be planted either in very early spring, or in the fall.
Cheap is not the biggest advantage. Home grown vegetables taste better, especially haricots verts and tomatoes.
Some fruits are ridiculously expensive though like raspberries and blackberries. They also require less weeding than most vegetables and they survive the winter. From one blackberry plant you can get 20kg of blackberries. This can cost like €300 in the supermarket.
Oh, but the flavor of wild, ripe blackberries is so much better then even the ones I can get at the farmers market. Along with tomatoes, they have the biggest difference in flavor home-grown vs bought. Also blackberries myst be the easiest thing in the world to grow (here in the bay area anyway). Getting rid of them when you are done might be another story...
Wild blackberries are actually small and not that tasty. If they are good, they are almost certainly feral domestics; maybe spread by birds or an old farm was nearby.
Get good at picking blackberries, with a hanging picker so you use both hands, and find or cultivate a bush with good, large berries, and you can pick that little $5 supermarket tub in about 5 minutes. Every day. :)
I enjoy picking blackberries like I enjoy tetris. Same neurons at work.
Yep, that's another option. Where I live they are very rare and the ones that are there are small and not many berries per plant. Gathering then from your own garden is very quick. Certainly quicker than the extra time you spend in the shop for them. And the ones in the shop are usually not ripe enough for my tastes. I like them sweet not sour.
Also buying 3 kg for making jam costs you a fortune. You can buy a jar of blackberry jam for less than €1, but buying that amount of fresh blackberries easily costs €10.
Yeah, especially tomatoes. So many vintage varieties with usual colours/tastes, and you can let them ripen naturally. Tomatoes are difficult though, I've seen lots of newbies have trouble - it's one of those plants that people need to read up about and follow the growing instructions carefully.
One problem I have is that they get a kind of disease (don't know the English name) that makes the leafs dry up and the tomatoes rot before they turn red. The solution is to buy seeds of plants that can't get this disease.
So when you plan on growing tomatoes ask for this, it's very common. And buy multiple different seeds so you don't put all eggs in one basket.
Tomatoes are vulnerable to a lot of diseases, it is particularly important that you rotate them; don't grow tomatoes in the same spot more than two years in a row, and wait at least two years before growing them there again. If growing them in pots sterilize the soil over the winter (there are several ways you can do this).
"Green zebra" and "Green Grape" tomatoes have particularly different and interesting flavors. They have a faint touch of the taste of a wild relative of theirs called "Cape Gooseberry".
It's highly dependent on where you live. They are quite uncommon in the wild here. We bought 1 plant 10 years ago and it's still 1 plant. You could literally kill it in 2 minutes by cutting it from the ground.
The fruit tree numbers are a bit silly; land isn't free, they should really be including the rent/mortgage cost of the land too. The returns would be less impressive at that point I'd imagine.
Almost every property you purchase in the United States will have setbacks and easements on it which make a large portion of the land unbuildable. For example, a typical suburban lot in my area will have a 5 foot utility easement along the sides and back, then a 20 foot front building setback. It seems to me that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your mortgage payment by not doing something with that area like gardening on it.
Just be careful where your property lines are when you plant your trees. Whether a tree is on one property or another seems to be a common dispute. However, if you're giving your neighbor several pounds of free fruit, they may be more amicable to a tree growing a foot or two on their side.
Since it's assumed that you already own the land in question, they're only looking at marginal cost of the tree itself. I don't see a problem with this.
Apple trees can be grown in pots. Also small fruit bushes (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries). Also beans. You can put these on roofs, fire escapes, windowsills and so on which are effectively underused and thus rent free.
After taking into account the cost of time and effort tending plants, it's almost always cheaper (dollars per pound) to buy food. Still, I'm an avid gardener because of the other benefits besides cost.
1. Better taste. A tomato out of the garden is almost a different fruit (vegetable?) than one from the store.
2. Personal satisfaction. There is just something rewarding about tending to a plant and enjoying the fruit after the work.
3. Aesthetics. I have a lemon and a grapefruit tree I keep indoors. They look and smell nice. The fruit is just an added bonus.
At the other end of the spectrum from the fruit tree at least, is sprouting.
It's dead easy (I think I could manage, but luckily my fiancee got bitten by some kind of sprouting-bug lately), doesn't require much space (the window sill is perfect) and very cheap.
Around here, a mini tub of store-bought sprouts can run around €1.5 (say, $2). That buys probably around 500 g of dried mung beans, which will give a volume of sprouts that easily beats the store-bought pack by a factor of, oh, 50 is probably very conservative. It's almost scary, at first.
We cheat and use a sprouter (a small plastic container with two levels of strainer shelves, a bottom, and a transparent lid) that was around €10-15, so it'll take a while to get our investment back.
For the impatient, sprouting is of course also very fast, you'll be harvesting in a manner of days.
Sure, most of those plants can be cheaper to buy than grow, if you treat your garden shop clerk as a used car salesman and let him connive you into buying every unnecessary over marketed garden gadget in the shop. But really, most plants will just require a shovel, trowel, cheap fertilizer, and a bit of time. Wheat and others are obvious exceptions, because their actual value is so low it's easy for any expense to exceed the benefit. Wheat also benefits hugely from mechanization, but the initial costs are high. It's basically an oddball. Potatoes don't fit that pattern, just buy seed potatoes once, then let a few grow "eyes", cut them off, throw them in the ground and weed them a bit. Done.
A) Tomatoes are a must grow and pretty simple. The taste of a tomato that never touches refrigeration is almost a different fruit. Easy to grow in a 5 gallon bucket on your deck or wherever.
B) Carrots are my favorite fresh. I can't believe they said there wasn't much of a difference between store bought and garden bought. Although I have noticed that I have gotten a few exceptional carrots at time. It may be that their such a durable vegetable buyers can be negligent and leave them sitting around for ages.
C) Asparagus plants take a while to establish but are easier than growing a fruit tree! Key is to plant them correctly and to lime the hell out of them every fall / spring. They thrive under the right soil conditions.
And on the foraging front, Mushroom Foraging is actually pretty simple for a few location dependent varieties. Chicken of the woods or Sulfur Shelf is blooming all over the place this time of year in New England. Hen of The Woods is also bloomer, although not as easy to spot.
My favorite grow-your own was Giant Shiitake's from Fungi Perfect. Buy spores online (30$), find a suitable tree(30$ or free) and a days of work to get started. Water in droughts and you will get tons of mushrooms twice a year for 2-3 years. I had 3 fruiting logs and I would get 6" deep in a grocery bag of portabello sized mushrooms! This was one of my more satisfying hobbies, although the logs died in a drought last summer =(
B) Carrots - my father-in-law did carrots once. Horribly bitter taste. I don't know if there are different varieties or if it is just soil composition but ugh.
Probably soil composition. I've noticed wide variation in taste of carrots from different parts of my garden. I don't bother growing them anymore because they are so picky about good soil.
You have to invest quite a lot of time to get everything to work. Nevertheless, growing your own food is still very popular here in Russia, when almost every family (even with <600$ total monthly income) has its village cottage with some plants. You get to harvest and eat fresh only late summer and early autumn though.
Well I have a small garden but try and get maximum yield from it. I've got Chives, Onions, Spring onions, basil, oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary. I have lettuce, tomatoes,zucchini,snowpeas and broccoloi, and celery. I have a small mandarin tree that yields by the bucketfull. In my planning I'm pulling out some decorative trees and replacing with a banana patch and I'm experimenting with pineapples.
I would estimate it's mostly been a money pit - the yields have been nowhere near enough to justify the time or money. For me it's a chance to do something real (I work from home) and a great learning opportunity for the kids.
The other thing not to forget is growing flowers. They're much easier and you can have fresh flowers inside the house for a very small outlay, or just keep them in the garden and enjoy.
With potatoes, when you have a few starting to get past it in the cupboard or potato box (going soft, growing on you, etc), just throw them in the ground and they will take off.
For anyone with a small amount of garden space, look into the book One Magic Square (I think that's what it's called). Local author/gardener, suggests square-metre plantings that are complementary or that will give you crops suiting certain meals (salads, soups, etc). The other big advantage is that you add a square-metre and get used to it before you take it further.
IME, one risk otherwise is diving in too deep and finding you've bitten off more than you can chew (well, manage by weeding, watering, etc). Instead, start incrementally.
I'd add to that list Blueberry bushes if you have the right type of soil (acidic/well-drained). They don't need pesticide spraying and each bush can grow up to 15 pounds/year of berries.
My yard project this fall is digging out a row of clay soil and making a raised amended bed for 8-9 blueberry highbushes. Blueberry plants are finicky about soil PH and drainage, so I am prepping the bed with sulfur, coarse sand, peat, and ground pine bark chips and getting it right for planting by spring 2012. I expect they will produce ~100 pounds per year in 5 years.
Growing my own food is something that was instilled in me by my parents - We always had fruit trees, nuts and veggies growing in our backyard. My Dad having an MS in Agronomy didnt hurt either.
Currently in backyard in CA:
-Plums, lemons, oranges, pomegranate (my personal favorite), avocado and fig tree.
-Eggplant, jalapeños, bellpepper, corn
-Mint is the only herb we're growing
Beyond watering every evening (I actually find this therapeutic in a way), the twice a year fertilizer (the fresh stuff we get from Dad's friend) and once a year pruning, our backyard garden provides us food year round.
I'm shocked they felt it necessary to mention that it's not worth your time to grow your own wheat. That's possibly the most obvious gardening suggestion ever.
In terms of time and effort, it is far cheaper to simply go buy food the grocery store.
On the other hand, we need to start taking responsiblity for the food we eat. Growing your own means you don't need to worry about food recalls or pesticide use. And, as other commenters have noted, homegrown does taste better.
Not exactly a vegetable, but making your own beer is cost effective, and tastes great (Though it will turn you into a beer snob).
It costs around $100-$200 upfront investment, and then about $50 to make 5 gallons. The time cost isn't that bad either, 3 hours on the first day, then 15 minutes, once a week for three weeks.
Totally does not account for the amount of time it takes to plant, water, weed, fertilize, pest-proof and on and on. $735 to maintain a garden for a year? Sure, if you consider your time as zero-cost.
In my experience, those heads of lettuce are delicious, rewarding, and cost 10-100x what you pay in the store.
Crazy talk - greens are so freaking easy to grow! You don't need to go crazy, just buy a couple bags of cheap soil, mound it up on whatever shit dirt you have, surround it with some rocks and water every other day. Water in the morning while you drink the coffee, takes a few minutes.
Way way way cheaper than the store - I am not detracting from my work or life in any way when I stand outside and water my (large) garden for thirty minutes while drinking coffee. Actually, it's one of the best ways I can think of to wake up.
Do many people have advice on things that can grow inside an apartment?
I've heard/seen various lamp-based systems that have timers and things. I was curious if there are any particular plants that would grow in the relative dark of an apartment if I could get myself a barrel with some soil.
I have windows, but I also live next to some trees which makes direct sunlight limited.
I was hoping there was some secret vegetables/herbs that could deal with low-light. I guess that means things that would be possible to grow in the woods, like underbrush.
If your window gets sun, you can get herbs like basil, parsley, or mint to grow indoors. Currently I'm growing catnip indoors and I plan on moving some of my herbs indoors when it gets colder.
Is it too late in the year to start mint? I have a very similar situation to the OP; live in an apartment in SE Michigan with a window/balcony, but near trees. I'm assuming it'll have to come inside around mid-October.
Mint is like a crazy weed. It'll take over your garden given half a chance. It survives mild (UK) winters, but probably needs to be established before it will do that. So you might want to look for advice and maybe start it indoors for the first winter.
I did make a great discovery this year: chocolate mint (mentha piperita). The leaves taste like minty chocolate (you really have to try this -- you won't believe it until you do).
Also, I've heard conflicting reports about growing mint indoors over the winter; some sources say that mint needs to die down in the winter and won't survive year-round growing, but others don't mention it. Should I just plant two pots, one indoors and one out?
I've always bought it in pots, not tried it from seed. The pots are really cheap anyway (like $3 equivalent). All they need are watering, and if they die off, just get another pot ...
Actually, except for heirloom varieties, most plants grown for decades have been hybrids - their parents are of different varieties, so their seeds produce different and usually far inferior products.
Newer patented varieties are legally protected against being non-sexually propagated also, like taking cuttings from herbs or roses, to start new plants.
Even with the work it takes, I would strongly recommend it. Remember, the true cost of the time and effort you put in is the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead with your time. For a large chunk of the population, that's TV or facebook (farmville, ha ha). Plus, there are intangible benefits beyond the retail value of the food itself. Personally, I find it immensely rewarding to eat food that I made myself from seed to plate. It tends to taste better too--foods in the grocery store are bred for fast harvest, lower soil requirements, long shelf life and durability during transportation. It should come as no surprise that they converge in most discernible attributes towards wax and cardboard. Meanwhile, the tomato seed varieties you can pick up at your local nursery are bred to optimize salad, pasta sauce, gazpacho and lasagna.
[1] Unless you live in Hawai`i. Seriously, you can throw a stick at any bare patch of ground on that island and come back to a tree in a few years. Lava is nutritious.