Does Gardening Save You Money, Or Not?

There is a commonly held belief that gardening is expensive and will cost you more money than it saves.  Maybe you’ve even heard of the book “The $64 Tomato”. 

There was a time when gardening was the thrifty, patriotic thing to do.  Then at some point, it became an expensive hobby that only retired professors could afford to partake in.  So which is it?

Know Your Goals in The Garden

What are your goals for your garden?  Simply to have fun?   To feed yourself during the summer?  To store food for the winter?  To cut flowers?  To attract pollinators?  

Knowing your goals before you open a seed catalog or put a shovel in the dirt will keep you from wasting time and money.

So is your garden an expensive hobby or a frugal endeavor?  Ours has been both, depending on the year.  When I first started gardening I tried any variety that struck my fancy and went through a phase where I grew mostly weird ornamental plants.  I was a kid, and gardening was just fun.  

It didn’t matter in those early years if anything grew or not.  Those gardens were purely a hobby, and even in a successful year where we canned salsa and jams my costs probably came a lot closer to $64 a tomato than I’d like to think.  

Now that Andy and I live on our own with a single income, it matters a heck of a lot more whether or not the garden produces.  The garden is no longer just a hobby, but a source of food and another source of income.  

One of our goals is for the garden to not only pay for itself but also make a small amount of income through a small business we run.  We also want to grow a significant amount of food for ourselves while improving the soil and providing pollinator habitat.  

This means we have to be careful with what we grow and how we spend our time; planting more edible crops and fewer ornamentals; more tried and true varieties and fewer experiments. Each year, we get slightly more profitable and grow more food for ourselves.  And it certainly isn’t at a cost of $64 a tomato. 

This plan develops as we gain experience and refine our goals for the garden. Each season we learn from the experimental crops, varieties, and practices of the year before.  We review what worked, what didn’t, and what we want to do differently next time.

The Lure of The Seed Catalog

I think every gardener wants to grow a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  When the seed catalogs come in December and January, it’s impossible not to want to order one of everything.  They all just look so interesting! How can you not?

I used to try and grow a few of everything.  36 different types of flowers, 15 different herbs, and 20 different vegetables all sitting under grow lights in April, struggling while they wait to go outside.  

Over time, I came to terms with the fact that it was more rewarding to grow a few things well than a lot of things poorly.  It’s also cheaper.  A packet of seeds may only be $3, but they add up quickly.  And then you need trays, soil, fertilizer, lights, and racks (you only have so much table space...) if you’re going to start them indoors; a necessity for most gardeners in Vermont.  

There are a lot of things that are just hard to grow in Northern climates.  Like celery, eggplant, watermelon, okra, and sweet potatoes.  For a long time I tried to grow these things, thinking I would eventually be successful.  I don’t even like okra or eggplant.  

At some point I had a mental breakthrough...or a breakdown, depending on how you look at it.  But it changed the way I garden.  I no longer try to grow everything under the sun.  If I’m only going to eat eggplant or radicchio once or twice a year, I just let a farmer grow it and buy it from them.  They’re much better at it than I ever will be. 

It’s not enjoyable to struggle all summer growing a plant only to never get a harvest.  I’d rather spend my time on something else.  In the end, by the time I pay for everything to grow my one or two eggplants/peppers/radicchio, I probably paid about the same anyway and spent way more of my time than if I had just bought it. 

The Economies of Scale

Growing a few things well and in large volume will get you good results.  I no longer grow a little bit of everything.  We grow a cheap, easy-to-maintain and successful garden by growing roughly the same things every year and growing a lot of it.  We freeze, can, dry, or store extras to use all year.  

Instead of just growing enough tomatoes to eat in the summer, we grow enough to eat fresh, to can as sauce, to can as diced, to make into salsa, and to freeze as enchilada sauce.   We grow enough peppers for our salsa and sauces plus freezing for use in the winter.  Same with pumpkins/squash, pole beans, basil (for pesto), and a variety of other herbs.  Usually, I also have a significant amount of storage onions, but this year's crop was a total failure.  

Our family has a farm and we get enough sweet corn to freeze for the year from them.  Everything listed is only 7 crops (plus herbs) but provides a significant amount of food.  Some of it (like the pesto, salsa, and enchilada sauce) is expensive to buy and therefore would not even be in our regular rotation if we had to buy it premade at the store.   Since we make it ourselves, we can eat it as often as we’d like.  

Instead of dividing my time between lots of different crops and having to remember all of their details, I can more efficiently move between only a few things.  If I have to prune 20 tomatoes, 60 isn’t that much more; I already have the tools and supplies out which is half the battle.  Moving from tomatoes to dahlias to potatoes to strawberries takes a lot more mental energy.  

But Food is So Cheap!

I can hear your argument already.  “But I can buy a can of tomatoes for $0.99 at the grocery store!  Why bother!”  And well, you’re right.  If you get them on sale tomatoes are only $0.50 a can.  

But that’s not the true cost.  Someone or something somewhere is paying the rest of the debt on that cheap can of vegetables. That debt could come in the form of air or water pollution, worker exploitation, degradation of soil health, carbon emissions, or erosion.  Even if you can’t see it, it’s there.  

To buy the equivalent volume of tomatoes from a local farm would be much more expensive.  Where we live, equivalent tomatoes would be $2.50-$3.00 a pound.  We live in a more expensive area, but during tomato season there’s a glut, and flats of field tomatoes can often be found with a slight discount so I’ll go with $2.50.  Cherry and heirloom tomatoes are more expensive.

So If we were to buy the tomatoes that we can for our 52 jars of salsa, I would need roughly 80 pounds of tomatoes (this is a very rough estimate based on the internet.  I didn’t actually go pull out my numbers from last year).  This would cost $187.78 in tomatoes for a year's worth of salsa, plus we’d need the peppers and cilantro.  

But, off of those plants, I also got enough tomatoes for tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, enchilada sauce, fresh eating, and green tomato salsa.  I also gave away fresh tomatoes throughout the season and gave away extra plants.  

Suddenly gardening doesn’t look like such a money pit after all.  My costs for the tomatoes were the seed, compost, light for the first few weeks, plus twine to trellis them.  My seed trays last multiple years, and compost, while “used up” by the plant will still condition your soil long term.  

The tomatoes I grow are going to be far healthier for me and the planet than the grocery store tomatoes.  Wondering why that is?  Read “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan.  It lays out all of the reasons why all food isn’t made equal.  It’s one of my favorite books.  

Gardening Really Can Save You Money

If you have a plan and stick to it, gardening really can save you money and help you eat better.  We have a garden because we want to eat healthily but can’t afford to buy all of our food fresh and locally. We find so much value (and can taste the difference) in local food that we see its cost as an investment in our health. By purchasing higher quality food, we’re (hopefully) increasing our health and minimizing some of our health care expenses later in life. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be eating a local salad or root crops than going to the doctors and popping pills.  

The cold days of winter are a great time to plan out your garden and figure out what your goals are.  Maybe you just want flowers, or you truly just enjoy experimenting.  Anything goes!  Just know why you’re doing what you’re doing.  

And yes, we still do grow pretty flowers, and we plant lots of things for the bees, other pollinators, and wildlife.  But we’re strategic about it and try not to let it blow our budget.  

It can be hard though when those shiny new catalogs come in January.  A few extra things always seem to sneak into the order, and that's ok...