Home garden economics

A personal garden is a hedge against starvation and can even be a source of income when most other sources have dried up. Not only does your family continue to need to eat, but so does everyone else.

So, let's take a look at the economics involved and see if gardening is a 'good fit' for your wallet and table. There is a project in Milwaukee that grows $500,000 worth of produce on only two inner-city acres. Do the math and you'll see that a 1/4th acre building lot can "make the difference" for almost anyone. In fact, an extra $62,500 a year could end our need to punch a clock forever.

If you buy a packet of tomato seeds and start it indoors, you will spend something less than $2.00 for roughly 50 seeds. Fifty tomato plants in 2” pots -- which is what you will have in about 2 months -- would have cost you roughly $150.

But, let's follow that packet of seeds a bit further through the season.

With 12 plants, my wife and I have tomatoes through the summer and some to put away. In fact, we are still drinking tomato juice that we canned in 2003 when we put away over 100 quarts of juice before running out of jars. The total that year for our garden of 240 sq. ft. was roughly 300 quarts and nearly as many pints.

If you have a larger family to care for and you keep 25 of those plants for your own needs, you could easily sell the others for $2.00 each. That's $50 cash in your pocket for a $2.00 investment in seeds, room on an old table and a spot in a cold frame once the weather broke. You are now $48.00 to the good and the tomato plants you kept are effectively free of charge.

The 25 you now set into the ground are going to give you somewhere between 4 pounds and 20 pounds (or more) of fruit each. Unless you planted cherry tomatoes, it's a mighty poor tomato plant that only yields 4 pounds of fruit. Your tomatoes are now worth from $4 to $20 apiece. And, at just $1.00 a pound for organically grown produce, that is definitely the lower end. Delegate a child to sell the excess from your driveway.

So, doing the math, we find that we spent about $12.00 for a packet of seeds and planting materials. The excess plants were sold for (at least) $50.00 and we realized between $100 and $500 in produce for ourselves plus whatever we sold. All this from about 80-120 square feet of soil.

The Department of Agriculture says that the amortized cost of canning a quart of home-grown produce is about ten cents. Those are old numbers, so call it 25 cents. That makes the home-canned product cost about ¾ cent per ounce vs 8 or more cents for the salty, 'chemically enhanced', commercial product. Food you can for yourself is better than what you can buy and costs only a fraction of the store-bought product.

When you “do the math”, gardening makes perfect sense. And might even be your escape hatch from the pincers that are closing around your neighbors.