First, thank you sarahnity for allowing me to guest host Frugal Fridays today!
If you have ever read "The $64 Dollar Tomato" by William Alexander, you may be wondering how growing your own food can be frugal. After all, 64 bucks is more than a little extravagant for a Brandywine, no matter how tasty it is! Granted, gardening can get expensive, especially if you are starting from scratch and need to buy tools and establish beds, but there are ways to get some fresh food from your backyard and still come out ahead.
Today's dairy is geared towards people who have not grown vegetables yet, or have tried and given up. Even if you just have a patio, there are many plants that do very well in containers.
The first thing that you need to decide is what to grow. Two very important factors to consider are one, grow what you like, and two, grow what is expensive when you go to the store. For example, you may like to eat carrots, but they are not very expensive so if you have limited time and/or space they are probably not the best choice. Here is msn's take on the best plants to grow and what not to grow.
One seed company, Burpee Seeds, even sells what they call their "Money Garden", which is a collection of lettuce, tomato, carrot, bean, pea, and bell pepper seeds. Now it may not produce that much for everyone, but it does it does give you an idea of what you can expect from 6 packets of seeds.
$10 of seeds produces over $650 worth of vegetables!
Major savings for people who grow their own vegetables!
A well-planned garden will result in a 1 to 25 cost-savings ratio, meaning $50 in seeds and fertilizer can produce $1,250 worth of groceries purchased at a supermarket. And all you need is a small, sunny plot to enjoy these big savings.
In addition to cost savings the taste of homegrown vegetables is vastly superior to store-bought and their nutritional value far exceeds vegetables that line the shelves of supermarkets a week or more after being picked.
Each Money Garden contains packages of six easy-to-grow varieties capable of producing $650 worth of vegetables on a mere tenth of an acre.
A $20 value for only $10.
The following is from houselogic.com and is another assessment of how much food you can expect from average seed packets.
Top plants for great returns
For the average gardener in most regions of the country, here are some of the most cost-effective vegetables to grow, and an estimate of what you’ll save over store-bought produce. These figures reflect veggies harvested for fresh eating only; if you freeze or can produce to consume beyond the harvest season, your savings will multiply.
Slicing tomato
Seedling cost: $2.00/plant
Yield: 10-15 pounds tomatoes/plant
Savings: $15-$23/plant
Bell pepper
Seedling cost: $2.00/plant
Yield: 6-8 peppers/plant
Savings: $9-$12/plant
Cucumber
Seed cost: $2.95/packet of 240 seeds
Yield: 10-15 pounds of cucumbers per plant
Savings: $5-$7.50/plant
Bush green beans
Seed cost: $2.95/packet of seeds
Yield: 2.5-3 pounds/5-foot row
Savings: $3.75-$4.50/row
Pole green beans
Seed cost: $2.95/packet of seeds
Yield: 4-5 pounds/5-foot row
Savings: $6-$7.50/row
Leaf lettuce
Seed cost: $2.00/packet of mixed lettuces
Yield: 16 oz. of salad every 3-5 days after leaves mature
Savings: $4 per week
This article, called Grow $700 of Food in 100 Square Feet!, chronicles one gardener's quest to not only to write a book on edible landscaping, but to quantify how much produce an average home garden can produce.
Now for a few specifics from my own experiences growing vegetables in my backyard.
Leaf lettuce is an excellent crop to grow because you can cut the young leaves and new ones will grow back. I buy this lettuce mix for only 1.25 and I have enough lettuce for the entire season for my family of 4. I have grown lettuce in window boxes with great success. Here are some more tips on container gardening with lettuce.
Tomatoes are a great value as well, whether it is from seed or transplants. A great way to grow tomatoes in containers is to plant them with complimentary plants, thinking in terms of a dish or recipe. For example, you could plant a plum tomato with basil, parsley and even garlic. A salsa planter could include tomato, jalapeno, and cilantro (if you are a fan of cilantro, which I am not!). This book has great container ideas for vegetables as well as charts that tell you exactly which size containers you need for different vegetables, and what yield you should expect.
Some other crops that are low maintenance to grow, but a little more expensive at the store, are raspberries, beets, peas, green beans, spinach, and most herbs.
After you have chosen you plants, you need to pick a spot that gets at least 6 hours of direct sun a day. This is where pots may come in handy, because even if you don't have the best conditions, you can usually find a sunny spot for at least a few containers. There are many great websites that discuss site selection at great length, but if you are just starting out,
this is a great overview.
Some other great resources are:
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging (my favorite!)
gardenweb
Dave's Garden
Mother Earth News
Organic Gardening
I know that is only the tip of the iceberg, but I hope that I have encouraged at least a few of you to play in the dirt(even better, the soil!) this summer and try your hand at growing a few vegetables.