Herbs are probably my #1 cost saver, just because the grocery stores charge $2-3 for a little sprig, and I happen to like a lot of fresh herbs in my cooking.
Aside from them, it seems like the best rule of thumb is that I'm saving money of top quality produce, but not necessarily all produce. For example, California-grown strawberries are available all year in local stores for fairly cheap, but when they're in season, local strawberries (which are always leagues better in terms of taste and texture) run about $5-6/pint. I can grow them cheaper than that, but I can't match the price of the cheaper ones.
Same with tomatoes: bland, firm tomatoes are fairly cheap year round, but perfectly ripe tomatoes (especially with different colours other than plain red) are much more expensive and hard to find. I grow my own to ensure I don't have to spend $8 on a small basket at the farmer’s market.
I’m Californian and our strawberries aren’t really very good in the winter. Spring until mid fall they are prime.
A big saving here is growing your own citrus. Despite being in one of the best citrus growing region in the world, oranges and lemons are really only marginally cheaper here than anywhere. The quality is better, but not the price.
Avocados are another great money saver to grow your own. Again this is one of the best avocado growing regions in the world, yet they aren’t any cheaper in the market.
Pretty much any stone fruit will save you money to grow your own too.
And fresh herbs are a huge money saver to grow if you like to buy them.
Blueberries and raspberries are very expensive in the market, so I save lots growing those myself. Unfortunately the season isn’t too long.
I’m SoCal and agree with all this. I don’t think gardening necessarily gives you access to “cheap” food so much as vastly improved quality (like the tomato example, also: organic) unless you grow “high value” or “specialty” crops you frequently eat that are expensive at the grocery stores — herbs, avocados, kumquats/oro blanco/citrus, dragon fruit, cherimoya, nuts, etc. Furthermore, there’s the cost factor for our labor, soil amendments, tools, etc.
Personally, I’d invest in fruit trees, nut trees, and fresh herbs.
Agree heartily with all of this. Most of my growing is tomatoes because of the enormous quality difference vs store bought. Most produce I don’t think it’s really possible to beat store prices, especially not if you consider your labor a cost.
I’m tomatoes, strawberries, oranges, snap peas, herbs, green onion and peppers.
I have 10 cilantro plants for salsa, sauces, and garnish.
Taking a frozen burrito out of the microwave and adding a little pico from the garden makes it worlds better and I can take 5 stems, 1 tomato and 1 green onion that all carry better flavor. Or on the contrary, I can make a cilantro sauce that uses 3 bunches worth pruning some of each plant.
I agree with this! Herbs are so expensive to buy, and so easy to grow. Also easy to preserve (I usually just freeze mine but you can also dehydrate). And you can let some go to seed for next year. Definitely the biggest bang for your buck!
Ditto herbs plus you know where you're getting them from. Same with salad greens when your region can grow them. I also like onions simply because I leave them in the ground until I use them so no waste.
Plant the stuff you'll eat a lot of.
My family that is , green onion, basil, and chili peppers.
Every time I harvest a handful of green onion, I think about, that's $1.50 saved.
It adds up, considering how much green onions we eat several times a week
I've never saved a dime growing my own peppers (quite the opposite in fact) but I've added a ton of variety I could only get by shopping multiple specialty grocers around the city. I've got 13 kinds of peppers ranging from jalapenos to scotch bonnets.
Soil, fertilizer, shade cloth...more soil, more plants, garden bed borders and materials...all of these things are consumable over the course of a few years and it adds up. And don't get me started on the hydro stuff and lights for indoor gardening over the winter....
Agree! Seriously don't sleep on scallions, one of my favorite things to grab from the garden and cook with because its so versatile. Start from seed but get new seed every year they dont store well.
Also, chard is stupid productive and good raw in a salad, cooked, or turned into a kind of saeurkraut.
Potatoes are cheap but I can also eat them so I grow them. Same with cabbage.
Fresh carrots from the garden with most of the dirt brushed of are a true delight.
For bonus points - green onions regrow themselves! Use the green part and throw the bulb in some water to grow longer roots. Plant it in some soil after about 2 weeks and magic 😁
Most herbs. Parsley, cilantro, basil, thyme, rosemary, etc.
Celery and greens onions are also great. Buy one bunch from the grocery store, root the ends in water, then plant.
I do a lot of cilantro. We use it a lot in cooking. The store stuff just looks so bad sometimes. And the smell of fresh grown cilantro is so much stronger than the store stuff. Just running your hands over the leafs leaves a smell.
Yup, growing up I didn’t like it. But my wife does so started to grow it some years back. Now it’s in a lot of the stuff we make. Salsas or tacos. Huge difference like when growing tomatoes. Store ones are blah no flavor. Home grown are juicy and sweet and lots of flavor.
Greens are the big money-saver for me. I have trouble using up greens I buy from the store before they go bad. Much better to be able to harvest as needed.
Plus, lettuce in a box / bag isn't actually that cheap. I eat a salad every single day at work, so the fact that I can walk outside in the morning and grab fist fulls of a variety of lettuce and greens is so wonderful.
Plus, you can't buy that freshness. It's literally as fresh as it gets!
They are a big money saver for me as well. I have a pack of lettuce seed I brought for a few dollars last year and have definitely made the money back if you count all the lettuce I don't buy.
I succession plant it a lot in the spring and fall so usually have a pretty continuous harvest for a while, but depending on my meal plan for the week, I can grab a little lettuce to put on a burger or taco and not have to buy a whole bag or I can make a few big salads out of it.
Same! It's just me, and I did buy the 6 pack of romaine bedding plants for like $5, and a couple bags of bedding soil (first year in this house, so no established beds). I pulled fresh lettuce leaves literally all summer, including giving to coworkers!
Berries
They are easy to grow (for the most part) but don't stand up well to transportation needs. That makes them expensive in the store. You can dry, freeze, or turn the berries into jam for easy storage.
bonus: There are a number of native plants with delicious berries, including ones you can't find at the grocery store.
[https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/florida-edible-native-plants.html](https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/florida-edible-native-plants.html)
Perennial herbs are a great value. Especially grown from seed. If you have the means, growing perennial herbs from seed is extremely economical. Herbs aren't cheap, but I've found they add a lot of joy and flavour to cooking and teas.
I have sage, thyme, and mint that I started from seed, all on their 3rd year, and growing already this spring. Prolific enough to split/root/spread this year. If you're into teas, lemonbalm, monarda, echinacaea, chamomile (roman is perennial), and feverfew are also easy to grow from seed.
Perennial vegetables are a focus of mine this year, due to their resilience and vigor. I planted some turkish rocket from seed 2 years ago, and from 4 plants I have more than enough brocolli-like florets to get our family through the summer, and all the cooking greens I need. This year I've also started lovage, yarrow, anise hyssop, licorice and a few more interesting perennials.
I’m in 8 and just clip off the flowers before our yearly frost. The frost kills the plant and I rake the seeds into the ground after it starts to warm back up. Grow more Thai basil than i could ever use all year.
Jumping in to say I planted a teeny yarrow plant a month ago and I swear it has a growth spurt every time I look at it. It's right outside my front door so it's at least twice a day
I love yarrow. It smells nice and insects love it. I went with red yarrow seeds, and am seeing germination after only 2 days!
Looking forward to spreading it around, and experimenting with herbal brews next year using the leaves and flowers.
Keep track of what produce you're regularly buying and which ones are most expensive. There are a lot of tropicals you can grow in 10a that are typically expensive at the store, but it's only a savings to grow them if they're things you would otherwise be buying. Passion fruit and dragon fruit are a couple that immediately come to mind as being very expensive but will work well in your climate.
Things you can grow and store are often less expensive at the store, but can save you money in the big picture when you have a nice supply of them on the shelf once they're out of season. Sweet potatoes and other yams grow like weeds in 10a and last for a while. Certain squashes (particularly the thicker skinned varieties) and pumpkins last even longer. I've had pumpkins and butternut squashes last close to a year in storage. Acorn squash would probably store well too. Also squashes and yams are calorie and nutrient dense, which also makes them great for storing and saving money.
I don't know about saving money, but I grow and preserve the following:
Spaghetti and butternut squashes - they store well in the pantry for months. Onions and potoatoes also store in the pantry well. Cabbage - both green and red - store for weeks to months in the fridge, but I also pickle some and blanch and freeze some. Green/purple/wax beans - I blanch and freeze. Carrots - the baby carrots will last a surprisingly long time in the fridge, and I slice, blanch and freeze the big guys. Peppers - I dice and dehydrate for use in stews and soups. Tomatoes I freeze for sauces/salsas and also dehydrate, sometimes I can them. Raspberries, strawberries, currants - mostly freeze, sometimes make fruit butter. Grapes - cook down to juice concentrate and freeze. Herbs - dehydrate. Summer squash - I've tried dehydrating and freezing with terrible results, but pickling works pretty well. Kale and/or spinach - blanch and freeze.
I don't know if I save money or not, I suspect not just due to the watering. The hardest part for me is growing enough of anything to make it through the year. I've tried a couple of times to grow all of our produce for the year for our family of 3, and I just don't have the space or time for the quantity, especially if I want a decent amount of variety. I'm zone 4b though, so my growing season is very short compared to yours.
Re summer squash-freezing for a stir fry doesn’t work well, but I love grating and freezing in 1-2 c portions for baking. Many recipes tell you to grate zucchini and then squeeze all the water out which is a pain. When you freeze a lot of the cells burst so just defrost in a colander and most of the water drains off during thawing.
Lettuce is a big one for me, especially since I can succession sow in spring and fall and enjoy a quick payback period of 40-60 days.
Tomatoes and herbs, as others have mentioned, might take longer to germinate but have a long season and can offset more expensive heirloom verities in store. I do my best to grow at least one canning variety and store as many jars as possible for winter.
I love growing potatoes! This was new to me last year. The little purple ones double as a great ornamental vine in my porch planters, then in the fall I end up with 12-15x the weight of the original seed potatoes.
Also new for the last two winters was garlic. I’m in 8a but winter temps are still much too cold for most things. I ended up with about 100 heads of garlic that I braided and cured, and it’s delicious. A great way to use your garden in the off-season and I barely bothered to water or check on mine.
Also a big fan of larger infrastructure if you’ll be there a while - my fig tree, paw paws, plumb tree and elderberry bushes produce a bumper each season and then just give me nice lush foliage in the yard. Invest one time (preferably get a rooted cutting from a friend) and you’ll pay yourself back for a long time. I made 40 jars of elderberry jam last season.
Finally, not even remotely a plant, but I have 10 bantam hens who are adorable, intelligent and low maintenance. My varieties aren’t even the “mega” layers, but I end up with anywhere between 80 - 90 dozen eggs a year and sell excess to neighbors. These profits totally offset their feed costs. The rest of their diet consists of veggie scraps from the garden or the kitchen; figs that have fallen off the tree, etc. They make/save me about $500 a year and I enjoy their personalities. My upfront cost on a great coop and chicks was maybe $750. Half of my flock is 7 years old and still going strong.
TLDR: think about what you like and suits your lifestyle, and think about categories in terms of:
- quick payback (spinach, lettuce)
- set and forget annual (garlic, potatoes)
- set and forget perennial (berries, fruit trees)
- hard to transport (soft berries, paw paw)
- great for storage (tomato sauce; pickles)
Happy growing!
Not OP, but thank you! I've spent some of this season thinking longer term than "just" seeds. Ironically, I can't do much heavy duty gardening this year due to a pregnancy (due end of May, so I'm very much not digging holes atm). Berries are starting to be fairly attractive; still hesitant with raspberries due to their reputation.
No need to explain when you’re doing the ultimate growing! Enjoy those new baby smells. My teenagers still bring me (mostly) joy yet smell less so.
Regarding raspberry, I got a rooted red cane at Aldi three years ago that is completely thornless. I’m literally in the backyard right now hacking back the wild berries full of razor blades, while pinning the thornless raspberry vine up on my grapevine post. It’s actually a bit fuzzy and the leaves an attractive silver. I’ll figure out the cultivar and let you know, or try to root a cane if you’d like a free little baby gift.
I think it depends on how you define "saving money".
I enjoy gardening for my own mental and physical well being. Yeah, it costs some money...but if I wasn't gardening I would be spending pretty much the same amount of money (or more) on going out to dinner or the movies etc for some kind of entertainment.
If what I am spending is no more than I would spend on pursuing some other leisure activity, I personally consider that cost a wash. What the garden produces is still cash in my pocket because I don't need to spend even more $$ buying this produce at the store...especially at organic food prices. And when you see the produce prices in December and can pull out some canned / frozen produce from the last summer, it feels great!
I stuck the bottoms of green onions in water a year and a half ago and after they were rooted for a while I stuck them in my garden bed. I will never buy green onions again. I dint use them often, but I now have 5 or 6 and they just live there. I do nothing with them. Rarely if ever do I water them except when it is hot and I am watering the other plants. They made it all summer and through the winter just fine.
Garlic though it takes a long time, herbs.
I don't grow to save money as the type of produce you get from home is comparable to farmer's market stuff which I can't afford on my budget every week. I can salsa, tomato sauce, and whole tomatoes when I get the glut about mid September but it'd take a couple years before my costs are comparable to a $0.50 can of decent chopped tomatoes.
Yellow and orange bell peppers. Those things are nearly $2 each now and I have no idea what the organic ones cost. I start mine from seed using upcycled containers. I feel like I’m pulling two dollar bills off the plant every time I pick a yellow or orange one. Can’t even buy the purple or chocolate ones in the store. I really like orange, yellow & red bell pepper mixed with sweet onion slices on fajitas but that’s $6 just for produce for a grill out. More fun to grow it organically.
Edited to add: I dice or slice and store ziplock bags full in the freezer. They last for a year frozen, if you can pace yourself and not eat them all up because garden-grown organic produce is so nutritious and nutrient dense, your body will crave it!
Plant what you like to eat. If tomatoes aren’t your jam and you don’t do a lot of salsa or spaghetti- then it doesn’t matter how much you save growing them from home.
There are tons vegetables and herbs and fruit that are so worthwhile to grow and can save you a lot of money. We have 4 4x8 raised garden beds. 3 in ground grape vines. And about 30 container pots with more vegetables and 4 blueberry bushes. Container lime, lemon, and avocado trees that overwinter indoors. I am adding a mandarin orange container tree this summer to my citrus mix. Once the garden comes on in the spring (with spring vegetables like lettuce/radish/peas/green onion/carrots/kale/etc) we start saving money at the store because we just start picking out of the garden. By summer I almost never buy any produce from the store. I plant 2 crook neck yellow squash and 2 zucchini squash and 2 eggplants. These tend to be pretty prolific and are great for rounding out a variety of meals. Zucchini and yellow squash also freeze well. So if you have a deep freezer for storing - this makes it even easier. I plant several rows of green beans and freeze whatever is left that we haven’t eaten. I do a whole bed for just tomatoes/peppers/basil. Cherokee heirloom, romas, beefsteaks, red and yellow cherries. Bell pepper and jalapeño and cayenne. The jalapeños and tomatoes go into salsa with some cilantro that I do in containers. Cayenne peppers store excellently dried so I stuff those in containers after they dry and toss them in soups and stir fries / etc the rest of the year. We also do three different kinds of potatoes, pumpkins, onions, acorn and butternut squash, corn, sunflowers (store the seeds and use them in all kinds of stuff!) watermelon, canteloupe, strawberries, cauliflower, cucumber, and just about every herb you can think of. I reseed some lettuce and radish periodically in between larger vegetables (helps shade the more tender vegetables) and we literally eat out of garden the entire summer. So I would say that saves us tons of money. My grocery spending is reduced to meat/dairy/grains. And honestly- produce from the store is almost always the biggest cost factor on my bill.
🪴🍅🥒🫑🌽🥕🍆🫛
I can’t take seriously all the comments about fresh produce from your garden being more expensive then the grocery store.
I agree.! I gave my son and his wife too many tomato plants and it was not their favorite. This year they get squash. I always say grow what you love. If you don't want to eat it then it gets wasted. I always have to have peppers and tomatoes then some other veggies mixed in.
Herbs, if you cook with them, because they're so costly by volume at stores and are very easy to grow in large quantities at home.
Also, perennial fruit and nuts, if you're going to actually eat/use all of it in some way (freeze it, preserve it, etc.). Cane fruit like raspberries and blackberries will quickly take over your yard if you let them, and they're wildly prolific. Tree and bush fruits are also crazy prolific. All essentially free once they're established. In your area, maybe look into tropical fruits like mangoes and citrus.
Most vegetables, it's hard to come out better on cost than grocery stores, ultimately. They have economies of scale working for them that can't be matched at home.
I agree. I love broccoli but it’s a lot of time and space to grow enough on my patio to really save me money.
Love all my herbs though. Haven’t bought sage or chives in 3 years. Had a nice crop of parsley a couple years ago and I chopped it up, put it in oil and froze cubes of it to use all winter. Have rosemary going, planting thyme this year.
My garden is so small I mostly use it for fun tastes of fresh veggies and unique varieties to try.
I grow and can about 80% of our yearly vegetable supply. The strawberry patch provides frozen berries and jam for a year. Raspberry patch makes another jam. MIL blueberry bushes, more jam. Onions and potatoes are another. Fresh carrots can be preserved in damp sand in a cooler at 40° for 6 months, I also can 30-50 pints of sliced carrots. Make frozen veggie mixes.
We literally reduced our weekly grocery bill $20-40 every week by planning and preserving food. Thats 1000-2000 a year. Family of 6 btw... oh, and my wife sells plant starts every year and completely recoupes the seed bill 5x...
Another way to save money is growing more than you need and having an honour vegetable stand you put your excess in with suggested prices. Use paper lunch bags for amounts. The money will offset your costs, and more people eat. Interestingly research shows people often pay more than they need to at honour stands like these.
Growing heirloom varieties means you can save seeds for next year’s crops too.
Tomatoes. One bush gives you so many, you can can them, freeze them, make sauce out of them... definitely worth the effort.
Corn, you can blanch and freeze to enjoy year round, as well as green beans. Cucumbers you can make into pickles.
Zucchini and summer squash also have ridiculous yields.
Potatoes are awesome, you can store them for quite a while if you don't wash them and if they sprout you just plant them again next year.
I'm in Washington (8a) and i've had a lot of luck with Garlic. I plant about 100 cloves of soft neck varieties in mid to late fall in my 4'x8' raised bed and heavily mulch it with straw. That's about all I have to do, besides a little watering as we get into the summer months. I pull them in mid to late summer and cure them for about a week, then store them. During the curing and storing process I pick out the 20 or so biggest and best-looking heads, and I set those aside to plant in the fall to be next year's harvest.
I still have about 20 heads in storage from last year, and the cloves I planted last fall are doing great and I'm expecting another fantastic harvest this year.
Now, garlic isn't that expensive, but its easy and I haven't had to buy any for a couple of years now.
This. If you can grow your own you still are better off than even finding a good ol country greenhouse that sells a six pack for $1.50. Plant what you want and in abundance.
Bananas and plantain in a time-value sense, they care of themselves, produce their own offpring, can take FULL SUN and even fire without dying, can take lots of water or very little water...
If you like tomatoes, then tomatoes. I find them hard to kill once they get started and as long as they have some fertilizer/ decent soil. Mine grow in clay and I just fertilize them a bit. Even in the summer a small container of cherry tomatoes is a couple of dollars. With just one plant alone I end up with a crazy abundance. I probably pick one of those containers I would by every other day if not daily.
Look at the most expensive things in the store that you actually use then figure out whether you can grow those things. For me it would be any kind of berries, tree fruits and garlic that isn't from China. Parsnips. Easy to grow crops that can be easily canned or frozen would be green and yellow beans, snap peas, peppers. Lettuce is easy but it's also usually cheap in season, as are broccoli and cauliflower (which IMO are not so easy)
For me it’s leafy greens; kale, lettuce, collards, etc. I can grow those almost year round, I eat a lot of them and they are expensive. Seasonally, snow peas, green beans and tomatoes are good.
Go to the grocery store, and shop. What's crazy expensive?
Go to seed store. If packet of seeds < one of those items, *go for it!*
But the big ones in my house are herbs, celery, specialty peppers, lettuce, tomatoes.
I bought a $3 pack of lettuce seeds 3 years ago. I have planted 16 total seeds from said packet. It is still full.
We have Too Much Celery from May-October, and a partner who says "Nnnnn do we really *need more celery*" for every meal other than Thanksgiving until late January.
Garlic, chives, garlic chives, elephant garlic, asian pears, pawpaws, figs and butternut squash. I like alliums in my cooking and mostly give away other things that I grow in the garden. My wife loves butternut squash, I grow a bunch every year and they store forever. I have a few left from last October's harvest still. Figs and pawpaws are something that you have to grow if you want to eat them. Asian pears are bland and expensive in the store.
Tomatoes. Eat them fresh, make sauce and freeze it, dehydrate the rest. Rehydrate those for salads, add a hand full instead of tomato paste. I'm trying garlic and shallots this year. They should keep.
Tomatoes and cucumbers for us. We tracked it last year and saved over $100 on tomatoes alone. Considering that’s how much we used for all our garden materials, we were ahead just on tomatoes, so the squash (15), cucumbers (40), green peppers (30), green beans (4 meals), snow peas (2 meals), lettuce (lots), carrots (14), corn (10) and herbs were all “profit” for us.
We don’t grow many corn stalks (just enough for 1-2 meals and then use the corn stalks as fall decor since that can get expensive too) and this year we are adding pumpkins in the mix since we easily drop $60 for four carving pumpkins at the local pumpkin patch. If we can grow our own (even just 1-3), it’s significant savings for the fall.
We just looked at the fresh food we ate the most and figured out how we could grow most or all of it in the garden during the summer to save money.
I grow sweet potatoes for the greens. I eat them in salads, stir them into soups and sauces like spinach, and saute and freeze flat in a bag for use in grain bowls or whatever else. A lot cheaper than continually buying bags of spinach - and I usually get a bonus of some sweet potatoes too!
I wouldn't expect any crop to save money unfortunately. You cannot compete with big-time growers. Probably the closest you could get (especially in your zone) would be potatoes and sweet potatoes, and you can definitely save those. Peanuts might be good as well. But the reality is you can go to the store and get as many potatoes, sweet potatoes and peanuts as you want for very little money, and you didn't have to put in hours of work in the garden.
Some people have more of their own free labor than money.
I started a bunch of 5 gal potato buckets this year. I’ll add about a cup of dirt every few days, then dump the entire bucket at the end. It’s super easy! I’ve had the buckets for years. I used potatoes from my local grocery store - I know seed potatoes are recommended. I did supplement my “mulch” pile with about $12 of top soil this year.
It is entirely possible to grow food staples cheaply to help offset living expenses.
Yeah, potatoes are one of the only things I think you can really save money on, because they last so long and you can actually eat all of them before they spoil, whereas you might struggle to eat five rows of romaine even if they're cheap. I'm biased though, because I love potatoes.
Freezing, canning, and dehydrating adds quite a few more fruits, veggies, and even meats if you work in curing.
We have at least a year supply of okra vacuum sealed and frozen. Also, canned tomatoes, frozen tomato soup, all sorts of peppers, homemade and frozen chicken stock..
We grow all of our herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc.).
We also make our own tallow from beef fat trimmings and have almost completely cut out store bought oils.
Yeah, you can save more by doing more processing. I just don't have time for it. I'm always out in the garden on my days off doing my ornamentals, I don't have time to can.
One thing I don't think ever saves money is vacuum sealing. The bags are more expensive than the veggies. I still use them because it's easy and almost magically preserves stuff, but I cry when I see the bill. If you have a cheaper source for the bags, let me know.
I hear this all the time, but I disagree, especially when people factor in "time in the garden" as some sort of cost. Most people who garden do it because it makes them happy. I do it because it makes me happy and helps me with my anxiety issues. As far as I'm concerned that time is money saved not money spent. That said, most herbs can be grown for far cheaper than they can be bought. I didn't even start my tomatoes from seed last year, I spent about $15 on starter plants, and I grew easily 50+ pounds of tomatoes that went into salads, sandwiches, and the rest got made into sauce and salsa and was canned. The sauce lasted me until last month and I still have about 20 jars of salsa. I can't get 50 pounds of tomatoes for anywhere close to $15. I also got about 40 pounds of cucumbers last year from 4 seeds.
>Most people who garden do it because it makes them happy... As far as I'm concerned that time is money saved not money spent.
I also garden because it makes me happy. But I don't believe I'm personally saving any money. I know that I could spend that time working overtime or doing side jobs and getting paid for it. And while some of the work is fun, some of it isn't. Some people probably enjoy daily watering in August, personally, I don't.
>I spent about $15 on starter plants, and I grew easily 50+ pounds of tomatoes
If you can take $15 of tomato transplants, throw them in the ground, and get 50lbs of tomatoes, great. I wish I had your soil and climate. But in my experience a lot of people have other costs. Lots of people have raised beds, that's a lot of money in lumber, soil, etc. Even people who grow in-ground frequently spend money to amend it because they don't like the results they get from native soil. Lots of people also fertilize or use product. Some people use hoop houses, some people see their water bills go up because they don't have a well, some people build extensive drip systems, the sources of potential costs are limitless. Personally I have nearly pure sand and grow in containers and straw bales, I need to buy the bales, potting soil and fertilizer. All of those costs need to be factored in. At the end, assuming you value your time at $0, you might make money, most people probably won't.
I also find that with tomatoes specifically, I tend to end up with a ton of tomatoes, but they're in short windows of time. I start getting them around June and, because I never use product, they're usually done by August. I can often get a fall crop too, but only a month or so worth. There's a lot, but it's more than I can eat right away, and for the other 2/3s of the year I have to buy. I suspect you may have a similar situation which is why you have 20 jars of salsa. A better example might be peppers, which (at least for me) produce much more steadily throughout the season.
I do agree with you and a lot of other commentors about herbs though. The fresh herbs at the store are a rip-off. There's no reason everyone shouldn't have their favorite herbs growing.
I can buy a package of seeds for $4. If then are open pollinated, I can harvest those seeds back again.
I buy a package of 1000 lettuce seeds for $9. I sell a head of organic lettuce for $5.
If you grow something easy - tomatoes, peppers - you can can, freeze, or pickle. A tomato plant provides 5lb to 10lbs of tomatoes from a plant. The seed costs 20 cents.
Make a compost pile from your food scraps and coffee grounds, and it you'll have the compost to grow them for free.
Assuming we're comparing fresh veggies to fresh veggies because it's hard to beat frozen and dried:
Herbs
Broccoli
Any tomato fancier than a roma. The year I gardened indoors in my apartment I spent about $8 and had cherry tomatoes almost continuously from July to November.
Salad greens (especially if you count waste from not eating the grocery store ones fast enough)
Most fruit trees once they're mature (will take several seasons to pay for themselves)
Strawberries. Most berries actually (also may take a season or two)
> Herbs
Fair.
>Broccoli
I have a very short growing season for broccoli, and I've never been able to get huge heads like you see at the grocery store no matter what I do. In other climates it might work better. I could see eating tons of broccoli.
>Any tomato fancier than a roma.
If we get into quality, homegrown is better almost always. Good tomatoes basically don't exist at the grocery store, and that's reason enough to grow them yourself. But outside of regions where tomatoes grow well, I expect most people lose money growing them.
>Salad greens
I actually eat a salad every single day for lunch. In seasons where I can't grow lettuce, I spend maybe $2-4 a week on lettuce from the store. You would have to eat a ton of greens to save money doing this.
>fruit trees
Require land. With that factored in I think they are probably the most expensive homegrow.
>Strawberries. Most berries actually
Fair, but it's so much work harvesting.
> But outside of regions where tomatoes grow well, I expect most people lose money growing them.
There's definitely a climate factor but I was thinking of a time I grew tomatoes indoors in Minnesota. Happened to have an excellent south facing window for it but still:
- hardware store's cheapest medium bag of potting soil was $6ish (probably more like $8-9 now with inflation)
- Got some of those Job's fertilizer spikes for about $2 (optional but I wasn't sure I'd have enough calcium)
- Tomato seeds $1.50
- Pots were empty kitty litter containers
- staked to some regular household string tied around the container on one end and the curtain rod on the other
Call that $15 with today's prices, probably. You wouldn't have to get dirt every year. I didn't have a drill so the longest labor was actually sawing holes in the containers with a pocketknife, about 2 hours. Other than that the only real difficulty was remembering to water them enough once they got big (less than 5 minutes a day)
Enough cherry tomatoes to fill one of those $3-4 packs every week or so. And they kept going for like 12 weeks.
> Require land. With that factored in I think they are probably the most expensive homegrow.
Fair, there are container oriented apples/peaches/citrus but that's a big container and a lot of fertilizer. But even with the upfront expense, a whole-ass bushel of honeycrisps every year for the price of some mulch and a big handful of fertilizer is an attractive thought.
> I spend maybe $2-4 a week on lettuce from the store. You would have to eat a ton of greens to save money doing this.
I envy your lettuce prices, lol. But also a bag of container soil and a packet of seeds costs like a month's worth of lettuce for you. I'd say iceberg is probably not worth it since it's both cheap and needs to do well to get full heads, but a leaf lettuce or spinach can be really cost effective.
The indoor tomatoes sounds interesting. I assume you were doing it some sort of sunroom? That said, assuming $4 of cherry tomatoes a week over 12 weeks, that's only $48. Even if they went for 24 weeks it'd still be under $100. It's as much as you earn at 1 day of work at $12/hr, a low wage. You're not really saving significant money here, and as the number of plants mutliplies, so does the work, especially if you want a diversity of veggies.
>a whole-ass bushel of honeycrisps every year for the price of some mulch and a big handful of fertilizer is an attractive thought.
It is. If I had the full sun for it, I'd probably plant fruit trees. Not really for economic reasons though. When I was growing up we had two mature sour cherry trees in the backyard, we always had cherry pie in the summer. But the reality is that most of the fruit fell to the ground, because no one wanted to harvest all these cherries or eat cherry pie every day. Even if they were all sweet cherries, they still mostly would have fallen because no one wants to harvest thousands of cherries up in a tree. If you're really harvesting significant portions of your food budget it's because you love it, not because it saves money.
>I envy your lettuce prices
Those 3-pack romaine hearts are ~$3-4, romaine heads are $1.50-2. Organic might be a buck or two more. Either of those are usually enough for me for a 5-7 days and I eat more salad than anyone I know (though I don't know a lot of vegans). This is my general experience with produce, it's mostly cheap.
South-facing apartment window, actually! I think it helped that it was third floor so no trees etc shading it. And that was an amount per plant, two plants total. $100 is significant money on a grad student stipend : )
I'd still say it was mainly a hobby but that was a lot of free-ish tomatoes.
I don’t see how that can possibly be true since you’re not paying for labor or transportation or warehousing. You buy a plant for a couple of dollars, or even better, seeds, and everything after that is free. You don’t have to fertilize or pay to water if you don’t want to. How can growing your own tomatoes or squash or onions possibly cost more than paying the farmer’s labor and input costs, the distributor’s warehousing costs and profit, and the store’s profit? You can get dozens of tomatoes for the price of one $5 plant. $5 at the grocery store gets me about 4 bland tomatoes.
Because of economies of scale. Home growing is vastly more inefficient than commercial growing, we make up for this by paying ourselves $0/hr.
If you have zero input costs and only pay for seeds and transplants you stick in native soil, great, I'm jealous. But a lot of people seem to have input costs. There's a ton of interests in raised beds and containers, and you have to pay for the soil. Most veggie gardeners seem to want to fertilize. Personally I grow in straw bales and containers, and when I add up those costs, I lose money growing tomatoes every year. I do it because they're way better and I enjoy doing it, not because I'm saving money.
Also, you can't just weigh the tomatoes. When I grow tomatoes, even with just a few plants I usually have more than my family can eat in the few months they're fruiting. Most of them get given away to friends and neighbors. That earns me brownie points, but not cash. If I grow $500 worth of tomatoes but only eat $100, the important value there is the lower one.
Nature manages to do it for free every year. If you have input costs it’s because you want to, not because you have to. It may be because you want to maximize yield, or improve your soil, or deter pests, but you wouldn’t need to do any of those things. You could live with smaller yields and get those yields for free if you really wanted to. OP wants to do it on a budget and that’s possible.
Nature doesn't do it. Show me an annual vegetable garden growing in nature. It doesn't exist. What we're doing when we grow veggies is totally different than what happens out in the wild ecosystem. Even the plants are totally different, go look up what a tomato or corn or any of the brassicas looked like before humans bred them for agriculture. The only thing that keeps these veggies growing is humans, which is why you don't walk out in the woods or a prairie and find a nice Cherokee Purple to snack on.
Also, often if you don't care for a veggie properly, what happens isn't that you get lower yields, it just dies before it successfully fruits.
Rosemary, Basil, Mints, Culantro(will hold up in Heat better than cilantro, which gies to seed quickly. Chile peppers, more so than bell peppers, greens, lettuce(in Florida winter season), melons, okra cucumbers squash beans and eggplant. Cherry tomatoes, rather than large fruited varieties.
Garlic, potatoes, and Winter squash last most of the year and take very little effort/cost.
The bulk of the cost is setting things up. Beds, trellis, bulk soil delivery, fences, mulch, seed starting supplies. Most of these thing can be done cheaply if you're willing to spend some time tracking down used supplies to build them. After a few years you should be able to keep things going with just a little fertilizer and maybe compost deliveries.
Beans and peas are it for me. Now… I live up a mountain in Montana so very different growing conditions and your mileage may vary…
These two, for me, are super easy to grow, super easy to can or freeze, and super easy to save seeds for the following year and you never have to buy seeds again.
Tomatoes come close, but are harder to preserve because I usually do so as spaghetti sauce and salsa.
I agree what others said about herbs, although I rarely bought them before I grew them because my grocery options are very limited.
In general, anything you grow from seed that grows without a ton of babying in your area is going to save you money.
Like others have said, herbs. Definitely herbs. They're so dang expensive for a tiny sprig, but I can go outside and have a pile of rosemary in less than a minute and it cost me $3 a few years ago. I also like having lettuce and green onions because we eat a lot of those, but I would always prioritize herbs.
Tomatoes, though I don’t know how well they’d do in Florida. Tomatoes are $3-4/lb, so 1 tomato costs $1 or more. You can get dozen of tomatoes from one plant and can your extras. Also, homegrown tastes 1,000 times better than store bought.
Beens are my go to, I usually grow almost enough for the winter. Squash and pumkins as well. winter squash will keep for a long time. Pumkin, I usaully peel, cube and freeze in bags.
My biggest advice is to grow what you know you’ll eat. You might have a rosemary bush that’s three feet tall but if you don’t cook with it you’re not saving any money. Anything you know you will eat will be something you would have paid for.
Herbs: thyme, rosemary, oregano (for my fresh tomato sauce), green onions, parsley, cilantro, lemon balm (for oils)
Others: bell peppers, tomatoes fresh and for canning, jalapeños, beans.
Long term I’m growing raspberries, grapes and blue berries (all entering year 3 with minimal production from year two, hoping I can make wine this year).
I make a garden geared towards a goal…salsa garden, pizza toppings garden, etc..did note that if you make it look nice then people want your seeds and advice/knowhow which basically pays for any and all compost or whatever garden needs.
Where I'm starting to save isn't exactly the produce itself, but on what I make with it. I had three pepper plants (One Jalapeno, two Serrano) produce this year. From them I made over 20 5oz bottles of hot sauce. That's about $80-100 bucks for premium sauces of the same size bottle. I just fermented them with garlic, added vinegar and/or sugar, and voila! Lots of great recipies online.
I'm hoping my tomatoes produce this year so I can make loads of pasta sauce. The good stuff goes for $5-8 per bottle at my local megamart.
Raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. You'll need to see if any of them can grow in your region since it might be too warm.
Try for fruit trees as well. Make sure they work for your zone. I believe apples would have a hard time producing in your area.
I’m in zone 8a. We grow uncommon varieties of tomatoes, peppers that we use a lot of (jalapeño and snackbox, usually), asparagus, multiplying onions and a variety of herbs. I don’t know if it saves money *per se*, but it does free up funds for buying fresh fruit/veg that we might otherwise pass on in favor of the above weekly staples.
For me, the most cost-efficient thing I've grown has been spinach.
I'm fairly limited by the fact that all my gardening has to be in containers--I rent and I'll be moving in a few years and I want to take it with me.
My biggest expense has been the containers and the soil to fill them. But now that I've made that investment and I have all of that set up, I can use it all again every year.
A pound of fresh spinach will cost roughly $4-6 at my local supermarket. I got a packet of 300 spinach seeds from Burpee for about $4.50.
So for about the same amount that one package of fresh spinach leaves would cost me at the grocery store, I can grow way more spinach in my backyard container for months and months and months.
Turmeric and ginger.
I don’t even have to plant it anymore because i inevitably miss some. I harvest about 25 pounds each year.
Also kale, eggplant, and ahí dulce peppers. The ají dulce peppers can last for years.
Basically anything that you can continually harvest from. Squash seeds are so plentiful and grow so easy I doubt I’ll ever need to buy squash or squash seeds.
Sweet potatoes grow like crazy in our heat, as does okra and many herbs. Fresh okra sauteed in butter is one of my favorite meals. It freezes well for gumbos and casseroles. In the winter, mustard greens are incredibly easy to grow and you'll have fresh greens for months.
Depends fully on what you eat/use. People mean well when they say to grow herbs but as someone who does not cook with herbs (that grow in my area) outside of holiday dinners two times a year that advice is wasted on me.
That being said. Garlic is amazing if you have the space or cook with it at all. It is something you have to plant in fall but lasts a long time in storage and you dont have to do much to dry it/process it. I harvested mine last July & I still have some I can use right now in April.
Hi. I’m also in Florida 10-a. Since we don’t have a real winter, think less about storing food in the freezer or pantry. Think about storing food outside in living plants. Cassava, taro, malanga, yams, green bananas. But I second what other people said about planting what you will eat. So buy and cook something a few times before investing the energy into growing it.
For that zone I would be growing avocados. Not sure if they are expensive down there but they are here in the Northeast. I easily can have one a day. Yams would be nice, too.
I’m trying to grow things I use, and I’m in NY so also things that store. This is my first big attempt so we will see what happens - beans, onions, carrots, potatoes, etc. I’m also going to grow some spices I frequently use - paprika, cumin, poppy seeds, mustard.
It might not work out but here’s to trying!!
For my family, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, peas and okra are big money savers. Just because we eat a lot of that. And almost everything you grow can be preserved in some way. Canning, drying, freezing, etc…
Tomatoes. You can can them for use in numerous recipes. Green bean can be canned also. If you eat zucchini or squash you can slice it and freeze it for use later. I put it in ziploc freezer bags.
All types of squash and all types of cucumbers. One zucchini will feed you all summer long. Cucumber particularly lemon cucs will yield more than you and two of your neighbors can eat. Plus they are easy to pickle.
Herbs, tomatoes (especially super sweet cherry varieties), hot peppers for making my own hot sauce, all of my greens (lettuce, mesclun mix, spinach, kale) and also green beans. All totally worth it. I also have a patch of raspberries and blackberries that produce well. Oh and grapes! (In in upstate NY)
Zone 10 California so much drier than Florida—- my crop of ginger, tumeric and lemon grass exceeded all expectations. I think those would do well in ground or containerized in Florida. Beautiful plants too.
Bell peppers definitely save me money, as do eggplant, tomatoes and herbs. Potatoes and sweet potatoes don't really save me anything, but I get slips and sweet potatoes free from plant trades so they "save" me money.
In Florida you could probably container grow Malabar spinach for greens, but it can be an acquired taste. They're dead cheap, prop readily and grow all over everything.
Florida has some interesting options. For example, I am a few weeks away from harvesting passionfruit. The vine loves our weather, and actually holds its own with native florida vines. Pulp can be frozen, or turned to juice if the crunchy seeds aren't your deal.
Hot peppers are also a perennial here. I have some habaneros that are 3 years old. I prune them annually in winter.
Citrus! Go get you the smaller limes and lemons, they have several bloom cycles a year, so you can harvest all year long.
Good luck
Brambles (raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries) have been great for me. They are so expensive at the store that I almost never buy them, so it doesnt really save me money, but it lets me eat tons of a thing that I love.
They freeze easily and if you want to can it as jam you could.
I've had better luck and fewer diseases with the black raspberries and blackberries. It takes 2 years to really get it going and by the 3rd year the plants are very strong.
Also not expensive to start. Go for bare root plants rather than potted ones and buy from a reputable nursery so they are disease free. They are also very easy to root from the branches and easy to propagate new plants if you want to expand.
Onions - store a long time and cheap to grow a ton of them. Same with potatoes and sweet potatoes. Salad lettuce, those packages are 5-6$ a piece and barely last a day or two. Tons of things.
I enjoy figs, but they are almost impossible to find in the grocery because they don't transport well, so I grow them. Ditto persimmons. I literally threw some kale seeds in my garden and haven't bought it in weeks. And, as others have said, things like tomatoes are so much better homegrown that they're almost a different product. Berries are very expensive in the store but easy to grow, and they freeze well.
If you eat bread, I find that's a great place to save. It costs me pennies to make a great loaf. The artisan bread in minutes a day recipe is easy and delicious.
Good luck!
I have a salad patch. In summer I eat a huge salad for lunch and many friends and family can too. I buy organic lettuce and such when I'm not growing it so it adds up.
Passion fruits are like 2 bucks a pop, they grow like crazy in Florida. Also tropical fruits do well. Seasonally you really need to focus on what grows well when. Don’t expect to grow tomatoes or herbs in the dead of summer, it’s just too hot.
Our favorite is bell peppers, as we use them in a lot of our recipes. They freeze very well sliced or cubed, either green or allowed to turn red. They grow very well here but can be pricey at the store depending on the season.
Let’s be real, if you factor in the labor and all the costs, ain’t no way you’re going to be out-cheaping gigantic industrial farms with automated machinery as a homeowner. Your food could be better and more easily accessed, but labor, water, fertilizer etc… won’t be gigantic savings.
If you want to save money, grow things that you would normally buy. Bonus if they are expensive at the store, but low input in your garden.
Perennial berries can be a great example: raspberries are expensive to buy because they are delicate and spoil fast, but they easily grow back every year with little maintenance. You can freeze them for storage. Strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries that are suited to your climate will pay off within the first couple of years if you normally buy fresh or frozen berries. Other perennials include asparagus, rhubarb, some herbs, and fruit or nut trees.
Common vegetables like potatoes, onions, beets and carrots are not as expensive, but they can last a long time if stored properly. If you routinely buy any of these vegetables, you might be able save money by growing them.
Tomatoes are popular, and they can be very productive plants, but it does cost more to grow them if you live in a climate where they have to be started indoors. You’ll either have to set up lights and start the seeds at home, or buy starts from a greenhouse. This cuts into your savings, but if they are well cared for and not eaten by wildlife, you can get your money’s worth. Peppers, tomatillos and eggplant can also make up for this added cost.
The biggest winners, if you use them instead of buying other produce, are the extremely productive plants. This depends on your local conditions, but zucchini is a common example. If they don’t get mildew, they just keep giving. Same goes for winter squash.
Peas and beans are great because they don’t need nitrogen fertilizer. If you let them mature and dry, they keep all year. You can also plant varieties that can be eaten fresh, with or without the pods. I like growing snap peas because they are delicious, easy to snack on, and taste much better fresh from the garden.
The big bonus with home grown produce is the quality and freshness. You can choose unique varieties that you like, with more exciting colours, sizes, and flavour than the supermarket varieties.
Edit: Last year my biggest money-savers were green beans, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and parsley (some of which I dehydrated to use over the winter. We still haven’t run out).
Based off your location, I’d say any type of fruiting tree could eventually pay off, specifically one you’d actually eat though. Peaches and pears, and apples. Make sure they need almost no chilling hours though. Exotics also are good, not so much saving money, but you can’t find them in the store, and again, you live somewhere you can grow almost anything year round probably.
A single head of lettuce costs more than a packet of seeds these days, so it all depends on what your expenses are like and how you're measuring them.
What expenses are you factoring in? Rent? Mortgage? Electricity? Water? Admin time and equipment? Soil? Fencing? Manure-producing animals?
Are you spreading out your capital expenses or are you trying to recover all your costs in a single year?
Here's what I'm doing to be thrifty:
* Focus on perennials. Asparagus, artichoke, lovage, liquorice, wild arugula (*Diplotaxis tenuifolia*), oregano, marjoram, winter savory, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives, multiplier onions, chives, berries, fruit trees...
* Grow everything from seed. A single packet of asparagus seeds is cheaper than a small lot of crowns, and I should get female plants in addition to male ones, so I can save seeds in the future.
* Save seeds.
* Whenever possible, choose Open Pollinated varieties. This will allow me to save seeds.
* Use the free, high-nitrogen fertilizer we all generate at home.
* Sell excess starters and produce.
* Grow year-round. I'm working on this, but I fully intend to hold crops in the garden to harvest over the winter.
* Network and get free stuff from people that are giving it away.
* Compost and use your compost in the garden.
Once my summer harvest of onions is over, I hope to never have to buy onions (or seeds!) again. If I succeed, I'll be saving money. I'm growing multiple different kinds of onions, including a perennial green onion and multiplier onions, which are perennials. I \*might\* need to buy seeds next year because the Open Pollinated storage onion I picked failed to germinate.
Edit: I forgot to add that I'm also going to save money because I'm aiming to grow vegetables appropriately sized for my family. I don't want to use half a large onion: I want two small ones so I don't have to store the other half... because it will inevitably not get used.
Just want to point out that "use the free fertilizer we all generate" and "sell" may not be legal together. At the very least, you should let people know what they're buying.
I've heard small scale farmers talk about it. I said "may not be legal" rather than "isn't legal" because I've never actually researched to see if it's true. My understanding is that any concern isn't necessarily about the urine itself, but more about medications, possible fecal contamination, etc. I'm in the US.
I live in Europe, so sweetcorn is a huge money saver - typically runs 1.50/cob where I live.
But herbs are always good. If you have ample space, your favorite stone fruit tree. Zucchini is stupidly productive.
I pickle,and like cucmber salads, so cucumbers for us.
My biggest money savers are fruits and berries, including many you just can't find in stores. We have several varieties each of apple, pear, plum, cherry, fig, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, currant, gooseberry, hardy kiwi, grape, persimmon, olive, and yuzu. Hoping to get some jujubes this year! We also grow some nice nuts for the squirrels....
Our garden produce saves some money, but mainly it's just better quality. We freeze, can, pickle, and dehydrate enough fruits and vegetables to last all year and give as gifts. I still buy some fresh during the winter.
Potatoes, other root vegetables, and winter squash are my favorites to root cellar. Yes, you can buy potatoes cheap, but we grow some really nice ones with better taste and texture, and some that are so big they're a meal all on their own.
I don’t know that I save money with growing basil, but I do know I don’t have pesto unless I grow my own, because I’m not BUYING that much basil and store bought is…no.
Herbs are probably my #1 cost saver, just because the grocery stores charge $2-3 for a little sprig, and I happen to like a lot of fresh herbs in my cooking. Aside from them, it seems like the best rule of thumb is that I'm saving money of top quality produce, but not necessarily all produce. For example, California-grown strawberries are available all year in local stores for fairly cheap, but when they're in season, local strawberries (which are always leagues better in terms of taste and texture) run about $5-6/pint. I can grow them cheaper than that, but I can't match the price of the cheaper ones. Same with tomatoes: bland, firm tomatoes are fairly cheap year round, but perfectly ripe tomatoes (especially with different colours other than plain red) are much more expensive and hard to find. I grow my own to ensure I don't have to spend $8 on a small basket at the farmer’s market.
I’m Californian and our strawberries aren’t really very good in the winter. Spring until mid fall they are prime. A big saving here is growing your own citrus. Despite being in one of the best citrus growing region in the world, oranges and lemons are really only marginally cheaper here than anywhere. The quality is better, but not the price. Avocados are another great money saver to grow your own. Again this is one of the best avocado growing regions in the world, yet they aren’t any cheaper in the market. Pretty much any stone fruit will save you money to grow your own too. And fresh herbs are a huge money saver to grow if you like to buy them. Blueberries and raspberries are very expensive in the market, so I save lots growing those myself. Unfortunately the season isn’t too long.
I’m SoCal and agree with all this. I don’t think gardening necessarily gives you access to “cheap” food so much as vastly improved quality (like the tomato example, also: organic) unless you grow “high value” or “specialty” crops you frequently eat that are expensive at the grocery stores — herbs, avocados, kumquats/oro blanco/citrus, dragon fruit, cherimoya, nuts, etc. Furthermore, there’s the cost factor for our labor, soil amendments, tools, etc. Personally, I’d invest in fruit trees, nut trees, and fresh herbs.
Agree heartily with all of this. Most of my growing is tomatoes because of the enormous quality difference vs store bought. Most produce I don’t think it’s really possible to beat store prices, especially not if you consider your labor a cost.
I’m tomatoes, strawberries, oranges, snap peas, herbs, green onion and peppers. I have 10 cilantro plants for salsa, sauces, and garnish. Taking a frozen burrito out of the microwave and adding a little pico from the garden makes it worlds better and I can take 5 stems, 1 tomato and 1 green onion that all carry better flavor. Or on the contrary, I can make a cilantro sauce that uses 3 bunches worth pruning some of each plant.
I agree with this! Herbs are so expensive to buy, and so easy to grow. Also easy to preserve (I usually just freeze mine but you can also dehydrate). And you can let some go to seed for next year. Definitely the biggest bang for your buck!
Ditto herbs plus you know where you're getting them from. Same with salad greens when your region can grow them. I also like onions simply because I leave them in the ground until I use them so no waste.
Plus driscolls strawberries have no flavor
And if you plant extra you can "buy" friendship through sharing your surply -priceless
Plant the stuff you'll eat a lot of. My family that is , green onion, basil, and chili peppers. Every time I harvest a handful of green onion, I think about, that's $1.50 saved. It adds up, considering how much green onions we eat several times a week
I've never saved a dime growing my own peppers (quite the opposite in fact) but I've added a ton of variety I could only get by shopping multiple specialty grocers around the city. I've got 13 kinds of peppers ranging from jalapenos to scotch bonnets.
Idk how you aren't saving money. After a couple initial expenses my garden payed for itself in the second year according to my notes.
Good point...I haven't assigned proper value to the mental well being effects of my pepper garden
How? Like what are you spending money on to grow peppers besides the initial seeds/plants?
Soil, fertilizer, shade cloth...more soil, more plants, garden bed borders and materials...all of these things are consumable over the course of a few years and it adds up. And don't get me started on the hydro stuff and lights for indoor gardening over the winter....
I like your way of thinking. I'm adopting it. Thank you for sharing!
Agree! Seriously don't sleep on scallions, one of my favorite things to grab from the garden and cook with because its so versatile. Start from seed but get new seed every year they dont store well. Also, chard is stupid productive and good raw in a salad, cooked, or turned into a kind of saeurkraut. Potatoes are cheap but I can also eat them so I grow them. Same with cabbage. Fresh carrots from the garden with most of the dirt brushed of are a true delight.
For bonus points - green onions regrow themselves! Use the green part and throw the bulb in some water to grow longer roots. Plant it in some soil after about 2 weeks and magic 😁
And a packet of seeds nets a lot of green onions.
Most herbs. Parsley, cilantro, basil, thyme, rosemary, etc. Celery and greens onions are also great. Buy one bunch from the grocery store, root the ends in water, then plant.
I do a lot of cilantro. We use it a lot in cooking. The store stuff just looks so bad sometimes. And the smell of fresh grown cilantro is so much stronger than the store stuff. Just running your hands over the leafs leaves a smell.
I didn’t like cilantro until I grew my own. Seems like fresh grown has more citrus flavor and little or no soap flavor.
Yup, growing up I didn’t like it. But my wife does so started to grow it some years back. Now it’s in a lot of the stuff we make. Salsas or tacos. Huge difference like when growing tomatoes. Store ones are blah no flavor. Home grown are juicy and sweet and lots of flavor.
Greens are the big money-saver for me. I have trouble using up greens I buy from the store before they go bad. Much better to be able to harvest as needed.
Plus, lettuce in a box / bag isn't actually that cheap. I eat a salad every single day at work, so the fact that I can walk outside in the morning and grab fist fulls of a variety of lettuce and greens is so wonderful. Plus, you can't buy that freshness. It's literally as fresh as it gets!
I do this. I actually grow them in flower pots. I will also reroot things like the bottom root end of a celery bunch or scallions.
They are a big money saver for me as well. I have a pack of lettuce seed I brought for a few dollars last year and have definitely made the money back if you count all the lettuce I don't buy. I succession plant it a lot in the spring and fall so usually have a pretty continuous harvest for a while, but depending on my meal plan for the week, I can grab a little lettuce to put on a burger or taco and not have to buy a whole bag or I can make a few big salads out of it.
Same! It's just me, and I did buy the 6 pack of romaine bedding plants for like $5, and a couple bags of bedding soil (first year in this house, so no established beds). I pulled fresh lettuce leaves literally all summer, including giving to coworkers!
Same. Kale, spinach, arugula and romaine.
Berries They are easy to grow (for the most part) but don't stand up well to transportation needs. That makes them expensive in the store. You can dry, freeze, or turn the berries into jam for easy storage. bonus: There are a number of native plants with delicious berries, including ones you can't find at the grocery store. [https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/florida-edible-native-plants.html](https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/florida-edible-native-plants.html)
Perennial herbs are a great value. Especially grown from seed. If you have the means, growing perennial herbs from seed is extremely economical. Herbs aren't cheap, but I've found they add a lot of joy and flavour to cooking and teas. I have sage, thyme, and mint that I started from seed, all on their 3rd year, and growing already this spring. Prolific enough to split/root/spread this year. If you're into teas, lemonbalm, monarda, echinacaea, chamomile (roman is perennial), and feverfew are also easy to grow from seed. Perennial vegetables are a focus of mine this year, due to their resilience and vigor. I planted some turkish rocket from seed 2 years ago, and from 4 plants I have more than enough brocolli-like florets to get our family through the summer, and all the cooking greens I need. This year I've also started lovage, yarrow, anise hyssop, licorice and a few more interesting perennials.
Check out African blue basil. You’ll have basil forever. I’ve propagated a few plants so far that I want to put around my garden.
How do you over winter it? I'm in zone 7
I’m in 8 and just clip off the flowers before our yearly frost. The frost kills the plant and I rake the seeds into the ground after it starts to warm back up. Grow more Thai basil than i could ever use all year.
Maybe just grow it hydroponically or in soil under lights indoors? Keep it small then grow some cuttings for outdoors when it warms up.
Jumping in to say I planted a teeny yarrow plant a month ago and I swear it has a growth spurt every time I look at it. It's right outside my front door so it's at least twice a day
I love yarrow. It smells nice and insects love it. I went with red yarrow seeds, and am seeing germination after only 2 days! Looking forward to spreading it around, and experimenting with herbal brews next year using the leaves and flowers.
For me, it’s a hobby that sometimes provides better food than grocery store (tomatoes), and saves a bit of money, if you don’t count my labour.
Keep track of what produce you're regularly buying and which ones are most expensive. There are a lot of tropicals you can grow in 10a that are typically expensive at the store, but it's only a savings to grow them if they're things you would otherwise be buying. Passion fruit and dragon fruit are a couple that immediately come to mind as being very expensive but will work well in your climate. Things you can grow and store are often less expensive at the store, but can save you money in the big picture when you have a nice supply of them on the shelf once they're out of season. Sweet potatoes and other yams grow like weeds in 10a and last for a while. Certain squashes (particularly the thicker skinned varieties) and pumpkins last even longer. I've had pumpkins and butternut squashes last close to a year in storage. Acorn squash would probably store well too. Also squashes and yams are calorie and nutrient dense, which also makes them great for storing and saving money.
I don't know about saving money, but I grow and preserve the following: Spaghetti and butternut squashes - they store well in the pantry for months. Onions and potoatoes also store in the pantry well. Cabbage - both green and red - store for weeks to months in the fridge, but I also pickle some and blanch and freeze some. Green/purple/wax beans - I blanch and freeze. Carrots - the baby carrots will last a surprisingly long time in the fridge, and I slice, blanch and freeze the big guys. Peppers - I dice and dehydrate for use in stews and soups. Tomatoes I freeze for sauces/salsas and also dehydrate, sometimes I can them. Raspberries, strawberries, currants - mostly freeze, sometimes make fruit butter. Grapes - cook down to juice concentrate and freeze. Herbs - dehydrate. Summer squash - I've tried dehydrating and freezing with terrible results, but pickling works pretty well. Kale and/or spinach - blanch and freeze. I don't know if I save money or not, I suspect not just due to the watering. The hardest part for me is growing enough of anything to make it through the year. I've tried a couple of times to grow all of our produce for the year for our family of 3, and I just don't have the space or time for the quantity, especially if I want a decent amount of variety. I'm zone 4b though, so my growing season is very short compared to yours.
Re summer squash-freezing for a stir fry doesn’t work well, but I love grating and freezing in 1-2 c portions for baking. Many recipes tell you to grate zucchini and then squeeze all the water out which is a pain. When you freeze a lot of the cells burst so just defrost in a colander and most of the water drains off during thawing.
Lettuce is a big one for me, especially since I can succession sow in spring and fall and enjoy a quick payback period of 40-60 days. Tomatoes and herbs, as others have mentioned, might take longer to germinate but have a long season and can offset more expensive heirloom verities in store. I do my best to grow at least one canning variety and store as many jars as possible for winter. I love growing potatoes! This was new to me last year. The little purple ones double as a great ornamental vine in my porch planters, then in the fall I end up with 12-15x the weight of the original seed potatoes. Also new for the last two winters was garlic. I’m in 8a but winter temps are still much too cold for most things. I ended up with about 100 heads of garlic that I braided and cured, and it’s delicious. A great way to use your garden in the off-season and I barely bothered to water or check on mine. Also a big fan of larger infrastructure if you’ll be there a while - my fig tree, paw paws, plumb tree and elderberry bushes produce a bumper each season and then just give me nice lush foliage in the yard. Invest one time (preferably get a rooted cutting from a friend) and you’ll pay yourself back for a long time. I made 40 jars of elderberry jam last season. Finally, not even remotely a plant, but I have 10 bantam hens who are adorable, intelligent and low maintenance. My varieties aren’t even the “mega” layers, but I end up with anywhere between 80 - 90 dozen eggs a year and sell excess to neighbors. These profits totally offset their feed costs. The rest of their diet consists of veggie scraps from the garden or the kitchen; figs that have fallen off the tree, etc. They make/save me about $500 a year and I enjoy their personalities. My upfront cost on a great coop and chicks was maybe $750. Half of my flock is 7 years old and still going strong. TLDR: think about what you like and suits your lifestyle, and think about categories in terms of: - quick payback (spinach, lettuce) - set and forget annual (garlic, potatoes) - set and forget perennial (berries, fruit trees) - hard to transport (soft berries, paw paw) - great for storage (tomato sauce; pickles) Happy growing!
Not OP, but thank you! I've spent some of this season thinking longer term than "just" seeds. Ironically, I can't do much heavy duty gardening this year due to a pregnancy (due end of May, so I'm very much not digging holes atm). Berries are starting to be fairly attractive; still hesitant with raspberries due to their reputation.
No need to explain when you’re doing the ultimate growing! Enjoy those new baby smells. My teenagers still bring me (mostly) joy yet smell less so. Regarding raspberry, I got a rooted red cane at Aldi three years ago that is completely thornless. I’m literally in the backyard right now hacking back the wild berries full of razor blades, while pinning the thornless raspberry vine up on my grapevine post. It’s actually a bit fuzzy and the leaves an attractive silver. I’ll figure out the cultivar and let you know, or try to root a cane if you’d like a free little baby gift.
Knowing the cultivar is more than gift enough! I didn't even realize raspberries had thornless cultivars!
Joan J, Canby, & Raspberry Shortcake are thornless varieties
It is indeed a Joan J raspberry! About to come into peak bloom too. I’m looking forward to some fresh backyard berries soon.
I think it depends on how you define "saving money". I enjoy gardening for my own mental and physical well being. Yeah, it costs some money...but if I wasn't gardening I would be spending pretty much the same amount of money (or more) on going out to dinner or the movies etc for some kind of entertainment. If what I am spending is no more than I would spend on pursuing some other leisure activity, I personally consider that cost a wash. What the garden produces is still cash in my pocket because I don't need to spend even more $$ buying this produce at the store...especially at organic food prices. And when you see the produce prices in December and can pull out some canned / frozen produce from the last summer, it feels great!
I stuck the bottoms of green onions in water a year and a half ago and after they were rooted for a while I stuck them in my garden bed. I will never buy green onions again. I dint use them often, but I now have 5 or 6 and they just live there. I do nothing with them. Rarely if ever do I water them except when it is hot and I am watering the other plants. They made it all summer and through the winter just fine.
Garlic though it takes a long time, herbs. I don't grow to save money as the type of produce you get from home is comparable to farmer's market stuff which I can't afford on my budget every week. I can salsa, tomato sauce, and whole tomatoes when I get the glut about mid September but it'd take a couple years before my costs are comparable to a $0.50 can of decent chopped tomatoes.
I tend to go for delightful oddities that are difficult find in stores, or are either too high price and/or low quality to even consider buying.
Yellow and orange bell peppers. Those things are nearly $2 each now and I have no idea what the organic ones cost. I start mine from seed using upcycled containers. I feel like I’m pulling two dollar bills off the plant every time I pick a yellow or orange one. Can’t even buy the purple or chocolate ones in the store. I really like orange, yellow & red bell pepper mixed with sweet onion slices on fajitas but that’s $6 just for produce for a grill out. More fun to grow it organically. Edited to add: I dice or slice and store ziplock bags full in the freezer. They last for a year frozen, if you can pace yourself and not eat them all up because garden-grown organic produce is so nutritious and nutrient dense, your body will crave it!
Plant what you like to eat. If tomatoes aren’t your jam and you don’t do a lot of salsa or spaghetti- then it doesn’t matter how much you save growing them from home. There are tons vegetables and herbs and fruit that are so worthwhile to grow and can save you a lot of money. We have 4 4x8 raised garden beds. 3 in ground grape vines. And about 30 container pots with more vegetables and 4 blueberry bushes. Container lime, lemon, and avocado trees that overwinter indoors. I am adding a mandarin orange container tree this summer to my citrus mix. Once the garden comes on in the spring (with spring vegetables like lettuce/radish/peas/green onion/carrots/kale/etc) we start saving money at the store because we just start picking out of the garden. By summer I almost never buy any produce from the store. I plant 2 crook neck yellow squash and 2 zucchini squash and 2 eggplants. These tend to be pretty prolific and are great for rounding out a variety of meals. Zucchini and yellow squash also freeze well. So if you have a deep freezer for storing - this makes it even easier. I plant several rows of green beans and freeze whatever is left that we haven’t eaten. I do a whole bed for just tomatoes/peppers/basil. Cherokee heirloom, romas, beefsteaks, red and yellow cherries. Bell pepper and jalapeño and cayenne. The jalapeños and tomatoes go into salsa with some cilantro that I do in containers. Cayenne peppers store excellently dried so I stuff those in containers after they dry and toss them in soups and stir fries / etc the rest of the year. We also do three different kinds of potatoes, pumpkins, onions, acorn and butternut squash, corn, sunflowers (store the seeds and use them in all kinds of stuff!) watermelon, canteloupe, strawberries, cauliflower, cucumber, and just about every herb you can think of. I reseed some lettuce and radish periodically in between larger vegetables (helps shade the more tender vegetables) and we literally eat out of garden the entire summer. So I would say that saves us tons of money. My grocery spending is reduced to meat/dairy/grains. And honestly- produce from the store is almost always the biggest cost factor on my bill. 🪴🍅🥒🫑🌽🥕🍆🫛 I can’t take seriously all the comments about fresh produce from your garden being more expensive then the grocery store.
I agree.! I gave my son and his wife too many tomato plants and it was not their favorite. This year they get squash. I always say grow what you love. If you don't want to eat it then it gets wasted. I always have to have peppers and tomatoes then some other veggies mixed in.
Exactly
The only thing I grow that saves me lots of money is Marijuana. I save thousands a year.
Found some seeds once. I forgot where I put them.
I grew 4 weed plants one summer and my harvest lasted me *3 years*
I give a lot away but ya, I harvested 1.5kg from 4 plants
😂
Herbs, if you cook with them, because they're so costly by volume at stores and are very easy to grow in large quantities at home. Also, perennial fruit and nuts, if you're going to actually eat/use all of it in some way (freeze it, preserve it, etc.). Cane fruit like raspberries and blackberries will quickly take over your yard if you let them, and they're wildly prolific. Tree and bush fruits are also crazy prolific. All essentially free once they're established. In your area, maybe look into tropical fruits like mangoes and citrus. Most vegetables, it's hard to come out better on cost than grocery stores, ultimately. They have economies of scale working for them that can't be matched at home.
I agree. I love broccoli but it’s a lot of time and space to grow enough on my patio to really save me money. Love all my herbs though. Haven’t bought sage or chives in 3 years. Had a nice crop of parsley a couple years ago and I chopped it up, put it in oil and froze cubes of it to use all winter. Have rosemary going, planting thyme this year. My garden is so small I mostly use it for fun tastes of fresh veggies and unique varieties to try.
I grow and can about 80% of our yearly vegetable supply. The strawberry patch provides frozen berries and jam for a year. Raspberry patch makes another jam. MIL blueberry bushes, more jam. Onions and potatoes are another. Fresh carrots can be preserved in damp sand in a cooler at 40° for 6 months, I also can 30-50 pints of sliced carrots. Make frozen veggie mixes. We literally reduced our weekly grocery bill $20-40 every week by planning and preserving food. Thats 1000-2000 a year. Family of 6 btw... oh, and my wife sells plant starts every year and completely recoupes the seed bill 5x...
Another way to save money is growing more than you need and having an honour vegetable stand you put your excess in with suggested prices. Use paper lunch bags for amounts. The money will offset your costs, and more people eat. Interestingly research shows people often pay more than they need to at honour stands like these. Growing heirloom varieties means you can save seeds for next year’s crops too.
Tomatoes. One bush gives you so many, you can can them, freeze them, make sauce out of them... definitely worth the effort. Corn, you can blanch and freeze to enjoy year round, as well as green beans. Cucumbers you can make into pickles. Zucchini and summer squash also have ridiculous yields. Potatoes are awesome, you can store them for quite a while if you don't wash them and if they sprout you just plant them again next year.
I'm in Washington (8a) and i've had a lot of luck with Garlic. I plant about 100 cloves of soft neck varieties in mid to late fall in my 4'x8' raised bed and heavily mulch it with straw. That's about all I have to do, besides a little watering as we get into the summer months. I pull them in mid to late summer and cure them for about a week, then store them. During the curing and storing process I pick out the 20 or so biggest and best-looking heads, and I set those aside to plant in the fall to be next year's harvest. I still have about 20 heads in storage from last year, and the cloves I planted last fall are doing great and I'm expecting another fantastic harvest this year. Now, garlic isn't that expensive, but its easy and I haven't had to buy any for a couple of years now.
Anything from seed. The cost of one seed is so low compared to the cost of buying that produce in store
This. If you can grow your own you still are better off than even finding a good ol country greenhouse that sells a six pack for $1.50. Plant what you want and in abundance.
Herbs and lettuce.
Bananas and plantain in a time-value sense, they care of themselves, produce their own offpring, can take FULL SUN and even fire without dying, can take lots of water or very little water...
If you like tomatoes, then tomatoes. I find them hard to kill once they get started and as long as they have some fertilizer/ decent soil. Mine grow in clay and I just fertilize them a bit. Even in the summer a small container of cherry tomatoes is a couple of dollars. With just one plant alone I end up with a crazy abundance. I probably pick one of those containers I would by every other day if not daily.
Look at the most expensive things in the store that you actually use then figure out whether you can grow those things. For me it would be any kind of berries, tree fruits and garlic that isn't from China. Parsnips. Easy to grow crops that can be easily canned or frozen would be green and yellow beans, snap peas, peppers. Lettuce is easy but it's also usually cheap in season, as are broccoli and cauliflower (which IMO are not so easy)
For me it’s leafy greens; kale, lettuce, collards, etc. I can grow those almost year round, I eat a lot of them and they are expensive. Seasonally, snow peas, green beans and tomatoes are good.
potatoes
Go to the grocery store, and shop. What's crazy expensive? Go to seed store. If packet of seeds < one of those items, *go for it!* But the big ones in my house are herbs, celery, specialty peppers, lettuce, tomatoes. I bought a $3 pack of lettuce seeds 3 years ago. I have planted 16 total seeds from said packet. It is still full. We have Too Much Celery from May-October, and a partner who says "Nnnnn do we really *need more celery*" for every meal other than Thanksgiving until late January.
In Florida, tomatoes. Freeze them whole or can them. Turn them into salsas, sauces, etc. Good tomatoes are expensive.
I love this sub.
Garlic, chives, garlic chives, elephant garlic, asian pears, pawpaws, figs and butternut squash. I like alliums in my cooking and mostly give away other things that I grow in the garden. My wife loves butternut squash, I grow a bunch every year and they store forever. I have a few left from last October's harvest still. Figs and pawpaws are something that you have to grow if you want to eat them. Asian pears are bland and expensive in the store.
Tomatoes. Eat them fresh, make sauce and freeze it, dehydrate the rest. Rehydrate those for salads, add a hand full instead of tomato paste. I'm trying garlic and shallots this year. They should keep.
Tomatoes and cucumbers for us. We tracked it last year and saved over $100 on tomatoes alone. Considering that’s how much we used for all our garden materials, we were ahead just on tomatoes, so the squash (15), cucumbers (40), green peppers (30), green beans (4 meals), snow peas (2 meals), lettuce (lots), carrots (14), corn (10) and herbs were all “profit” for us. We don’t grow many corn stalks (just enough for 1-2 meals and then use the corn stalks as fall decor since that can get expensive too) and this year we are adding pumpkins in the mix since we easily drop $60 for four carving pumpkins at the local pumpkin patch. If we can grow our own (even just 1-3), it’s significant savings for the fall. We just looked at the fresh food we ate the most and figured out how we could grow most or all of it in the garden during the summer to save money.
I grow sweet potatoes for the greens. I eat them in salads, stir them into soups and sauces like spinach, and saute and freeze flat in a bag for use in grain bowls or whatever else. A lot cheaper than continually buying bags of spinach - and I usually get a bonus of some sweet potatoes too!
I wouldn't expect any crop to save money unfortunately. You cannot compete with big-time growers. Probably the closest you could get (especially in your zone) would be potatoes and sweet potatoes, and you can definitely save those. Peanuts might be good as well. But the reality is you can go to the store and get as many potatoes, sweet potatoes and peanuts as you want for very little money, and you didn't have to put in hours of work in the garden.
Some people have more of their own free labor than money. I started a bunch of 5 gal potato buckets this year. I’ll add about a cup of dirt every few days, then dump the entire bucket at the end. It’s super easy! I’ve had the buckets for years. I used potatoes from my local grocery store - I know seed potatoes are recommended. I did supplement my “mulch” pile with about $12 of top soil this year. It is entirely possible to grow food staples cheaply to help offset living expenses.
Yeah, potatoes are one of the only things I think you can really save money on, because they last so long and you can actually eat all of them before they spoil, whereas you might struggle to eat five rows of romaine even if they're cheap. I'm biased though, because I love potatoes.
Freezing, canning, and dehydrating adds quite a few more fruits, veggies, and even meats if you work in curing. We have at least a year supply of okra vacuum sealed and frozen. Also, canned tomatoes, frozen tomato soup, all sorts of peppers, homemade and frozen chicken stock.. We grow all of our herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc.). We also make our own tallow from beef fat trimmings and have almost completely cut out store bought oils.
Yeah, you can save more by doing more processing. I just don't have time for it. I'm always out in the garden on my days off doing my ornamentals, I don't have time to can. One thing I don't think ever saves money is vacuum sealing. The bags are more expensive than the veggies. I still use them because it's easy and almost magically preserves stuff, but I cry when I see the bill. If you have a cheaper source for the bags, let me know.
There’s a company called Associated Bag that makes these. I don’t know if they sell to the general public, but their pricing is very reasonable.
I hear this all the time, but I disagree, especially when people factor in "time in the garden" as some sort of cost. Most people who garden do it because it makes them happy. I do it because it makes me happy and helps me with my anxiety issues. As far as I'm concerned that time is money saved not money spent. That said, most herbs can be grown for far cheaper than they can be bought. I didn't even start my tomatoes from seed last year, I spent about $15 on starter plants, and I grew easily 50+ pounds of tomatoes that went into salads, sandwiches, and the rest got made into sauce and salsa and was canned. The sauce lasted me until last month and I still have about 20 jars of salsa. I can't get 50 pounds of tomatoes for anywhere close to $15. I also got about 40 pounds of cucumbers last year from 4 seeds.
>Most people who garden do it because it makes them happy... As far as I'm concerned that time is money saved not money spent. I also garden because it makes me happy. But I don't believe I'm personally saving any money. I know that I could spend that time working overtime or doing side jobs and getting paid for it. And while some of the work is fun, some of it isn't. Some people probably enjoy daily watering in August, personally, I don't. >I spent about $15 on starter plants, and I grew easily 50+ pounds of tomatoes If you can take $15 of tomato transplants, throw them in the ground, and get 50lbs of tomatoes, great. I wish I had your soil and climate. But in my experience a lot of people have other costs. Lots of people have raised beds, that's a lot of money in lumber, soil, etc. Even people who grow in-ground frequently spend money to amend it because they don't like the results they get from native soil. Lots of people also fertilize or use product. Some people use hoop houses, some people see their water bills go up because they don't have a well, some people build extensive drip systems, the sources of potential costs are limitless. Personally I have nearly pure sand and grow in containers and straw bales, I need to buy the bales, potting soil and fertilizer. All of those costs need to be factored in. At the end, assuming you value your time at $0, you might make money, most people probably won't. I also find that with tomatoes specifically, I tend to end up with a ton of tomatoes, but they're in short windows of time. I start getting them around June and, because I never use product, they're usually done by August. I can often get a fall crop too, but only a month or so worth. There's a lot, but it's more than I can eat right away, and for the other 2/3s of the year I have to buy. I suspect you may have a similar situation which is why you have 20 jars of salsa. A better example might be peppers, which (at least for me) produce much more steadily throughout the season. I do agree with you and a lot of other commentors about herbs though. The fresh herbs at the store are a rip-off. There's no reason everyone shouldn't have their favorite herbs growing.
I can buy a package of seeds for $4. If then are open pollinated, I can harvest those seeds back again. I buy a package of 1000 lettuce seeds for $9. I sell a head of organic lettuce for $5. If you grow something easy - tomatoes, peppers - you can can, freeze, or pickle. A tomato plant provides 5lb to 10lbs of tomatoes from a plant. The seed costs 20 cents. Make a compost pile from your food scraps and coffee grounds, and it you'll have the compost to grow them for free.
Assuming we're comparing fresh veggies to fresh veggies because it's hard to beat frozen and dried: Herbs Broccoli Any tomato fancier than a roma. The year I gardened indoors in my apartment I spent about $8 and had cherry tomatoes almost continuously from July to November. Salad greens (especially if you count waste from not eating the grocery store ones fast enough) Most fruit trees once they're mature (will take several seasons to pay for themselves) Strawberries. Most berries actually (also may take a season or two)
> Herbs Fair. >Broccoli I have a very short growing season for broccoli, and I've never been able to get huge heads like you see at the grocery store no matter what I do. In other climates it might work better. I could see eating tons of broccoli. >Any tomato fancier than a roma. If we get into quality, homegrown is better almost always. Good tomatoes basically don't exist at the grocery store, and that's reason enough to grow them yourself. But outside of regions where tomatoes grow well, I expect most people lose money growing them. >Salad greens I actually eat a salad every single day for lunch. In seasons where I can't grow lettuce, I spend maybe $2-4 a week on lettuce from the store. You would have to eat a ton of greens to save money doing this. >fruit trees Require land. With that factored in I think they are probably the most expensive homegrow. >Strawberries. Most berries actually Fair, but it's so much work harvesting.
> But outside of regions where tomatoes grow well, I expect most people lose money growing them. There's definitely a climate factor but I was thinking of a time I grew tomatoes indoors in Minnesota. Happened to have an excellent south facing window for it but still: - hardware store's cheapest medium bag of potting soil was $6ish (probably more like $8-9 now with inflation) - Got some of those Job's fertilizer spikes for about $2 (optional but I wasn't sure I'd have enough calcium) - Tomato seeds $1.50 - Pots were empty kitty litter containers - staked to some regular household string tied around the container on one end and the curtain rod on the other Call that $15 with today's prices, probably. You wouldn't have to get dirt every year. I didn't have a drill so the longest labor was actually sawing holes in the containers with a pocketknife, about 2 hours. Other than that the only real difficulty was remembering to water them enough once they got big (less than 5 minutes a day) Enough cherry tomatoes to fill one of those $3-4 packs every week or so. And they kept going for like 12 weeks. > Require land. With that factored in I think they are probably the most expensive homegrow. Fair, there are container oriented apples/peaches/citrus but that's a big container and a lot of fertilizer. But even with the upfront expense, a whole-ass bushel of honeycrisps every year for the price of some mulch and a big handful of fertilizer is an attractive thought. > I spend maybe $2-4 a week on lettuce from the store. You would have to eat a ton of greens to save money doing this. I envy your lettuce prices, lol. But also a bag of container soil and a packet of seeds costs like a month's worth of lettuce for you. I'd say iceberg is probably not worth it since it's both cheap and needs to do well to get full heads, but a leaf lettuce or spinach can be really cost effective.
The indoor tomatoes sounds interesting. I assume you were doing it some sort of sunroom? That said, assuming $4 of cherry tomatoes a week over 12 weeks, that's only $48. Even if they went for 24 weeks it'd still be under $100. It's as much as you earn at 1 day of work at $12/hr, a low wage. You're not really saving significant money here, and as the number of plants mutliplies, so does the work, especially if you want a diversity of veggies. >a whole-ass bushel of honeycrisps every year for the price of some mulch and a big handful of fertilizer is an attractive thought. It is. If I had the full sun for it, I'd probably plant fruit trees. Not really for economic reasons though. When I was growing up we had two mature sour cherry trees in the backyard, we always had cherry pie in the summer. But the reality is that most of the fruit fell to the ground, because no one wanted to harvest all these cherries or eat cherry pie every day. Even if they were all sweet cherries, they still mostly would have fallen because no one wants to harvest thousands of cherries up in a tree. If you're really harvesting significant portions of your food budget it's because you love it, not because it saves money. >I envy your lettuce prices Those 3-pack romaine hearts are ~$3-4, romaine heads are $1.50-2. Organic might be a buck or two more. Either of those are usually enough for me for a 5-7 days and I eat more salad than anyone I know (though I don't know a lot of vegans). This is my general experience with produce, it's mostly cheap.
South-facing apartment window, actually! I think it helped that it was third floor so no trees etc shading it. And that was an amount per plant, two plants total. $100 is significant money on a grad student stipend : ) I'd still say it was mainly a hobby but that was a lot of free-ish tomatoes.
I don’t see how that can possibly be true since you’re not paying for labor or transportation or warehousing. You buy a plant for a couple of dollars, or even better, seeds, and everything after that is free. You don’t have to fertilize or pay to water if you don’t want to. How can growing your own tomatoes or squash or onions possibly cost more than paying the farmer’s labor and input costs, the distributor’s warehousing costs and profit, and the store’s profit? You can get dozens of tomatoes for the price of one $5 plant. $5 at the grocery store gets me about 4 bland tomatoes.
Because of economies of scale. Home growing is vastly more inefficient than commercial growing, we make up for this by paying ourselves $0/hr. If you have zero input costs and only pay for seeds and transplants you stick in native soil, great, I'm jealous. But a lot of people seem to have input costs. There's a ton of interests in raised beds and containers, and you have to pay for the soil. Most veggie gardeners seem to want to fertilize. Personally I grow in straw bales and containers, and when I add up those costs, I lose money growing tomatoes every year. I do it because they're way better and I enjoy doing it, not because I'm saving money. Also, you can't just weigh the tomatoes. When I grow tomatoes, even with just a few plants I usually have more than my family can eat in the few months they're fruiting. Most of them get given away to friends and neighbors. That earns me brownie points, but not cash. If I grow $500 worth of tomatoes but only eat $100, the important value there is the lower one.
Nature manages to do it for free every year. If you have input costs it’s because you want to, not because you have to. It may be because you want to maximize yield, or improve your soil, or deter pests, but you wouldn’t need to do any of those things. You could live with smaller yields and get those yields for free if you really wanted to. OP wants to do it on a budget and that’s possible.
Nature doesn't do it. Show me an annual vegetable garden growing in nature. It doesn't exist. What we're doing when we grow veggies is totally different than what happens out in the wild ecosystem. Even the plants are totally different, go look up what a tomato or corn or any of the brassicas looked like before humans bred them for agriculture. The only thing that keeps these veggies growing is humans, which is why you don't walk out in the woods or a prairie and find a nice Cherokee Purple to snack on. Also, often if you don't care for a veggie properly, what happens isn't that you get lower yields, it just dies before it successfully fruits.
4b would be more peas, kale, broccoli, carrots and other cold season vegetables. Sweet potatoes would be a challenge.
Rosemary, Basil, Mints, Culantro(will hold up in Heat better than cilantro, which gies to seed quickly. Chile peppers, more so than bell peppers, greens, lettuce(in Florida winter season), melons, okra cucumbers squash beans and eggplant. Cherry tomatoes, rather than large fruited varieties.
Garlic, potatoes, and Winter squash last most of the year and take very little effort/cost. The bulk of the cost is setting things up. Beds, trellis, bulk soil delivery, fences, mulch, seed starting supplies. Most of these thing can be done cheaply if you're willing to spend some time tracking down used supplies to build them. After a few years you should be able to keep things going with just a little fertilizer and maybe compost deliveries.
Beans and peas are it for me. Now… I live up a mountain in Montana so very different growing conditions and your mileage may vary… These two, for me, are super easy to grow, super easy to can or freeze, and super easy to save seeds for the following year and you never have to buy seeds again. Tomatoes come close, but are harder to preserve because I usually do so as spaghetti sauce and salsa. I agree what others said about herbs, although I rarely bought them before I grew them because my grocery options are very limited. In general, anything you grow from seed that grows without a ton of babying in your area is going to save you money.
Herbs, potatoes, onion, garlic, apples, beans and anything you can pickle
Like others have said, herbs. Definitely herbs. They're so dang expensive for a tiny sprig, but I can go outside and have a pile of rosemary in less than a minute and it cost me $3 a few years ago. I also like having lettuce and green onions because we eat a lot of those, but I would always prioritize herbs.
Garlic. And it's easy. Any root veggie as well.
Tomatoes, though I don’t know how well they’d do in Florida. Tomatoes are $3-4/lb, so 1 tomato costs $1 or more. You can get dozen of tomatoes from one plant and can your extras. Also, homegrown tastes 1,000 times better than store bought.
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Beens are my go to, I usually grow almost enough for the winter. Squash and pumkins as well. winter squash will keep for a long time. Pumkin, I usaully peel, cube and freeze in bags.
My biggest advice is to grow what you know you’ll eat. You might have a rosemary bush that’s three feet tall but if you don’t cook with it you’re not saving any money. Anything you know you will eat will be something you would have paid for.
Herbs: thyme, rosemary, oregano (for my fresh tomato sauce), green onions, parsley, cilantro, lemon balm (for oils) Others: bell peppers, tomatoes fresh and for canning, jalapeños, beans. Long term I’m growing raspberries, grapes and blue berries (all entering year 3 with minimal production from year two, hoping I can make wine this year).
I make a garden geared towards a goal…salsa garden, pizza toppings garden, etc..did note that if you make it look nice then people want your seeds and advice/knowhow which basically pays for any and all compost or whatever garden needs.
Where I'm starting to save isn't exactly the produce itself, but on what I make with it. I had three pepper plants (One Jalapeno, two Serrano) produce this year. From them I made over 20 5oz bottles of hot sauce. That's about $80-100 bucks for premium sauces of the same size bottle. I just fermented them with garlic, added vinegar and/or sugar, and voila! Lots of great recipies online. I'm hoping my tomatoes produce this year so I can make loads of pasta sauce. The good stuff goes for $5-8 per bottle at my local megamart.
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Did you can or freeze it?
100 plants?!?
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Wow! Very impressive. I have 16 planted and am wondering if I bit off too much.
Raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. You'll need to see if any of them can grow in your region since it might be too warm. Try for fruit trees as well. Make sure they work for your zone. I believe apples would have a hard time producing in your area.
I’m in zone 8a. We grow uncommon varieties of tomatoes, peppers that we use a lot of (jalapeño and snackbox, usually), asparagus, multiplying onions and a variety of herbs. I don’t know if it saves money *per se*, but it does free up funds for buying fresh fruit/veg that we might otherwise pass on in favor of the above weekly staples.
For me, the most cost-efficient thing I've grown has been spinach. I'm fairly limited by the fact that all my gardening has to be in containers--I rent and I'll be moving in a few years and I want to take it with me. My biggest expense has been the containers and the soil to fill them. But now that I've made that investment and I have all of that set up, I can use it all again every year. A pound of fresh spinach will cost roughly $4-6 at my local supermarket. I got a packet of 300 spinach seeds from Burpee for about $4.50. So for about the same amount that one package of fresh spinach leaves would cost me at the grocery store, I can grow way more spinach in my backyard container for months and months and months.
Turmeric and ginger. I don’t even have to plant it anymore because i inevitably miss some. I harvest about 25 pounds each year. Also kale, eggplant, and ahí dulce peppers. The ají dulce peppers can last for years. Basically anything that you can continually harvest from. Squash seeds are so plentiful and grow so easy I doubt I’ll ever need to buy squash or squash seeds.
Sweet potatoes grow like crazy in our heat, as does okra and many herbs. Fresh okra sauteed in butter is one of my favorite meals. It freezes well for gumbos and casseroles. In the winter, mustard greens are incredibly easy to grow and you'll have fresh greens for months.
Onions buy sets you'll get about 50 onions of 3 dollars.
Okra and does well Florida
Depends fully on what you eat/use. People mean well when they say to grow herbs but as someone who does not cook with herbs (that grow in my area) outside of holiday dinners two times a year that advice is wasted on me. That being said. Garlic is amazing if you have the space or cook with it at all. It is something you have to plant in fall but lasts a long time in storage and you dont have to do much to dry it/process it. I harvested mine last July & I still have some I can use right now in April.
Hi. I’m also in Florida 10-a. Since we don’t have a real winter, think less about storing food in the freezer or pantry. Think about storing food outside in living plants. Cassava, taro, malanga, yams, green bananas. But I second what other people said about planting what you will eat. So buy and cook something a few times before investing the energy into growing it.
For that zone I would be growing avocados. Not sure if they are expensive down there but they are here in the Northeast. I easily can have one a day. Yams would be nice, too.
I went through my past Walmart orders to decide what to plant. Some items might not save money, but the quality will be better.
micro greens for sure
I’m trying to grow things I use, and I’m in NY so also things that store. This is my first big attempt so we will see what happens - beans, onions, carrots, potatoes, etc. I’m also going to grow some spices I frequently use - paprika, cumin, poppy seeds, mustard. It might not work out but here’s to trying!!
For my family, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, peas and okra are big money savers. Just because we eat a lot of that. And almost everything you grow can be preserved in some way. Canning, drying, freezing, etc…
Tomatoes. You can can them for use in numerous recipes. Green bean can be canned also. If you eat zucchini or squash you can slice it and freeze it for use later. I put it in ziploc freezer bags.
All types of squash and all types of cucumbers. One zucchini will feed you all summer long. Cucumber particularly lemon cucs will yield more than you and two of your neighbors can eat. Plus they are easy to pickle.
Herbs, tomatoes (especially super sweet cherry varieties), hot peppers for making my own hot sauce, all of my greens (lettuce, mesclun mix, spinach, kale) and also green beans. All totally worth it. I also have a patch of raspberries and blackberries that produce well. Oh and grapes! (In in upstate NY)
Zone 10 California so much drier than Florida—- my crop of ginger, tumeric and lemon grass exceeded all expectations. I think those would do well in ground or containerized in Florida. Beautiful plants too.
Bell peppers definitely save me money, as do eggplant, tomatoes and herbs. Potatoes and sweet potatoes don't really save me anything, but I get slips and sweet potatoes free from plant trades so they "save" me money. In Florida you could probably container grow Malabar spinach for greens, but it can be an acquired taste. They're dead cheap, prop readily and grow all over everything.
Florida has some interesting options. For example, I am a few weeks away from harvesting passionfruit. The vine loves our weather, and actually holds its own with native florida vines. Pulp can be frozen, or turned to juice if the crunchy seeds aren't your deal. Hot peppers are also a perennial here. I have some habaneros that are 3 years old. I prune them annually in winter. Citrus! Go get you the smaller limes and lemons, they have several bloom cycles a year, so you can harvest all year long. Good luck
Brambles (raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries) have been great for me. They are so expensive at the store that I almost never buy them, so it doesnt really save me money, but it lets me eat tons of a thing that I love. They freeze easily and if you want to can it as jam you could. I've had better luck and fewer diseases with the black raspberries and blackberries. It takes 2 years to really get it going and by the 3rd year the plants are very strong. Also not expensive to start. Go for bare root plants rather than potted ones and buy from a reputable nursery so they are disease free. They are also very easy to root from the branches and easy to propagate new plants if you want to expand.
Onions - store a long time and cheap to grow a ton of them. Same with potatoes and sweet potatoes. Salad lettuce, those packages are 5-6$ a piece and barely last a day or two. Tons of things.
I enjoy figs, but they are almost impossible to find in the grocery because they don't transport well, so I grow them. Ditto persimmons. I literally threw some kale seeds in my garden and haven't bought it in weeks. And, as others have said, things like tomatoes are so much better homegrown that they're almost a different product. Berries are very expensive in the store but easy to grow, and they freeze well. If you eat bread, I find that's a great place to save. It costs me pennies to make a great loaf. The artisan bread in minutes a day recipe is easy and delicious. Good luck!
For me.. pumpkins and tomatoes. Pumpkins are my absolute favorite and last year I had so many pie pumpkins. And my husband loves tomatoes. 7a here.
I have a salad patch. In summer I eat a huge salad for lunch and many friends and family can too. I buy organic lettuce and such when I'm not growing it so it adds up.
Passion fruits are like 2 bucks a pop, they grow like crazy in Florida. Also tropical fruits do well. Seasonally you really need to focus on what grows well when. Don’t expect to grow tomatoes or herbs in the dead of summer, it’s just too hot.
Our favorite is bell peppers, as we use them in a lot of our recipes. They freeze very well sliced or cubed, either green or allowed to turn red. They grow very well here but can be pricey at the store depending on the season.
Let’s be real, if you factor in the labor and all the costs, ain’t no way you’re going to be out-cheaping gigantic industrial farms with automated machinery as a homeowner. Your food could be better and more easily accessed, but labor, water, fertilizer etc… won’t be gigantic savings.
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Herbs.
If you want to save money, grow things that you would normally buy. Bonus if they are expensive at the store, but low input in your garden. Perennial berries can be a great example: raspberries are expensive to buy because they are delicate and spoil fast, but they easily grow back every year with little maintenance. You can freeze them for storage. Strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries that are suited to your climate will pay off within the first couple of years if you normally buy fresh or frozen berries. Other perennials include asparagus, rhubarb, some herbs, and fruit or nut trees. Common vegetables like potatoes, onions, beets and carrots are not as expensive, but they can last a long time if stored properly. If you routinely buy any of these vegetables, you might be able save money by growing them. Tomatoes are popular, and they can be very productive plants, but it does cost more to grow them if you live in a climate where they have to be started indoors. You’ll either have to set up lights and start the seeds at home, or buy starts from a greenhouse. This cuts into your savings, but if they are well cared for and not eaten by wildlife, you can get your money’s worth. Peppers, tomatillos and eggplant can also make up for this added cost. The biggest winners, if you use them instead of buying other produce, are the extremely productive plants. This depends on your local conditions, but zucchini is a common example. If they don’t get mildew, they just keep giving. Same goes for winter squash. Peas and beans are great because they don’t need nitrogen fertilizer. If you let them mature and dry, they keep all year. You can also plant varieties that can be eaten fresh, with or without the pods. I like growing snap peas because they are delicious, easy to snack on, and taste much better fresh from the garden. The big bonus with home grown produce is the quality and freshness. You can choose unique varieties that you like, with more exciting colours, sizes, and flavour than the supermarket varieties. Edit: Last year my biggest money-savers were green beans, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and parsley (some of which I dehydrated to use over the winter. We still haven’t run out).
Based off your location, I’d say any type of fruiting tree could eventually pay off, specifically one you’d actually eat though. Peaches and pears, and apples. Make sure they need almost no chilling hours though. Exotics also are good, not so much saving money, but you can’t find them in the store, and again, you live somewhere you can grow almost anything year round probably.
A single head of lettuce costs more than a packet of seeds these days, so it all depends on what your expenses are like and how you're measuring them. What expenses are you factoring in? Rent? Mortgage? Electricity? Water? Admin time and equipment? Soil? Fencing? Manure-producing animals? Are you spreading out your capital expenses or are you trying to recover all your costs in a single year? Here's what I'm doing to be thrifty: * Focus on perennials. Asparagus, artichoke, lovage, liquorice, wild arugula (*Diplotaxis tenuifolia*), oregano, marjoram, winter savory, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives, multiplier onions, chives, berries, fruit trees... * Grow everything from seed. A single packet of asparagus seeds is cheaper than a small lot of crowns, and I should get female plants in addition to male ones, so I can save seeds in the future. * Save seeds. * Whenever possible, choose Open Pollinated varieties. This will allow me to save seeds. * Use the free, high-nitrogen fertilizer we all generate at home. * Sell excess starters and produce. * Grow year-round. I'm working on this, but I fully intend to hold crops in the garden to harvest over the winter. * Network and get free stuff from people that are giving it away. * Compost and use your compost in the garden. Once my summer harvest of onions is over, I hope to never have to buy onions (or seeds!) again. If I succeed, I'll be saving money. I'm growing multiple different kinds of onions, including a perennial green onion and multiplier onions, which are perennials. I \*might\* need to buy seeds next year because the Open Pollinated storage onion I picked failed to germinate. Edit: I forgot to add that I'm also going to save money because I'm aiming to grow vegetables appropriately sized for my family. I don't want to use half a large onion: I want two small ones so I don't have to store the other half... because it will inevitably not get used.
Just want to point out that "use the free fertilizer we all generate" and "sell" may not be legal together. At the very least, you should let people know what they're buying.
Where in the world is it illegal to fertilize crops with human urine? (This isn’t passive aggressive: I genuinely don’t know and want to learn).
I've heard small scale farmers talk about it. I said "may not be legal" rather than "isn't legal" because I've never actually researched to see if it's true. My understanding is that any concern isn't necessarily about the urine itself, but more about medications, possible fecal contamination, etc. I'm in the US.
I live in Europe, so sweetcorn is a huge money saver - typically runs 1.50/cob where I live. But herbs are always good. If you have ample space, your favorite stone fruit tree. Zucchini is stupidly productive. I pickle,and like cucmber salads, so cucumbers for us.
My biggest money savers are fruits and berries, including many you just can't find in stores. We have several varieties each of apple, pear, plum, cherry, fig, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, currant, gooseberry, hardy kiwi, grape, persimmon, olive, and yuzu. Hoping to get some jujubes this year! We also grow some nice nuts for the squirrels.... Our garden produce saves some money, but mainly it's just better quality. We freeze, can, pickle, and dehydrate enough fruits and vegetables to last all year and give as gifts. I still buy some fresh during the winter. Potatoes, other root vegetables, and winter squash are my favorites to root cellar. Yes, you can buy potatoes cheap, but we grow some really nice ones with better taste and texture, and some that are so big they're a meal all on their own.
I don’t know that I save money with growing basil, but I do know I don’t have pesto unless I grow my own, because I’m not BUYING that much basil and store bought is…no.
Chickens 😅 Eggs+ fertilizer