10 ms·

5 foods it's cheaper to grow

71 points by ph0rque 16y ago

guyzero 16y ago
I'm shocked they felt it necessary to mention that it's not worth your time to grow your own wheat. That's possibly the most obvious gardening suggestion ever.
ciupicri 16y ago
I asked Steiner how I can tell if I can use a seed again. "It says on the package 'one-use seed' if it's been genetically modified," he says. I sometimes wonder if we've gone too far with these genetic modifications.
- scotty79 16y ago
  That's probably just a wish of seed manufacturer. See "seed piracy".
- billswift 16y ago
  Actually, except for heirloom varieties, most plants grown for decades have been hybrids - their parents are of different varieties, so their seeds produce different and usually far inferior products. Newer patented varieties are legally protected against being non-sexually propagated also, like taking cuttings from herbs or roses, to start new plants.
KingOfB 16y ago
A) Tomatoes are a must grow and pretty simple. The taste of a tomato that never touches refrigeration is almost a different fruit. Easy to grow in a 5 gallon bucket on your deck or wherever. B) Carrots are my favorite fresh. I can't believe they said there wasn't much of a difference between store bought and garden bought. Although I have noticed that I have gotten a few exceptional carrots at time. It may be that their such a durable vegetable buyers can be negligent and leave them sitting around for ages. C) Asparagus plants take a while to establish but are easier than growing a fruit tree! Key is to plant them correctly and to lime the hell out of them every fall / spring. They thrive under the right soil conditions. And on the foraging front, Mushroom Foraging is actually pretty simple for a few location dependent varieties. Chicken of the woods or Sulfur Shelf is blooming all over the place this time of year in New England. Hen of The Woods is also bloomer, although not as easy to spot. My favorite grow-your own was Giant Shiitake's from Fungi Perfect. Buy spores online (30$), find a suitable tree(30$ or free) and a days of work to get started. Water in droughts and you will get tons of mushrooms twice a year for 2-3 years. I had 3 fruiting logs and I would get 6" deep in a grocery bag of portabello sized mushrooms! This was one of my more satisfying hobbies, although the logs died in a drought last summer =( http://fungi.com/plugs/plugs.html http://fungi.com/plugs/plugs.html
- camiller 16y ago
  B) Carrots - my father-in-law did carrots once. Horribly bitter taste. I don't know if there are different varieties or if it is just soil composition but ugh.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
    Probably soil composition. I've noticed wide variation in taste of carrots from different parts of my garden. I don't bother growing them anymore because they are so picky about good soil.
Jkeg 16y ago
Sure, most of those plants can be cheaper to buy than grow, if you treat your garden shop clerk as a used car salesman and let him connive you into buying every unnecessary over marketed garden gadget in the shop. But really, most plants will just require a shovel, trowel, cheap fertilizer, and a bit of time. Wheat and others are obvious exceptions, because their actual value is so low it's easy for any expense to exceed the benefit. Wheat also benefits hugely from mechanization, but the initial costs are high. It's basically an oddball. Potatoes don't fit that pattern, just buy seed potatoes once, then let a few grow "eyes", cut them off, throw them in the ground and weed them a bit. Done.
jgv 16y ago
Growing herbs was one of my best decisions (lifehacks?) of the summer. I have found basil to be the most rewarding and robust herb to grow. Although my friends have a mint plant that keeps on coming back. You also don't need to be living in a rural or suburban area to grow herbs. I live in Brooklyn and have herbs growing on my fire escape, as do many of my neighbors. If you're lucky enough to have outdoor space, a good trick is to take tires and fill them with dirt to grow crops. Friends of mine have been successful with tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. I'm an advocate of urban farming and I'd love to hear from other people growing food in an urban area. I'm dying to try Window Farms (http://windowfarms.org http://windowfarms.org), which looks like a great project and has built a robust community around urban farming. One more thing: cat people, grow catnip! It's ~$1 for a bag of seeds and keeps on coming back. Much cheaper than anything store bought. EDIT: Currently growing basil, rosemary, cilantro (barely), chives, mint, catnip, parsley. Would love to hear what has been successful or any advice since I'm kind of new to growing.
- Deestan 16y ago
  I've had great success with Peppermint and Aloe vera. Both plants are useful, can take a lot of abuse, and doesn't require any green fingers on your part. - Peppermint can be used to make tea, mojito, as flavour for ice cream, or you can just chew on the leaves as a snack. - Aloe vera juice can be used to relieve itching from sunburn or insect bites. - Need more plants? Just break off a bit of your old aloe vera or peppermint and shove it in some wet soil. - And of course, both plants are decorative. :)
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    don't forget that pure aloe vera is great for actual burns(mild not severe, if sever get yourself to the ER) not just the sun variety.
- nostromo 16y ago
  A warning: A friend gardening on a fire escape in Brooklyn came home from work one day to find all of her plants gone. It turns out it's illegal to keep things there and they can be removed without warning. Regarding mint, it's super robust and will expand if allowed to. You can also surround other plants with mint, because most pests don't like the flavor (that's probably why it evolved that way) it will act as a barrier. Ants, mosquitos, cockroaches all don't like it. I grow Pineapple Mint because it looks cool. :)
vinhboy 16y ago
lemon tree....
- joeyh 16y ago
  Specifically, potted Meyer lemon tree :) Expensive, but worth it.
andrew1 16y ago
The fruit tree numbers are a bit silly; land isn't free, they should really be including the rent/mortgage cost of the land too. The returns would be less impressive at that point I'd imagine.
- pjscott 16y ago
  Since it's assumed that you already own the land in question, they're only looking at marginal cost of the tree itself. I don't see a problem with this.
- amalcon 16y ago
  Fruit trees can also count as decorative.
- rwmj 16y ago
  Apple trees can be grown in pots. Also small fruit bushes (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries). Also beans. You can put these on roofs, fire escapes, windowsills and so on which are effectively underused and thus rent free.
  - NickPollard 16y ago
    Fire escapes are underused except for when you need them the most.
- tedshroyer 16y ago
  Almost every property you purchase in the United States will have setbacks and easements on it which make a large portion of the land unbuildable. For example, a typical suburban lot in my area will have a 5 foot utility easement along the sides and back, then a 20 foot front building setback. It seems to me that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your mortgage payment by not doing something with that area like gardening on it.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Just be careful where your property lines are when you plant your trees. Whether a tree is on one property or another seems to be a common dispute. However, if you're giving your neighbor several pounds of free fruit, they may be more amicable to a tree growing a foot or two on their side.
prawn 16y ago
With potatoes, when you have a few starting to get past it in the cupboard or potato box (going soft, growing on you, etc), just throw them in the ground and they will take off. For anyone with a small amount of garden space, look into the book One Magic Square (I think that's what it's called). Local author/gardener, suggests square-metre plantings that are complementary or that will give you crops suiting certain meals (salads, soups, etc). The other big advantage is that you add a square-metre and get used to it before you take it further. IME, one risk otherwise is diving in too deep and finding you've bitten off more than you can chew (well, manage by weeding, watering, etc). Instead, start incrementally.
lmkg 16y ago
In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food. It does, however, take a significant time and effort commitment. Very few plants are simply plant-and-forget[1]. As usual, when you go to the store, you pay for the convenience more than for the product itself. Nonetheless, even when you consider time & labor, home-grown food probably comes out cheaper because a significant amount of the convenience markup comes from transportation, which gets eliminated entirely. Even with the work it takes, I would strongly recommend it. Remember, the true cost of the time and effort you put in is the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead with your time. For a large chunk of the population, that's TV or facebook (farmville, ha ha). Plus, there are intangible benefits beyond the retail value of the food itself. Personally, I find it immensely rewarding to eat food that I made myself from seed to plate. It tends to taste better too--foods in the grocery store are bred for fast harvest, lower soil requirements, long shelf life and durability during transportation. It should come as no surprise that they converge in most discernible attributes towards wax and cardboard. Meanwhile, the tomato seed varieties you can pick up at your local nursery are bred to optimize salad, pasta sauce, gazpacho and lasagna. [1] Unless you live in Hawai`i. Seriously, you can throw a stick at any bare patch of ground on that island and come back to a tree in a few years. Lava is nutritious.
- nostromo 16y ago
  I've started doing this on a limited basis. An added benefit: you know what goes into your food. I've got a higher than average risk for Parkinson's Disease, so it's important that I avoid pesticides religiously. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421091705.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421091705.ht...) Buying organic veggies helps, but growing is the best way to be sure.
- iuhjytgfbnjhmk 16y ago
  >In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food Not necessarily - thats the point of the article Even in just cost of seeds and fertilizer you can't grow wheat more cheaply than iowa or saskatchewan.
  - camiller 16y ago
emarcotte 16y ago
Do many people have advice on things that can grow inside an apartment? I've heard/seen various lamp-based systems that have timers and things. I was curious if there are any particular plants that would grow in the relative dark of an apartment if I could get myself a barrel with some soil.
- rwmj 16y ago
  It'll cost you a fortune in electricity if cough my friend's experience growing dope as a student is anything to go by. I'm assuming your apartment has windows (or do you live in the dark?) so invest in some window boxes. You can grow herbs easily in those.
  - emarcotte 16y ago
    I have windows, but I also live next to some trees which makes direct sunlight limited. I was hoping there was some secret vegetables/herbs that could deal with low-light. I guess that means things that would be possible to grow in the woods, like underbrush.
    - jgv 16y ago
      If your window gets sun, you can get herbs like basil, parsley, or mint to grow indoors. Currently I'm growing catnip indoors and I plan on moving some of my herbs indoors when it gets colder.
      - EventHorizon 16y ago
        for the more adventurous there are also hydroponic window 'farms': http://www.windowfarms.org/ http://www.windowfarms.org/
      - swolchok 16y ago
        Is it too late in the year to start mint? I have a very similar situation to the OP; live in an apartment in SE Michigan with a window/balcony, but near trees. I'm assuming it'll have to come inside around mid-October.
jules 16y ago
Cheap is not the biggest advantage. Home grown vegetables taste better, especially haricots verts and tomatoes. Some fruits are ridiculously expensive though like raspberries and blackberries. They also require less weeding than most vegetables and they survive the winter. From one blackberry plant you can get 20kg of blackberries. This can cost like €300 in the supermarket.
- Semiapies 16y ago
  For blackberries, do what the hipsters call "foraging" or what folks when I was a kid called "picking them" from wild bushes. Cheap. (Make sure you're not close to a road, garbage dump, etc. And they may not grow in your area. Void where prohibited.) After going to the trouble of doing so, you might just prefer to spend the money for a little tub of them. Still, it's an option.
  - robobenjie 16y ago
    Oh, but the flavor of wild, ripe blackberries is so much better then even the ones I can get at the farmers market. Along with tomatoes, they have the biggest difference in flavor home-grown vs bought. Also blackberries myst be the easiest thing in the world to grow (here in the bay area anyway). Getting rid of them when you are done might be another story...
    - tjpick 16y ago
      yeah, blackberry grows so easily that it's a noxious weed in this part of the world.
    - billswift 16y ago
      Wild blackberries are actually small and not that tasty. If they are good, they are almost certainly feral domestics; maybe spread by birds or an old farm was nearby.
  - jules 16y ago
    Yep, that's another option. Where I live they are very rare and the ones that are there are small and not many berries per plant. Gathering then from your own garden is very quick. Certainly quicker than the extra time you spend in the shop for them. And the ones in the shop are usually not ripe enough for my tastes. I like them sweet not sour. Also buying 3 kg for making jam costs you a fortune. You can buy a jar of blackberry jam for less than €1, but buying that amount of fresh blackberries easily costs €10.
nobody_nowhere 16y ago
Totally does not account for the amount of time it takes to plant, water, weed, fertilize, pest-proof and on and on. $735 to maintain a garden for a year? Sure, if you consider your time as zero-cost. In my experience, those heads of lettuce are delicious, rewarding, and cost 10-100x what you pay in the store.
- cullenking 16y ago
  Crazy talk - greens are so freaking easy to grow! You don't need to go crazy, just buy a couple bags of cheap soil, mound it up on whatever shit dirt you have, surround it with some rocks and water every other day. Water in the morning while you drink the coffee, takes a few minutes. Way way way cheaper than the store - I am not detracting from my work or life in any way when I stand outside and water my (large) garden for thirty minutes while drinking coffee. Actually, it's one of the best ways I can think of to wake up.
te_platt 16y ago
After taking into account the cost of time and effort tending plants, it's almost always cheaper (dollars per pound) to buy food. Still, I'm an avid gardener because of the other benefits besides cost. 1. Better taste. A tomato out of the garden is almost a different fruit (vegetable?) than one from the store. 2. Personal satisfaction. There is just something rewarding about tending to a plant and enjoying the fruit after the work. 3. Aesthetics. I have a lemon and a grapefruit tree I keep indoors. They look and smell nice. The fruit is just an added bonus.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  interesting. How big do they get indoors?
xentronium 16y ago
You have to invest quite a lot of time to get everything to work. Nevertheless, growing your own food is still very popular here in Russia, when almost every family (even with <600$ total monthly income) has its village cottage with some plants. You get to harvest and eat fresh only late summer and early autumn though.
unwind 16y ago
At the other end of the spectrum from the fruit tree at least, is sprouting. It's dead easy (I think I could manage, but luckily my fiancee got bitten by some kind of sprouting-bug lately), doesn't require much space (the window sill is perfect) and very cheap. Around here, a mini tub of store-bought sprouts can run around €1.5 (say, $2). That buys probably around 500 g of dried mung beans, which will give a volume of sprouts that easily beats the store-bought pack by a factor of, oh, 50 is probably very conservative. It's almost scary, at first. We cheat and use a sprouter (a small plastic container with two levels of strainer shelves, a bottom, and a transparent lid) that was around €10-15, so it'll take a while to get our investment back. For the impatient, sprouting is of course also very fast, you'll be harvesting in a manner of days.
mast 16y ago
In terms of time and effort, it is far cheaper to simply go buy food the grocery store. On the other hand, we need to start taking responsiblity for the food we eat. Growing your own means you don't need to worry about food recalls or pesticide use. And, as other commenters have noted, homegrown does taste better.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
I've got a small orchard of 8 fruit trees [1]. I've found that if you want to grow your own food, the time investment for fruit is the lowest per unit product. I'd estimate that I spend less than 5 hours per year on my trees, total. Maintenance consists of pruning in the fall, culling fruit early in the season, fertilizing occasionally, and periodic spraying. For pruning, decide how much you think you ought to cut back, and then cut twice that amount. Do not skip the spraying. People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests. A given type of fruit tends to come ripe all at once. I'll be harvesting my peaches, say, over 1.5 - 2 weeks. For soft fruits like peaches or plums, you can't keep them very long. You've got to preserve them or give them away. So plan your crops accordingly. If you want to do this, now is the time to start planning. Even more than tomatoes, you need to time it right. Trees need to be planted either in very early spring, or in the fall. [1] 2 peaches, 2 apples, 2 pears, 1 plum, 1 pluot
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  TIL: plum crossed with apricot is a pluot (or aprium). >People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests. I think that's part of the point. Wiping out bugs with pesticides has far reaching effects and not just on the bugs directly.
froggy 16y ago
I'd add to that list Blueberry bushes if you have the right type of soil (acidic/well-drained). They don't need pesticide spraying and each bush can grow up to 15 pounds/year of berries. My yard project this fall is digging out a row of clay soil and making a raised amended bed for 8-9 blueberry highbushes. Blueberry plants are finicky about soil PH and drainage, so I am prepping the bed with sulfur, coarse sand, peat, and ground pine bark chips and getting it right for planting by spring 2012. I expect they will produce ~100 pounds per year in 5 years.
arohner 16y ago
Not exactly a vegetable, but making your own beer is cost effective, and tastes great (Though it will turn you into a beer snob). It costs around $100-$200 upfront investment, and then about $50 to make 5 gallons. The time cost isn't that bad either, 3 hours on the first day, then 15 minutes, once a week for three weeks.
sgoraya 16y ago
Growing my own food is something that was instilled in me by my parents - We always had fruit trees, nuts and veggies growing in our backyard. My Dad having an MS in Agronomy didnt hurt either. Currently in backyard in CA: -Plums, lemons, oranges, pomegranate (my personal favorite), avocado and fig tree. -Eggplant, jalapeños, bellpepper, corn -Mint is the only herb we're growing Beyond watering every evening (I actually find this therapeutic in a way), the twice a year fertilizer (the fresh stuff we get from Dad's friend) and once a year pruning, our backyard garden provides us food year round.
brc 16y ago
Well I have a small garden but try and get maximum yield from it. I've got Chives, Onions, Spring onions, basil, oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary. I have lettuce, tomatoes,zucchini,snowpeas and broccoloi, and celery. I have a small mandarin tree that yields by the bucketfull. In my planning I'm pulling out some decorative trees and replacing with a banana patch and I'm experimenting with pineapples. I would estimate it's mostly been a money pit - the yields have been nowhere near enough to justify the time or money. For me it's a chance to do something real (I work from home) and a great learning opportunity for the kids. The other thing not to forget is growing flowers. They're much easier and you can have fresh flowers inside the house for a very small outlay, or just keep them in the garden and enjoy.

71 points by ph0rque 16y ago

I'm shocked they felt it necessary to mention that it's not worth your time to grow your own wheat. That's possibly the most obvious gardening suggestion ever.

ciupicri 16y ago

I asked Steiner how I can tell if I can use a seed again. "It says on the package 'one-use seed' if it's been genetically modified," he says. I sometimes wonder if we've gone too far with these genetic modifications.

scotty79 16y ago
That's probably just a wish of seed manufacturer. See "seed piracy".
billswift 16y ago
Actually, except for heirloom varieties, most plants grown for decades have been hybrids - their parents are of different varieties, so their seeds produce different and usually far inferior products. Newer patented varieties are legally protected against being non-sexually propagated also, like taking cuttings from herbs or roses, to start new plants.

KingOfB 16y ago

A) Tomatoes are a must grow and pretty simple. The taste of a tomato that never touches refrigeration is almost a different fruit. Easy to grow in a 5 gallon bucket on your deck or wherever. B) Carrots are my favorite fresh. I can't believe they said there wasn't much of a difference between store bought and garden bought. Although I have noticed that I have gotten a few exceptional carrots at time. It may be that their such a durable vegetable buyers can be negligent and leave them sitting around for ages. C) Asparagus plants take a while to establish but are easier than growing a fruit tree! Key is to plant them correctly and to lime the hell out of them every fall / spring. They thrive under the right soil conditions. And on the foraging front, Mushroom Foraging is actually pretty simple for a few location dependent varieties. Chicken of the woods or Sulfur Shelf is blooming all over the place this time of year in New England. Hen of The Woods is also bloomer, although not as easy to spot. My favorite grow-your own was Giant Shiitake's from Fungi Perfect. Buy spores online (30$), find a suitable tree(30$ or free) and a days of work to get started. Water in droughts and you will get tons of mushrooms twice a year for 2-3 years. I had 3 fruiting logs and I would get 6" deep in a grocery bag of portabello sized mushrooms! This was one of my more satisfying hobbies, although the logs died in a drought last summer =( http://fungi.com/plugs/plugs.html http://fungi.com/plugs/plugs.html

camiller 16y ago
B) Carrots - my father-in-law did carrots once. Horribly bitter taste. I don't know if there are different varieties or if it is just soil composition but ugh.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  Probably soil composition. I've noticed wide variation in taste of carrots from different parts of my garden. I don't bother growing them anymore because they are so picky about good soil.

Jkeg 16y ago

Sure, most of those plants can be cheaper to buy than grow, if you treat your garden shop clerk as a used car salesman and let him connive you into buying every unnecessary over marketed garden gadget in the shop. But really, most plants will just require a shovel, trowel, cheap fertilizer, and a bit of time. Wheat and others are obvious exceptions, because their actual value is so low it's easy for any expense to exceed the benefit. Wheat also benefits hugely from mechanization, but the initial costs are high. It's basically an oddball. Potatoes don't fit that pattern, just buy seed potatoes once, then let a few grow "eyes", cut them off, throw them in the ground and weed them a bit. Done.

jgv 16y ago

Growing herbs was one of my best decisions (lifehacks?) of the summer. I have found basil to be the most rewarding and robust herb to grow. Although my friends have a mint plant that keeps on coming back. You also don't need to be living in a rural or suburban area to grow herbs. I live in Brooklyn and have herbs growing on my fire escape, as do many of my neighbors. If you're lucky enough to have outdoor space, a good trick is to take tires and fill them with dirt to grow crops. Friends of mine have been successful with tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. I'm an advocate of urban farming and I'd love to hear from other people growing food in an urban area. I'm dying to try Window Farms (http://windowfarms.org http://windowfarms.org), which looks like a great project and has built a robust community around urban farming. One more thing: cat people, grow catnip! It's ~$1 for a bag of seeds and keeps on coming back. Much cheaper than anything store bought. EDIT: Currently growing basil, rosemary, cilantro (barely), chives, mint, catnip, parsley. Would love to hear what has been successful or any advice since I'm kind of new to growing.

Deestan 16y ago
I've had great success with Peppermint and Aloe vera. Both plants are useful, can take a lot of abuse, and doesn't require any green fingers on your part. - Peppermint can be used to make tea, mojito, as flavour for ice cream, or you can just chew on the leaves as a snack. - Aloe vera juice can be used to relieve itching from sunburn or insect bites. - Need more plants? Just break off a bit of your old aloe vera or peppermint and shove it in some wet soil. - And of course, both plants are decorative. :)
- weaksauce 16y ago
  don't forget that pure aloe vera is great for actual burns(mild not severe, if sever get yourself to the ER) not just the sun variety.
nostromo 16y ago
A warning: A friend gardening on a fire escape in Brooklyn came home from work one day to find all of her plants gone. It turns out it's illegal to keep things there and they can be removed without warning. Regarding mint, it's super robust and will expand if allowed to. You can also surround other plants with mint, because most pests don't like the flavor (that's probably why it evolved that way) it will act as a barrier. Ants, mosquitos, cockroaches all don't like it. I grow Pineapple Mint because it looks cool. :)

vinhboy 16y ago

lemon tree....

joeyh 16y ago
Specifically, potted Meyer lemon tree :) Expensive, but worth it.

andrew1 16y ago

The fruit tree numbers are a bit silly; land isn't free, they should really be including the rent/mortgage cost of the land too. The returns would be less impressive at that point I'd imagine.

pjscott 16y ago
Since it's assumed that you already own the land in question, they're only looking at marginal cost of the tree itself. I don't see a problem with this.
amalcon 16y ago
Fruit trees can also count as decorative.
rwmj 16y ago
Apple trees can be grown in pots. Also small fruit bushes (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries). Also beans. You can put these on roofs, fire escapes, windowsills and so on which are effectively underused and thus rent free.
- NickPollard 16y ago
  Fire escapes are underused except for when you need them the most.
tedshroyer 16y ago
Almost every property you purchase in the United States will have setbacks and easements on it which make a large portion of the land unbuildable. For example, a typical suburban lot in my area will have a 5 foot utility easement along the sides and back, then a 20 foot front building setback. It seems to me that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your mortgage payment by not doing something with that area like gardening on it.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Just be careful where your property lines are when you plant your trees. Whether a tree is on one property or another seems to be a common dispute. However, if you're giving your neighbor several pounds of free fruit, they may be more amicable to a tree growing a foot or two on their side.

prawn 16y ago

With potatoes, when you have a few starting to get past it in the cupboard or potato box (going soft, growing on you, etc), just throw them in the ground and they will take off. For anyone with a small amount of garden space, look into the book One Magic Square (I think that's what it's called). Local author/gardener, suggests square-metre plantings that are complementary or that will give you crops suiting certain meals (salads, soups, etc). The other big advantage is that you add a square-metre and get used to it before you take it further. IME, one risk otherwise is diving in too deep and finding you've bitten off more than you can chew (well, manage by weeding, watering, etc). Instead, start incrementally.

lmkg 16y ago

In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food. It does, however, take a significant time and effort commitment. Very few plants are simply plant-and-forget[1]. As usual, when you go to the store, you pay for the convenience more than for the product itself. Nonetheless, even when you consider time & labor, home-grown food probably comes out cheaper because a significant amount of the convenience markup comes from transportation, which gets eliminated entirely. Even with the work it takes, I would strongly recommend it. Remember, the true cost of the time and effort you put in is the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead with your time. For a large chunk of the population, that's TV or facebook (farmville, ha ha). Plus, there are intangible benefits beyond the retail value of the food itself. Personally, I find it immensely rewarding to eat food that I made myself from seed to plate. It tends to taste better too--foods in the grocery store are bred for fast harvest, lower soil requirements, long shelf life and durability during transportation. It should come as no surprise that they converge in most discernible attributes towards wax and cardboard. Meanwhile, the tomato seed varieties you can pick up at your local nursery are bred to optimize salad, pasta sauce, gazpacho and lasagna. [1] Unless you live in Hawai`i. Seriously, you can throw a stick at any bare patch of ground on that island and come back to a tree in a few years. Lava is nutritious.

nostromo 16y ago
I've started doing this on a limited basis. An added benefit: you know what goes into your food. I've got a higher than average risk for Parkinson's Disease, so it's important that I avoid pesticides religiously. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421091705.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421091705.ht...) Buying organic veggies helps, but growing is the best way to be sure.
iuhjytgfbnjhmk 16y ago
>In terms of just money, it's far cheaper to grow your own food Not necessarily - thats the point of the article Even in just cost of seeds and fertilizer you can't grow wheat more cheaply than iowa or saskatchewan.
- camiller 16y ago

emarcotte 16y ago

Do many people have advice on things that can grow inside an apartment? I've heard/seen various lamp-based systems that have timers and things. I was curious if there are any particular plants that would grow in the relative dark of an apartment if I could get myself a barrel with some soil.

rwmj 16y ago
It'll cost you a fortune in electricity if cough my friend's experience growing dope as a student is anything to go by. I'm assuming your apartment has windows (or do you live in the dark?) so invest in some window boxes. You can grow herbs easily in those.
- emarcotte 16y ago
  I have windows, but I also live next to some trees which makes direct sunlight limited. I was hoping there was some secret vegetables/herbs that could deal with low-light. I guess that means things that would be possible to grow in the woods, like underbrush.
  - jgv 16y ago
    If your window gets sun, you can get herbs like basil, parsley, or mint to grow indoors. Currently I'm growing catnip indoors and I plan on moving some of my herbs indoors when it gets colder.
    - EventHorizon 16y ago
      for the more adventurous there are also hydroponic window 'farms': http://www.windowfarms.org/ http://www.windowfarms.org/
    - swolchok 16y ago
      Is it too late in the year to start mint? I have a very similar situation to the OP; live in an apartment in SE Michigan with a window/balcony, but near trees. I'm assuming it'll have to come inside around mid-October.

jules 16y ago

Cheap is not the biggest advantage. Home grown vegetables taste better, especially haricots verts and tomatoes. Some fruits are ridiculously expensive though like raspberries and blackberries. They also require less weeding than most vegetables and they survive the winter. From one blackberry plant you can get 20kg of blackberries. This can cost like €300 in the supermarket.

Semiapies 16y ago
For blackberries, do what the hipsters call "foraging" or what folks when I was a kid called "picking them" from wild bushes. Cheap. (Make sure you're not close to a road, garbage dump, etc. And they may not grow in your area. Void where prohibited.) After going to the trouble of doing so, you might just prefer to spend the money for a little tub of them. Still, it's an option.
- robobenjie 16y ago
  Oh, but the flavor of wild, ripe blackberries is so much better then even the ones I can get at the farmers market. Along with tomatoes, they have the biggest difference in flavor home-grown vs bought. Also blackberries myst be the easiest thing in the world to grow (here in the bay area anyway). Getting rid of them when you are done might be another story...
  - tjpick 16y ago
    yeah, blackberry grows so easily that it's a noxious weed in this part of the world.
  - billswift 16y ago
    Wild blackberries are actually small and not that tasty. If they are good, they are almost certainly feral domestics; maybe spread by birds or an old farm was nearby.
- jules 16y ago
  Yep, that's another option. Where I live they are very rare and the ones that are there are small and not many berries per plant. Gathering then from your own garden is very quick. Certainly quicker than the extra time you spend in the shop for them. And the ones in the shop are usually not ripe enough for my tastes. I like them sweet not sour. Also buying 3 kg for making jam costs you a fortune. You can buy a jar of blackberry jam for less than €1, but buying that amount of fresh blackberries easily costs €10.

nobody_nowhere 16y ago

Totally does not account for the amount of time it takes to plant, water, weed, fertilize, pest-proof and on and on. $735 to maintain a garden for a year? Sure, if you consider your time as zero-cost. In my experience, those heads of lettuce are delicious, rewarding, and cost 10-100x what you pay in the store.

cullenking 16y ago
Crazy talk - greens are so freaking easy to grow! You don't need to go crazy, just buy a couple bags of cheap soil, mound it up on whatever shit dirt you have, surround it with some rocks and water every other day. Water in the morning while you drink the coffee, takes a few minutes. Way way way cheaper than the store - I am not detracting from my work or life in any way when I stand outside and water my (large) garden for thirty minutes while drinking coffee. Actually, it's one of the best ways I can think of to wake up.

te_platt 16y ago

After taking into account the cost of time and effort tending plants, it's almost always cheaper (dollars per pound) to buy food. Still, I'm an avid gardener because of the other benefits besides cost. 1. Better taste. A tomato out of the garden is almost a different fruit (vegetable?) than one from the store. 2. Personal satisfaction. There is just something rewarding about tending to a plant and enjoying the fruit after the work. 3. Aesthetics. I have a lemon and a grapefruit tree I keep indoors. They look and smell nice. The fruit is just an added bonus.

weaksauce 16y ago
interesting. How big do they get indoors?

xentronium 16y ago

You have to invest quite a lot of time to get everything to work. Nevertheless, growing your own food is still very popular here in Russia, when almost every family (even with <600$ total monthly income) has its village cottage with some plants. You get to harvest and eat fresh only late summer and early autumn though.

unwind 16y ago

At the other end of the spectrum from the fruit tree at least, is sprouting. It's dead easy (I think I could manage, but luckily my fiancee got bitten by some kind of sprouting-bug lately), doesn't require much space (the window sill is perfect) and very cheap. Around here, a mini tub of store-bought sprouts can run around €1.5 (say, $2). That buys probably around 500 g of dried mung beans, which will give a volume of sprouts that easily beats the store-bought pack by a factor of, oh, 50 is probably very conservative. It's almost scary, at first. We cheat and use a sprouter (a small plastic container with two levels of strainer shelves, a bottom, and a transparent lid) that was around €10-15, so it'll take a while to get our investment back. For the impatient, sprouting is of course also very fast, you'll be harvesting in a manner of days.

mast 16y ago

In terms of time and effort, it is far cheaper to simply go buy food the grocery store. On the other hand, we need to start taking responsiblity for the food we eat. Growing your own means you don't need to worry about food recalls or pesticide use. And, as other commenters have noted, homegrown does taste better.

CWuestefeld 16y ago

I've got a small orchard of 8 fruit trees [1]. I've found that if you want to grow your own food, the time investment for fruit is the lowest per unit product. I'd estimate that I spend less than 5 hours per year on my trees, total. Maintenance consists of pruning in the fall, culling fruit early in the season, fertilizing occasionally, and periodic spraying. For pruning, decide how much you think you ought to cut back, and then cut twice that amount. Do not skip the spraying. People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests. A given type of fruit tends to come ripe all at once. I'll be harvesting my peaches, say, over 1.5 - 2 weeks. For soft fruits like peaches or plums, you can't keep them very long. You've got to preserve them or give them away. So plan your crops accordingly. If you want to do this, now is the time to start planning. Even more than tomatoes, you need to time it right. Trees need to be planted either in very early spring, or in the fall. [1] 2 peaches, 2 apples, 2 pears, 1 plum, 1 pluot

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
TIL: plum crossed with apricot is a pluot (or aprium). >People who want their food grown all naturally really just wind up feeding the bugs and other pests. I think that's part of the point. Wiping out bugs with pesticides has far reaching effects and not just on the bugs directly.

froggy 16y ago

I'd add to that list Blueberry bushes if you have the right type of soil (acidic/well-drained). They don't need pesticide spraying and each bush can grow up to 15 pounds/year of berries. My yard project this fall is digging out a row of clay soil and making a raised amended bed for 8-9 blueberry highbushes. Blueberry plants are finicky about soil PH and drainage, so I am prepping the bed with sulfur, coarse sand, peat, and ground pine bark chips and getting it right for planting by spring 2012. I expect they will produce ~100 pounds per year in 5 years.

arohner 16y ago

Not exactly a vegetable, but making your own beer is cost effective, and tastes great (Though it will turn you into a beer snob). It costs around $100-$200 upfront investment, and then about $50 to make 5 gallons. The time cost isn't that bad either, 3 hours on the first day, then 15 minutes, once a week for three weeks.

sgoraya 16y ago

Growing my own food is something that was instilled in me by my parents - We always had fruit trees, nuts and veggies growing in our backyard. My Dad having an MS in Agronomy didnt hurt either. Currently in backyard in CA: -Plums, lemons, oranges, pomegranate (my personal favorite), avocado and fig tree. -Eggplant, jalapeños, bellpepper, corn -Mint is the only herb we're growing Beyond watering every evening (I actually find this therapeutic in a way), the twice a year fertilizer (the fresh stuff we get from Dad's friend) and once a year pruning, our backyard garden provides us food year round.

brc 16y ago

Well I have a small garden but try and get maximum yield from it. I've got Chives, Onions, Spring onions, basil, oregano, Thyme, and Rosemary. I have lettuce, tomatoes,zucchini,snowpeas and broccoloi, and celery. I have a small mandarin tree that yields by the bucketfull. In my planning I'm pulling out some decorative trees and replacing with a banana patch and I'm experimenting with pineapples. I would estimate it's mostly been a money pit - the yields have been nowhere near enough to justify the time or money. For me it's a chance to do something real (I work from home) and a great learning opportunity for the kids. The other thing not to forget is growing flowers. They're much easier and you can have fresh flowers inside the house for a very small outlay, or just keep them in the garden and enjoy.