Living Wildly Well

“I spent $300 and got one jalapeño and three tomatoes.” Sound familiar?

It’s become the trendy narrative among gardening influencers that a vegetable garden is nothing more than an expensive hobby.

I wholeheartedly disagree and I have the numbers to prove it. I mean unless you’re just a really bad gardener, in which case, stop influencing. 😂

I have had quite a challenging year in the garden. I was sabotaged by herbicide drift. I didn’t want to pay several hundred dollars to find out exactly what it was to track down the definitive source, but the bean assay test showed there was definitely a problem and the damage to my tomato leaves was confirmed by the local Agricultural Extension Office.

And despite that, I grew 67 pounds of food in July alone.

For a family of two, that’s a little over a pound of produce a day. You can’t tell me that isn’t worth it.

Plus, no worry of the poo poo 💩 parasite that they still don’t have a handle on.

Not including garlic, onions, green onions, or herbs, here are the total weights:

• Beets – 2.02 lbs – could only find a price per bunch, so I’m calling it $2/lb – $4.04
• Beans – 9.37 lbs – 31cents per ounce – $46.47
• Carrots – 2.78 lbs – $1.31/lb – $3.64
• Chard – 3.2 oz – 35 cents/ounce – $1.12
• Cowpeas – .12 lbs $4/pound – .48
• Cucumbers – 15.67 lbs – 13 cents/ ounce – $32.59
• Peppers – .10 lbs – $1.76/pound – .17
• Tomatoes – 37.31 lbs – $4.99/pound – $186.17

That’s a total of over 67lbs pound of food and the dollar amount compared to my local grocery store for organic produce of $274.68.

Now, for me, that’s a dollar amount that’s worth it. And my summer squash didn’t even hit the balance sheet because the herbicide slowed it down so much. 😭 I still have hopes that I’ll get some this year. There is also more of everything above in the way, plus winter squash ripening on the vine, lettuce, radishes, fava beans, blueberries, blackberries, garlic scapes, squash flowers, and more in previous months.

Comparing this to the cost of a few seed packets and dirt, I’m definitely coming out ahead financially.

So, what do you think, is growing a garden worth it?