Growing your own vegetables provides you with healthy, fresh produce. Not to mention the joy it brings to get your hands dirty, smell the freshly turned soil and to see your plants grow and bear fruit. But does growing your own vegetables also make economic sense? After all, you do have expenses as you need to buy seeds and/or seedlings, compost, mulch, tools etc. And then there is the manual labor, even if for most gardeners it is a “labor of love”. Every year, I have the best intention to try to answer this question but every year I fail to record the weight and amount of produce harvested in order to assess the monetary value of my garden. This past season was no different.
I do have numbers for the input though. In 2018, I spent a total of $ 114.07 on seeds, seedlings, seed garlic, seed potatoes and supplies. In detail, I spent the following:
- Sand Hill Preservation Center (seeds) 18.00
- Fedco (seed potatoes) 18.00
- Johnny’s (seeds) 9.45
- Home Depot (manure etc., herb seedlings) 29.83
- Agricultural Hall Jamaica Plain (2 x hay) 26.00
- Burpee (seed garlic) 12.79
I believe I definitely got my money’s worth growing my own vegetables even though I can’t say precisely how much money I saved. In 2018, I bought only one single head of garlic in between the last harvested head of 2017 and the first cured head of 2018 (and we use a lot of garlic, sometimes 6 to 8 cloves in one dish). I did not buy any chard, green beans or cucumbers (or many other vegetables) all through the summer. I make a home-cooked dinner for my family of four almost every night, we rarely eat out (maybe once a month) and order take-out maybe once or twice a year, so there is a lot of cooking in my kitchen. I grew almost all the herbs I used all summer and fall — even though the sage and flat parsley in my plot mysteriously died over the summer (I had potted parsley and sage on the back porch).
I have a few “hard” numbers from my harvests though: I harvested a total of about 25 pounds of cucumbers (from a set of 3-4 plants), a disappointing amount of only about 4 lbs. of fingerling potatoes, about 20 lbs. of tomatoes. My garlic harvest was much smaller this season (about 25 heads) and as of right now (mid-January), I have only 3 full heads left. I harvested about 2 dozen leeks. I have no numbers for the beans (but there sure was a ton of them), beets, salad greens, squash, eggplant, carrots, radishes, asparagus, rhubarb, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale or hot peppers.
I produced about $60 worth of tomatoes alone (again from three plants) , assuming a price of $3 per pound. So, even with a small plot like mine you can grow the variety and the amount of organic, super-tasty vegetables needed to truly supplement your family’s diet over the summer and fall, saving you money.
Last night’s dinner was Moroccan meatballs with harrisa, cumin-roasted cauliflower with tahini, Greek salad and rice. The five tomatoes in the salad were the very last ones from my garden. They had been ripening on the kitchen window sill for the past five weeks. They were so very tasty.
Eating from the garden in November – potato leek soup. Leeks, garlic and parsley are home-grown.
Last two cloves of (volunteer) hardneck garlic. Now onto the softnecks.
Leeks and garlic sauteed in butter.
Add potatoes …
… and water , salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes and puree. To be served with chopped parsley, bacon bits and homemade croutons. Yum!
Today I spent a couple of hours raking our back yard (I had great help by my son) and clearing out the front yard flower bed and then moved on to the community garden. It is supposed to dip down to the 20s tonight so I thought it would be a good time to get the garden ready for winter. I got a bale of field hay from 
Still growing are two stalks of Brussels sprouts …
…, two stalks of kale and about a dozen leeks. Ready for winter:
I planted my garlic today after putting in a few hours of community work in the garden. I planted two rows of hardneck (Red Russian) and 3 rows of softnecks (Transsylvania), 7 cloves per row. This is the earliest ever I planted garlic. Normally I wait until the first week of November. But we already had two nights of light frost and the weather the next two weeks looks good (50s and 60s), so the garlic should be able to set some nice roots before winter is here for good.
Today’s harvest: a couple of carrots, parsley, the last two hot peppers, a tiny butternut squash (the foliage was already damaged by frost), and the last dahlia. I pulled all the tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, nasturtiums and beans and semi-cleaned the plot to get it ready for planting garlic. I still need to do more weeding, pull the dahlia tubers and will need to get hay to mulch the plot.
Rainbow chard
Brussels sprouts
Mustard greens and baby kale (and weeds)
Temperatures tonight are supposed to reach 31 degrees. I harvested most of the rest of my tender vegetables tonight: chard, last (green) tomatoes, two last cucumbers, hot peppers, two small eggplants. Still growing: carrots, radishes, leeks, fall greens, arugula, kale, chard, butternut squash.
The last dahlias of the season (perhaps).
My share today: Ping Tung eggplant, rutabaga, flat parsley, red Russian kale, jalapeno and ghost peppers (not pictured: tons of Thai basil).
Today’s harvest and a butternut squash that is trying to make it.
I will take back what I said about cucumbers. I harvested two big ones yesterday, plus green beans and two eggplants. There are just a few more tomatoes on the vines now, sadly.