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.

Most vegetables mature at 90-120 days. So lets be reasonable and assume that you live in an arid environment, have to water most of 3-4 months, don’t mulch your garden and don’t want to capture and use the runoff water from your rooftop. Assuming expensive city water/sewer costs then maybe growing your own is a net loss.

Also, perhaps you *really* are going to use all that free time (more on this later) for something either profitable or that saves you decent money. Again, you might be better off monetarily by going to the store and buying canned vegetables.

On the other hand, when I posted my comment in early July we hadn’t had to water our garden yet. By the end of August when we started harvesting there were probably a total of 3 weeks where we had to run a sprinkler for an hour each evening.

I didn’t really keep track of our time/expenses before making that post, but I did after. I also made some notes of our early time/expenses as best I could remember them at the time.

Looking back at my notes we spent: $50 for fencing material (one time expense.) $26 for peat moss to loosen up the soil and provide extra organic matter (one time expense.) Roughly $30 for seeds and extra water use. $25 to rent a roto-tiller and gas for it.

As for time it took, roughly: 4 hours tilling in the peat moss and putting up fencing. 30 minute picking up the tiller and dropping it back off. 1.5 hours laying out the rows and planting seeds. 2 hours weeding (about 15 min/week for 2 months.) 20 minutes watering (not like we need to stand there and watch the water run.) A few minutes every 1-2 days picking whatever we wanted to eat or what was ripe. (Less time than I’d have spent in the fresh foods isle trying to find quality ripe vegies.) But we’ll call it 40 minutes anyhow to make a nice round 7 hours.

I could have earned over $1300 at my max rate for 9 hours! Add the stat up costs and now we’re at nearly $1200. Expensive garden right!?!?

Not so fast! This was a 15′x15′ garden. Based on our local mega-mart prices for fresh vegetables, we got $40 worth of red/yellow peppers, $30 worth of beats, $30 worth of green beans, $30 worth of broccoli, $20 of potatoes, $25 of cucumbers, $30 of carrots, $15 of onions, $20 worth of squash and $50 of tomatoes. Or a net gain (money only) of $159.

You could argue that I only made (saved) $17.67/hr at an opportunity cost of my standard billing rate. The truth is that only 6 hours of that time was in a long enough consecutive block to be worth anything. I didn’t have any billable work waiting to be done at the time anyhow so it’s a specious claim. Most of the rest of the time would have simply been “lost” time.

I also look at most of the initial cost and time as an investment for future returns in the garden. I’ll easily cut 3.5 hours off the time it costs this year. The only recurrent expenses are going to be roughly $50-60 for seeds, water and tiller rental (if I even need to till this year.)

Assuming the same yield (should be better if we actually learned anything last year) and those estimates and we’re talking over $40/hr worth of food doing some fairly enjoyable “work”. That is also not considering that the food produced was organic. If I use prices from Whole Foods or my store’s organic isle instead of the bulk fresh foods isle then the value of what we produced in the garden jumps significantly.

And finally… while some foods really don’t taste much differently fresh out of the garden compared to store bought many just don’t compare at all. I never cared for BLTs until my wife made some this fall from fresh tomatoes out of our garden. BIG difference and definitely worth a little effort on my part.

If, on the other hand, the time would have been spent watching “reality” TV, then I’d say the return on the time invested is probably better with the gardening. And, from a strictly economic standpoint, Shae comes out $22+ ahead.

BTW- Lela, sage tastes fantastic with pork, it’s one of the main flavors in traditional sausage, so it tastes great on a pork roast, mixed with ground pork for burgers or other crumbles. You can put a little in meatballs, on a poultry to roast, etc. Careful about the cook time as it can get bitter.