"GrlIntrpted" wrote in message
...
My husband and I are in the midst of a heated debate. He disagrees with
me that growing your own produce is cheaper than purchasing it.

Besides the health benefits, and obviously the better tasting produce I
would be very interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on the subject.

Is it cheaper or more expensive to grow your own crops?

Depends on how you value your time and what you'd be
doing if you didn't garden. If you spend the average American's
four and a half hours a day in front of the boob tube watching
Seinfeld reruns, then it's definitely cheaper -- and better for
you than being a couch potato.

***

Costs are virtually nothing. I bought about 30 bucks worth of
seeds 5 years ago, and have been saving seeds from each year
to start the next year's crop. I do manage to spend 6 or 8 bucks
a year on new seeds for some of the goofbal hybrid varieties that
produce junk on second generation seeds.

Haven't spent a dime on fertilizer. We compost everything, and
there's a lot of organic waste on our 9 acre plot.

Trelises, cages, poles, stakes -- what are those? Who needs
to buy those? We plant everything that likes to vine/climb or
needs support -- we plant them along our fenceline and they
climb the fence.

We don't buy pots or other containers. We recycle stuff -- yogurt
containers that would normally get thrown away, butter tubs,
CoolWhip(tm) plastic containers -- we even wash and recycle
the styrofoam cups from our FouthOfJulySummerBash(tm) to
use to pot out small plants. Cardboard egg cartons (not the
styrofoam ones) make excellent little seedling starter kits. No
need to purchase containers to hold your plants for starting
indoors. You don't need a greenhouse either. We do ours in
the basement with flourescent shop lights that we already
have in the basement, and a set of shelves (built from scrap
lumber) to hold the plants up close to the light. I bought
a 6 dollar timer at HomeDepot to control the lights.

I had to buy a box of shotgun shells to chase out the annual
migration of Canada geese that would show up and tear our
garden to hell and back -- cost: 6 bucks, first year only. They
never came back once they figured out I was serious.

We have no need for potting soil or topsoil -- we make our
own (see composting above).

We use no insecticides in the garden, however we do plant
roughly double what we'll need -- knowing we'll lose better
than half to the bugs.

I did buy a used tiller for 80 bucks about 5 years ago. Amortize
that out over its expected lifespan and you're looking at ... maybe
10 bucks a year (?). We use about 3 gallons of gas a year to till our
entire plot (twice a year: spring and fall). Maybe 8, 9 bucks a year.

I'd guess that it costs us about 40 or 50 bucks a year when it
comes down to it. What do I get out of it? Don't know for
sure now -- haven't calculated it since the first year, but that
first year we added up what we would spend on the produce
at the local WeSellGroceries store. Came to around $900 bucks
worth of produce.

It's far, far more now. I've started growing and curing my own
tobacco to roll my own cigarettes. That, alone, saves me about
$1200 bucks a year that used to go to Mr. Marlboro.

Saves us a couple of grand a year when you add it all up. If,
however, you calculate your time at a dollar value -- even as
low as minimum wage, it's certainly a loser ... and a very
big one at that.

What's your time worth? That's the key to whether you think
it's a winning or losing proposition.