It takes about 3 hours at the beginning and the end of the season to get it going and put it to bed, but the rest of the season, I spend about an hour a week weeding.

I don’t count the time harvesting and preparing because if I were spending time going to the grocery store, it would actually take more time, and you have to cook regardless.

The difference between getting it out of the garden and getting it at the store is, when I pick my dinner in the summer, I always make a double or triple recipe. One we eat, the others we freeze. Add to that all the vegetables we are able to store without processing, and it’s a pretty good return.

It took a couple seasons to get down to a system, but now I am able to feed a family of four for most of the year, mostly from our garden, and our annual cost is less than $100 (fuel and experiments). I know that before we got serious about putting up our produce, we spent about $300/month on a groceries. Now we spend less than $100 (cleaning supplies, etc). It is enough of a savings that when we do eat meat we are able to buy local, organic meat, and still spend less/month than when we were chained to what the big-box stores wanted to sell us.

Finally, growing any of your own food offers a lot of non-monetary rewards, especially if you have a family. You know your food is not contaminated with chemicals or e-coli, it’s a fun, healthy way to spend time with kids of all ages (and gets them outside and away from the TV), and it can be tremendously educational on so many levels.

price to save seeds for next years plantings… free

use online seed exchanges to increase your biodiversity for the cost of a few stamps

For patio gardening use self watering containers made from 5 gallon PVC buckets (google it)… i get the buckets for FREE from a local bakery and my local costco.

The first year use a decent potting mix, in the following years use home-made compost which you make yourself for (you guessed it) FREE

Hope this helps someone

Yes the time where they are busy eating McDonalds and sit on their fat “cushins” watching “reality TV”.

So okay, lets turn it around a bit:
1. they get a little excercise in the garden – how much does a fitness center cost? this is free exercise.
2. they get halthier food without all the chemicals – have any of you any idea of how many chemicals are poured over the “fresh” veggies you buy?
3. veggies in your own garden are harvested when they are READY to be eaten and full of vitamins, minerals and great taste – factory veggies are harvested a long time before they are ready and artificially ripened with gas, so they lack a lot of taste, vitamins, minerals, flavor but of course they got a good dose of chemicals and last a long time and they almost glow in the dark.

What is all this worth to you? Having your own veggiegarden also encourages eating more veggies, because they taste better, they are ready at hand and in return you get healthier (how much is that worth to you?) Look at the world as it is now, people are getting fatter and fatter and all that matters to them is to make enough money so they can buy more premade (almost prechewed) food so they can spend more time to sit infront of their tv and get even bigger… Tragic (yes you might think I sound fanatic)

Bring the kids out with you in the garden, teach them stuff, spend time with them, it’s called quality time, and you can’t put a price on that and you can’t put a price on your familys health either.

I don’t use pesticides. Mulch is free as a waste product of maintaining my property. We use compost instead of fertilizer and again at no cost because it is waste I would have to dispose of anyhow. There is a labor cost to turning the compost pile but it’s only about 10 minutes a month extra.

And again, opportunity cost only really exists if you would have used the opportunity. My nephew-in-law (is that a real word) loves to cite opportunity cost as a reason he doesn’t do anything himself. He also uses all that extra free time to sit on his butt and watch TV. So in his case “opportunity cost” is a fallacy.

Another relative of mine, however, never stops working (much to the displeasure of his children.) Taking 30 minutes to change his own oil (plus time to purchase it, etc.) would indeed cost him far more than paying someone $25 to do it for him. For him gardening would be kind of foolish and it would cost him far less to just order completely sustainable and organic groceries, have them delivered and have a cook make dinner for him. (Then again, at this rate he may have to factor in the cost of giving 1/2 his assets to his wife due to divorce sometime in the future… but that’s not really relevant here.)

I think most of us fall in between these extremes and have plenty of otherwise “wasted” time. For me, the time I spend in the garden is just robbing me of a few minutes watching television for the most part.

Your expected vegetable return: $290

Your yearly expenses:
$25 Tiller (that’s a good price. At our Home Depot, the light weight tiller is $39 + tax for 4 hours, and that tiller is worthless IMO).
$25-35 Water & Seeds (I have no idea how many gallons you need or how much water costs you. I think the cost would be quite a bit higher where I live.)
————–
$230-240 Profit

But this is not distributing your initial investment or considering any other recurring supplies such as fertilizer, pesticides, repairs, mulch, etc. And it definitely ignores opportunity loss.

In our current economy, gardening is making a comeback because people think they will save a lot of money. But that is only true for certain people. For many people it is much better to work more. Or look harder for a new job. And for most I’d say it is a break-even kind of game. But gardening is not a bad way to spend time

Gardening in our part of Texas typically starts in March and ends in November. Even in December we often have 80° days. You can stagger plants with different growing times. Assuming we get our normal spring and autumn rains, it’s safe to say watering would still be needed 5 or 6 of those months.

And I’ve tried my hand at gardening before with mixed results. Our long summers are pest friendly. Sometimes we don’t even get hard freezes. Pest control of some kind and regular fertilizing are necessary to see any real returns.

But I agree with you on the time cost issues. Whether or not your free time has more valuable uses will depend on the person. I do a lot of freelancing on the side, and when I’m not working, I’m usually taking care of other necessities. Adding another chore to the list will not displace the necessities. That leaves other leisure activities or potential earnings from work as sources of displaced time. Since effective gardening requires more than an hour here or an hour there whenever I happen to be able to find it, there will be some lost earnings, especially in creating the garden.

But having said that, I actually started a good size garden this weekend. There are benefits other than dollar savings. I just hope I win against the varmints.