Today, I welcome Lucy, founder of GardenAmbition.com. She shares some great ways to save money gardening, including some suggestions on cost-efficient plants! Take it away, Lucy!
Generally, hobbies offer a sense of calm and increased productivity to enthusiasts, but some of these are known to give more than just that.
In this article, we’re going to talk about gardening and its many benefits, particularly the ones that can help you save money. Yes, aside from reducing one’s carbon footprint in the environment and ensuring food safety, growing your own food is also a simple and economical solution to certain budget limitations. Gardening is the perfect add-on to a frugal yet healthy lifestyle. Don’t believe us? Read on to know how to save money from gardening!
Less Time and Money Spent in Grocery Stores
If you really want to take advantage of gardening’s economic benefits, get 60-80% of your daily sustenance from plant-based foods, particularly the ones that you have in your own backyard. A plentiful garden is enough to provide this nourishment. Not only will you spend less money on grocery stores, but you can also have more sweet time at home to yourself from the reduced grocery shopping trips.
The temptation to buy unnecessary food products and other items when grocery shopping can be overwhelming. If you have a self-sustaining home, you can do with bi-monthly grocery shopping trips and still get everything you need to stay healthy. This is another way to save money from gardening.
Planting Cost-Efficient Food-Bearing Crops
There are so many types of food-bearing crops that you can grow in your garden. Depending on your food choices, climate, and soil type, you can create your very own vegetable garden, plant fruit-bearing trees that also double as shade, pot a selection of herbs you can use daily for cooking, and grow other crops that can sustain your healthy lifestyle minus the added costs. If you really want to save money from gardening, you should know which of these plants provide the most sustenance with the least gardening and maintenance costs.
- Leafy Greens
By growing your very own leafy greens in your garden, you can save as much as $250 in one harvest, given that these veggies often cost around $4-$5 per bag in grocery stores. Leafy greens, such as arugula, lettuce, Swiss chard, and spinach, don’t have much shelf life as compared to other foods. That said, you can lose a lot of money if you don’t use whole bags in a day’s worth of cooking.
The trick is to keep a steady supply of these veggies without much surplus. To achieve this, you can plant some seeds on a weekly basis. Leafy greens are some of the easiest plants to grow, making it ideal for a home garden. So, if you’re a salad lover and newbie gardener, you may want to start with these versatile greens.
- Green Beans
Heirloom green beans can cost around $6 by the pound in grocery stores, making one of the most expensive green bean varieties there are. Hence, growing these crops in your own backyard sounds more cost-efficient. A $2 seed packet can yield two pounds of beans, which allows you to save you about $180 of your monthly food budget in a single harvest.
A good tip in maximizing the production of heirloom green beans would be to choose those that grow on vines to grow additional pounds.
- Cherry Tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes are great additions to several recipes, making it a joy to grow and harvest. Growing your own heirloom cherry tomatoes is so economical; you can save as much as $300 per season. Heirloom cherry tomatoes have higher production in much longer seasons. For tomato lovers, you can even turn production up a notch by using tomato fertilizers. A pint of these garden must-haves cost around $5 while a single plant can yield to 20 pints.
- Herbs
Did you know that a single herbal plant can yield up to 50 times more than what you pay $3 for in the grocery store? Perhaps the best thing about herbs is that some varieties can survive a bit of neglect and still produce everything you need to cook up a hearty, herb-infused meal.
Needing only about 4-6 hours of daily sunlight, herbs don’t require as much maintenance as other crops and can even be grown indoors. The surplus of these aromatic recipe additives also doesn’t go to waste as much as other crops since they can be preserved, dried, and even frozen for future use.
Guaranteed Food Safety=Zero Hospital Bills
Another economic benefit brought by gardening is ensuring the quality of the food produced. You’re growing crops for your own consumption, which means you don’t have to include harmful chemicals to increase production. Knowing exactly where the food on your plate comes from and the safe processes that led to its production eliminate the chance of food poisoning and other medical emergencies.
Conclusion
Gardening is a hobby that gives. With all this info, it’s easy to see why. If you’re currently stuck in a financial rut, maybe it’s time for you to try this green method. Save money from gardening now, and you just might stick with the lifestyle for a long, long time.
Hi there! I’m Lucy – founder of GardenAmbition.com and I’m a self-confessed garden fanatic. Gardening has always been a passion of mine and will always be my favorite pastime. Now that I am married and have one adorable son, I have the time to write and share my personal experiences with other garden enthusiasts like me.
I have a very un-green thumb, but I would love to try my hand at gardening next summer! Luckily, Mr. Adventure Rich is much more garden savvy, so maybe we will be able to make it work 😉
We have saved SO much money via gardening – and the food tastes infinitely better than what you’ll find at the stores. Well worth the time and effort.
I’ve had pretty good luck with the herbs, but really want to branch out with some fruit trees next year. (We tried last year, but the deer ate the trees.) While it takes some time to develop, it can really trim your grocery bill if you can get a couple of producing blueberry bushes/blackberry brambles/apple trees, depending on your soil and climate.
We’ve had bad luck with our garden this year. A few cucumbers and green peppers, but everything else was a bust. We were really looking forward to fresh tomatoes. Not sure what happened 🙁
Thank you, Lucy. Mrs. Groovy and I are determined to become gardening hobbyists and this provided the necessary spur. Safe, economical food grown in your very own backyard. What the heck have we been waiting for?
I do not have a green thumb at all! I have a terrible history of murdering plants. However, my father grew up on a farm and planted wonderful vegetable and berry gardens as we were growing up, and I have fond memories of picking beans for dinner and picking raspberries to go with dessert. I do harbour a secret ambition to garden, but I think I’ll wait until retirement (only 2 years away) and begin with tomatoes and herbs. I’ll have to take very small baby steps and read up a lot about it. Thanks for this post – a good reminder of what I still want to do.
We planted herbs, leafy greens, and tomatoes this spring and summer. The bugs killed our cucumbers and squash after the first pickings, but, our tomato plants have been really successful.
We’re also trying our hand at a fall garden this year too. As my wife and I are also have a history for killing more plants than letting them thrive, it has been a learning experience.
We bought the book Square Foot Gardening when we bought our house and have loved growing our own vegetables! Tomatoes and peppers seem to grow especially well where our boxes are placed so we get to make and freeze tomato sauce for the year. We also have a strawberry box which is great, but we rarely get many berries off it as my toddler loves to pick and eat them when he is outside playing!
If you have the space it’s such a good idea. Easiest ones I’ve grown are strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes.