Will my vegetable garden pay for itself? Optimistic math says yes - Saving You Money (2024)

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Gardening is a common hobby and is often touted as a way to save money or to be self-sufficient. But when it comes to dollars and cents, is growing your own fruits and vegetables actually worth it?

Yes, if you provide free labor. If I had to pay the “workers” my backyard farm would go bankrupt.

While working on a column about cheap and free ways to fertilize your garden — spoiler alert, the internet is often wrong — I started to worry that my garden was a money pit.

So, I ran the numbers. And even though I had about $950 in startup costs, I should be able to grow about $1,750 worth of produce in my first year.

But I’ll admit, my math may be too confident. Tim McDermott, the gardening expert and educator at the OSU Extension office in Franklin County, look at my spreadsheet and said my expectations are optimistic.

He said it’s “actually fairly difficult to beat the store” on prices. Where you can beat them is on freshness, availability and — if all goes well — quality.

• Need garden tips? Read cleveland.com’s gardening columns

I think I’ll come out ahead financially. Before we get any further, I’ll address one common gripe I get: “Not everything is meant to save money.”

There’s something special about sitting in the yard or on the patio, drinking a coffee or a beer, and looking out at your plants. Author John Green has a great video on YouTube about this, where he harvests, cooks and eats just eight peas from his first harvest that year.

Growing said peas cost about 25 cents each, making them pretty expensive.

“But another way of looking at it is that my peas are very valuable,” Green said.

It’s a great sentiment, but this column is quite literally about money. So “joy” is not included in my math.

How much did it cost to start my garden?

Starting a garden can be cheap or expensive depending on how you do it — and how much help you get from others. My guess is that my growing space — about 400 square feet with more than 100 plants — is on the high end.

My back-of-the-napkin math says I used $950 of materials to start my garden. But I only spent $350.

First, I borrowed a rototiller, which would have cost about $300 if I had to buy it. Then, I took a bunch of building materials from my dad.

I built a border around the garden using 8-foot timbers, which would have cost about $200 new. To be fair, these weren’t new and were most likely from a cull pile somewhere. The same goes for a dozen fence stakes and 100 feet of chicken wire ($108). I also took some tomato cages.

Many of my plants came from Hansen’s Greenhouse on Columbia Road in Olmsted Falls. They charge about $17 for a flat or $1.50 for a tomato plant or a “veggie pack” which could have anywhere from three to six plants. An independent greenhouse is usually cheaper (and better) than buying plants at a home center.

I also got plants from my dad, who started his own seeds. And a few from Marc’s because they had funny names like “Lemon Boy” or “Mortgage Lifter.”

There are other miscellaneous things like potting mix, gardening tools, fertilizer and of course water. My math says I’ll pay $50 to water my garden this year. We’ll see what my water and sewer bills say.

I’m also experimenting with “self-wicking” tubs, essentially pots that water themselves. You could build one for about $20 with a 5-gallon bucket, an empty milk or soda container and PVC-pipe.

Or you can literally just throw seeds at the grounds.

The previous homeowners’ child quite literally took a handful of seeds and threw them. Now parsley and garlic are growing in my front flower beds.

That being said, my own garden is already showing some issues. Something is nibbling on my eggplant and I don’t think the ants crawling near my Shish*to peppers is a great sign.

“Raising food is the second hardest thing you’ll ever raise,” McDermott said. “Children our the first.”

How much will my garden grow?

The internet is full of extensive and contradictory information about gardening, and predicting how much food I’ll grow is really more speculation than anything else.

Different sources make different claims. Instead of finding the “best” answers for yield, I tried to find an answer that was reasonable.

Then I compared my estimate for how much I’d grow to prices for the most similar item at Giant Eagle.

Between my cherry tomatoes, poblanos, bell peppers and mustard greens, I think I can grow about $1,750 of produce if things go well.

Will everything work out? Probably not. But if half my plants die, I can have an OK year.

Here’s a few examples.

My 16 bellstar tomato plants could grow five pounds of fruit on average. At $2.99 a pound, that’s $240 of produce, or $15 a plant.

I did the same math for each crop. I’m assuming my cherry tomatoes will grow about $28 of fruit per plant. My California Wonders, a bell-pepper variety, will produce only about $6 of produce per plant.

The crop I have the most of is shallots. Why? Because each plant has two-or-three stems you plant individually — which I didn’t know when I bought it. I have enough that I lost count. But I think I’ll get about $40 worth of shallots.

All-in-all I think I’m averaging $13 of “revenue” per plant — not counting the shallots. Some of these plants cost $1.50; some where as cheap as 25 cents.

This is all very complicated. Let’s look at an easier example — my 5-gallon self-wicking planters.

It holds just one tomato plant, which might bear anywhere from $15 to $25 of fruit, depending on the variety. It might hold two jalapeno plants. I’ve even read that you can fit four lettuce heads.

Experimenting is key. But there’s no reason that I can use the same bucket and potting soil each year, with the right care and fertilizing.

Will my math hold up?

Keen readers are probably poking holes in my math, and that’s fair, because there’s a lot of variables and caveats here.

And there are the two elephants in the room — time and … time.

On the one hand, I’ll hopefully be gardening each year. I’ll spread out my startup costs over time, improve my soil and hopefully become a better gardener. Using the first year to judge my garden is sort of foolish.

More expenses will probably crop up, though. I’m already planning on a new fence and adding raised beds next year. Even though I won’t buy the same things next year. I’ll spend more money.

On the other hand, if I paid myself Ohio’s minimum wage of $10.10 an hour, I’d already be far in the red. I cannot be as productive per square-foot as a 1,000-acre farm with tractors and irrigation systems. I’ll get better, but never that good.

It’s incredibly time-consuming.

On the other, other hand, I can grow things that can’t be found at my local grocer. Just among my cherry tomatoes I have Sweet 100s, Sungolds and Yellow Cherrys. I have Shisito peppers and Purple Beauties (a purple bell pepper).

It might be better to compare my produce to prices at a farmers’ market, because in theory I’ll be getting fresh-from-the-field food. Doing that might be an insult to farmers, who grow much better produce than I will.

But isn’t it too late to start a garden?

Nope. Greenhouses and nurseries still have plants available. But also, there are plenty of things to plant right now, McDermott said.

Ohio State’s extension office has a growing calendar that you can find here. And a more extensive guide on garden planting here. You can still sow seeds and grow beans, carrots, sweet corn and herbs.

Each county has an Ohio State extension office. You can find the Cuyahoga County office at cuyahoga.osu.edu/home.

Saving You Money is cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer’s column about saving money. We want to know how we can help you save money. Send your questions and comments to smcdonnell@cleveland.com.