AndyS wrote:

From a practical standpoint, buying canned vegetables would be
more cost effective. But, we wouldn't get the same feeling as
we do when we eat a nice salad, and know that it only cost us
a few dozen man-hours of garden work to gather ourselves....
.... Seems silly, but I really like that feeling.....and the more
I do "myself", the better it feels...... Heck, I can afford to
throw away a couple bucks a year to get up my learning curve.....

There are several things that motivate me to garden, but cost is pretty
far down the list. I am sure that if I took the actual cost of the
garden that I could buy more frozen/canned produce than I harvest from
the garden.

But there are two things that stand out -- taste and satisfaction.

There is just nothing that compares with fresh asparagus. I mean REALLY
fresh, as in get the water boiling before cutting it. Another example
is tomatoes -- the commercial varieties are bred for good shipping and
consistency, not for taste. Farmer's market produce comes close, but
the taste of stuff fresh from the garden just cannot be beat. (Then
there's the experience of picking the raspberries off the bush and
popping them directly into the mouth.)

On the other hand, there are things that I can grow in my garden but
don't because I don't consider them worth the effort. Cauliflower is an
example -- I can buy frozen cauliflower at reasonable prices and the
taste compares favorably with what I can achieve by freezing it myself.
I just don't consider the incremental improvement worth my time to
plant, tend, harvest, and process it.

I do get satisfaction from growing my own food. I enjoy my vegetable
garden, but it's only one of the activities I enjoy in the summer. I
try to do two things to avoid burnout. First, I make an effort to limit
how much I plant. Second, I try to develop techniques like mulching
that reduce the amount of time it takes to maintain the garden. The
idea is to avoid standing in the garden in July, overwhelmed by the
amount of work that is needed to maintain it.