Rising Food Costs - Gardening

If you watched the news the last couple of weeks, you probably have seen a bunch of stories on how food prices are going to start seriously going up. Much of this has to do with corn and other commodities going into ethanol but there are other reasons as well.

It is about this time of year I start to think about what I am going to do with the garden. I have already decided to about triple the size of it as it was way too small last year (first garden in this location). With this news, I might even go bigger. Even with the small garden last year, I still saved a lot of money once there was product to pull.

I wonder if there will be more of a push for home gardening this year due to what is expected to happen in commodities? Are any of you planning on a new garden or expanding your current one?

Hi Jafo,

Yes, you bet I am planning a small garden now that we found a house. I don't have tons of room but enough to help out. It's been years since I did serious gardening but the cost is a BIG factor on fresh vs. store bought this year. But not only that but the taste is so much superior on home grown!!! I want cherry tomatoes growing out of every nook & cranny!!! Okra, greens, pole beans, sugar snap peas just to mention a few!

Cathy

Setting The Record Straight

There are all sorts of great and good reasons to grow your own veggies. And they all come down to quality. The produce you grow---particularly if you opt for heirlooms and other open pollinated varieties---taste better, and can be more nutritious, than anything you buy at the market.

However, unless you only mean "dollars out of pocket," you do not actually save money by growing your own. Even if food prices go up the projected 20% this year, you cannot grow your own cheaper than buying. Not if you include all the actual cost factors.

I mean, let's get real. Does anybody really believe they can achieve the economies of scale reached by Monsanto?

Now then, if you want to talk about value (as opposed to cost), Monsanto can't begin competing with you.

So it's best to concentrate on the value of growing your own: home-grown has inherent flavor, nutritional, recreational, and environmental benefits that alone make it worthwhile. But cost really isn't one of those benefits.

KYH is absolutely correct!

KYH you hit the nail on the head with that one! I never found gardening to be cheap. But I do believe that we can cut back on our out-of-pocket exspenses if we make a few adjustments.

I have a goal and intention of trying to really garden cheap this year for instance...using marigolds and other flowers and herbs to repel bugs, marking the territory to help detour other kritters by training my little doggie to tinkle at various locations throughout. Starting ALL my plants indoors from seed, except the greens, and squash of-course. And I seriously believe (if you do not count our labor) we can save $$$ if we try.

But even if not: as you say the quality, freshness and nutritional value far outweighs any cost factor!

Not to mention we soak up sunshine (Vitamin D) while we work our garden, and we take in loads more fresh H2o, and we feel more at peace out in the garden than shopping in the store!

I wish everyone could know the joy of growing fresh veggies, and the frustrations too (to gain appreciation of our farmers!) You never really know until you do it with your whole heart!

About seeds

I was wondering KYH, if I wanted to use the heirloom seeds where exactly would I find them for sale around these parts? And what are the benefits of using heirloom?

I do not know that I have ever used them. We used to purchase all our seeds at the Feed Store and I had no idea where they came from, and each seed had a pink coating on it to keep the bugs from feasting on them, I doubt they were heirloom seeds.

You must believe in them as I don't gather that you would waste time on something you do not feel is worth your while.

I'm 100% sold on fresh veggies from a garden - if you can grow them - and I always got good seed from the feed store. Heck I even had a brother and sis-in-law that went and sowed dried black eyed peas from a bag they bought at a grocery store and they had black-eyed peas growing like crazy that year! Boy did they brag on that!

But I am interested in the benefits of heirloom.

Thanks, Cathy

When you see the price of tomatoes and peppers here, you definitely save money by planting them rather than buying them. I also can my produce which boosts savings. I try to use natural homemade composts and grow from seed as often as possible. All of this makes the savings more than worth it.

Well, Jafo, I reckon your time isn't worth anything. So I'm gonna hire you to work for me.

And there is no value to the land you plant on? Nor is amortization on the capital investment an issue for you? Nor......

The point is, if you are going to cost-acccount your garden (an exercize, btw, that I see no value in), you have to include all the cost elements. If you insist on cherry picking which costs count and which don't, then you're only kidding yourself.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: from a cost viewpoint, you cannot compete with Monsanto.

I'm amused, too, that you choose to highlight the least costly element (seed) and ignore the most costly (labor).

KYHeirloomer said:

I'm amused, too, that you choose to highlight the least costly element (seed) and ignore the most costly (labor).

Click to expand...

Ok if you want to take the cost of labor, well what does it cost do cook meals 3 times a day? Wouldn't it be cheaper for you to just eat out instead of cooking meals from scratch? Or, if like me, you enjoy cooking and the actual labor of cooking doesn't even enter the equation.

What does it cost in labor for you to clean your house? Why not hire a maid because it is cheaper? Or if you like me you see no need to spend the money I labored to get, to pay someone to labor on something I have plenty of time to do myself.

Your point would make sense to me if I was working on my garden instead of going to work, but I find that with a little time every day, and a few hours on my days off, I can manage a rather large garden. This doesn't even take into consideration the two free laborers I have in the form of my strapping twin sons. Subtract the time it takes for me to shop (spend gas, pay for car maintenance, insurance, wait in line, search for decent ingredients) I save money.

Let us also not forget the exercise and time outside can only make you healthier for the most part.

A nice looking garden does nothing but improve the look of the property; property that was otherwise just growing grass before the garden was installed.

Cathy, you're right. I am passionate about heirlooms. In fact, I will not put a hybrid in the ground---as much for political reasons as horticultural ones.

As to availability, heirloom seeds are everywhere, nowadays. Even the mainstream seed houses, like Burpee, offer some. And there are at least two dozen companies that specialize in heirlooms. Among them:

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
Tomato Grower's Supply
Victory Seeds

You can find them, and many others, on-line.

There also are several seed-saving organizations you should check out.

Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is the largest such group in the world. In addition to their growers exchange proceedure they have a public catalog, where anyone can order seeds. Find them at Seed Savers Exchange.

Appalachian Heirloom Seed Conservancy, of which I'm the managing director. Specializes in preserving the edible foods of the mountain south. No web page, but you can reach AHSC at KentuckySeeds@hotmail.com for membership info. Be sure an include your snail-mail addy.

Southern Legacy Seed Project & PASS (Pass Along Southern Seeds) based at the University of Georgia.

And there are a few really specialized ones, such as Native Seeds/SEARCH, which specializing in collecting native crops of the Southwest and northern Mexico, and re-establishing them among native peoples.

There are, too, individual growers who offer seeds at seed swaps, and spring gardening meets, and on line. For instance, I'll have a large display on hand when I give my seed-starting presentation at a local library next month.

The benefits of heirlooms are legion.

First and foremost is flavor. Families have passed these down, one generation to the next, because they taste good. Flavor has been the sole selection criterium. The same cannot be said about hybrids.

Hybrids are selected to meet the needs of the food distribution system. Flavor is not one of those needs, and when a hybrid has good flavor it's because it sneaks in by accident as part of the overall genetic mix.

Second is seed saving. You can save seed from open pollinated plants, and, in the absence of mutations or cross pollination, they will breed true to type. With hybrids, on the other hand, as the old commercial says, you don't know what you're getting. They do not breed true to type.

Next is bio-diversity. Virtually every major agricultural disaster of the past several hundred years resulted from there being a limited number, of genetically similar varities. A new blight appears, and wipes out the crop.

Do you want to put all your marbles in the half dozen hybrid tomatoes that Monsanto et als offers you? Or would you rather make your choice from the 6,000 or so known open pollinated varieties.

The only exception to all this are beans. Despite what the seed houses would like you to believe (so they can keep selling you seed) there are no hybrid beans. They are all---all 10,000 or so of them---open pollinated.

Whew! I reckon that's a little more than you wanted to know.

No, quite to the contrary KYH that is not at all more than I wanted to know. I am very interested and want to make wise decisions when it comes to growing food for my family! I have concerns as to the why's. And I really do care not only about food, but also the ecology. I think I am going to buy heirloom!

I have up to the moment placed 2 telephone calls to 1) the local 4-H and 2) the local Health Dept. = it seems there was a large scale PCB contamination in this region compliments of a nice big GE facility (long since closed down)! I have no idea of the extent that it remains a threat, but the creek behind my house is (reportedly) involved and well I was thinking of using it to irrigate with given the fact we are in the midst of a bad drought. I'd hate to water my garden with PCB water! And in the process potentially poision us all. So it is my hope and prayer that threat no longer exists! But I would rather ask questions and be a nuisance than be ignorant!

And I am doing my homework and want to do companion planting to control the insect balance in my garden. Why the #@*&! spray all my plants and poision the bees who are lovingly fufilling their purpose in life? There has got to be a balance in here somewhere! And what with tons and tons of bees mysteriously disappearing last year, why further the problem with spray? Goodness we need to be considerate of those we share this planet with!

My ole' grandma battled tortoises and all kind of varmits in her garden and never used pesticides, she composted, had a green thumb, and she also smoked, drank, and ate like a health food freak long before it was popular and she also lived to be almost 100! Her diet must have had an active role in her long robust life, maybe a few good genes too (hope I got some of 'em) but she always ate fresh fruit & veggies every day of her beautiful life! So I just would like to continue to do what I know works! (except for her smokin' they stink and cost too much now a-days!)

Thank you so much for the information, Cathy

P.S. I wish you all could've seen her she would spot this big tortie out in her garden munching down on her nice young plants and she would dart out her back door run and grab that tortie and carry him outside the perimeter of her garden and turn it upside down- gave him lots of time to consider his sins while he was trying desperately to upright his ole' self!

I wish I had a bigger yard I would plant more. I can fit in a row of pepper plants, about 6 of them and two large tomato plants and 3 zucchini plants squeezed together. I seem to have no problem growing tomatoes and like having BLT's in the summer plus and recipes called for fresh tomatoes. I have tried growing vegetable in flower pots but haven't been successful with it. I plant peppers for the red variety because these peppers cost too much money at the store. However we have a farmers market and peppers must grow very well around here. During peak season I can get a bushel for 9 dollars. I chop them up and freeze them. Use them with onion and garlic to fry in the start of many of my recipes. This lasts me all winter. The bushel is the amount it would take to fill a tall trash bag till its bulging. I like to have more success with my zucchine plants. 2 out of 3 will produce for me, given I don't lose them to some kind of borer.
Canning would be a good thing for me to learn.

Hi Jafo! Gardening Woes & Hoes!

Can I Borrow Those Twins To Help In My Garden You Are Very Lucky!!! Mine Grew Up And Flew The Coop, They Used To Hate Picking Okra, I Would Put Gloves And Long Sleeves On 'em And They Would Still Get Stung.

Then One Year My Oldest Hit The Youngest In The Forehead With The Hoe - Thus A Trip To The Emergency Room Blood Squirting Everywhere, And Me (a Young Me!) About To Pass Out From The Sight Of My Baby Boy Bleeding Like A "stuck Hog"!

And If Ya' Like There Are More Stories To Make Ya' Laugh.. Let Me Know!

Cathy

Jaffo, I don't disagree with your points.

All I'm trying to do is show that the very idea of cost-accounting a garden is a stupid game. But if you insist on doing it, then you have to include all the cost elements. And if you do that, you cannot grow it cheaper than you can buy it.

What you are doing is making the common mistake of confusing dollar outlays with costs. These are not the same thing.

And you are confusing choices with objective measurements. As a matter of fact, it might be more cost effective to hire a maid, or a personal chef. Just because you choose not to doesn't change the math.

To use your own example, because you enjoy cooking, you choose to ignore the labor cost of feeding your family. That's fine as a personal decision. But it doesn't eliminate the labor cost.

On the other hand, your points deal not with the cost of growing, but with the value of doing so. And when you look at your garden from that point of view, from the nutritional, taste, emotional, recreational, and environmental benefits, then that leaves Monsanto sucking hind teat.

And that's what really counts: the value of doing something. If, on a value scale, something is worth more to you than not doing it, then you do it. And hang the cost.

Lizgirl,

If you haven't already done so, take a gander at some of the intensive gardening techniques. The latest buzzword is "square foot gardening." But that's just the newest innovation in what is a 200 year old process.

The point is, if you follow some of those methods, you can grow an incredible amount in a very small space.

I usually keep an extra eye on them when they have tools because I can definitely see a "hoe incident" like you describe if I didn't. I have been putting them to work since they were about 4-5. They are 8 years old now but everyone thinks they are 11 - 12 because they are just strong boys. Their football coach loves them and calls them the tackling twins.

In the winter, when it snows, even though we rent and the landlord pays for plowing and shoveling, I send them out there to clean everyones car off (about 10 people living here in the building), and shovel in between them.

In the spring, I have them doing garden work, pulling weeds, cutting weeds with sickles (the golf club kind, spacing them FAR apart from each other lol), and other general landscaping. This year, they will be pulling the sod from the yard where I will be making the garden bigger. They then will be putting that sod in places where the plowing tore into parts of the yard.

In the summer, they help me with anything in the garden.

In the fall they break out the wheelbarrows and rakes and rake up 1 acre of leaves before snowfall. This goes into our compost pile for the garden in the following season.

All of this work has kept them from getting soft and chunky like the rest of their friends and has begun to teach them a good work ethic. It also gets them out of my hair when they are home from school on vacation or snow days as I work online from home.

Jafo,

You have great parenting skills! And your sons will become wonderful men I am sure of that! Wow eight yrs. old, I too am raising an 8yr. old, but a little girl, and she is actually my oldest grandchild! I have a total of 4 grands she is the only girl and the only one I am raising, both my boys have sons only! She also has chores, but not as many as your sons. A good work ethic is such a gift for parents to give their children!

When my boys were 2 & 3yrs. old our neighbor had a garden that produced squash before ours, so they gave us some squash. A few days later I look out the front window and there go "MY BOYS" walking down the road hauling along a 5 gallon bucket between them. Well of-course I had to see what they were up to, turns out they were returning the neighbors kindness and were taking them some of our squash in return, they had picked my garden clean of all teeny-tiny newly formed squash about 3/4 in. long!!! And the 5 gallon bucket was indeed overkill, I about passed out laughing.

The boys felt perfectly at home in the garden as they were included in the entire process from tilling & planting right up to fertilizing to harvesting! The hoeing accident was done when they were trying to surprise Mom with their good deed for the day!

They had some more nice surprises for me that summer too, such as finding all the eggs my hens had laid and smashing them against the side of the chicken coop, wooped their little butts for that one!

Then they had this pet goat, well ya' know for some reason that goat wound up being my responsibility, and I used to chase him around his fenced in yard and place a chain around his neck and tie him out in the back yard to a huge cement block so he could munch on fresh grass. Of-course the goat had no idea that I was trying to do him a good deed and he would make me chase him forever before I caught him. So one early evening I am at the kitchen sink; it faced the back yard and what to my wandering eyes did appear? But my goat standing on his hind legs, head down, horns aimed and ready to ram = our neigbbors St. Bernard also in attack mode and on his hind legs!!! (What a sight that was) Well needless to say that goat made his way into my deep freeze shortly thereafter, and even though I cooked that sucker I never touched one bite of it - he even stunk while he roasted PEWWIE!!! I didn't have the internet and cooking forums to ask how to properly cook GOAT!

I love gardening and the whole "earth" thing it makes for such wonderful memories for a family!

Cheers and be happy making those memories this summer, Cathy

Hi KYH, re: seed needs!

Hello KYH,

I struck out with Burpee (at least at their web-site) and could not pull up heritage seeds. So I am e-mailing the conservancy you belong to. I am certain that I want these natural seed.

I did manage to find out that the area where we are going to be living has had exposure to PCB contamination in years gone by. The threat to our health at this time (according to an "Authority" at our local health dept.) is minimal. I am; to say the least, not surprised, yet am still disappointed. I am still going to call a contact at the EPA and really dig a little deeper, just for my own peace of mind. From what I know the same thing happened here as in the Hudson area of NY. Of-course thanks to GE for both areas! Monsanto is also a culprit in many soil contamination incidents.

There is a bit of rebel left in me from the 60's-70's and I would love to see every family possible grow their own veggies and put a wee pinch on Monsanto and their profits THAT WOULD TEACH THEM TO CONTAMINATE OUR SOIL!

Do you think I will be able to acquire these heritage seeds soon? I kind of feel pressed for time, as I feel that I should have my seedlings started soon. Please let me know what your experience is on the shipping time for heritage. Much Thanks to you for letting us know about heritage seed!

I am still looking forward to my fresh homegrown veggies despite what I have learned about our soil, Cathy

Cathy,

While we'd certainly welcome you as a member, AHSC is not the right venue for getting seeds quickly. It's a membership organization, and most seed is obtained via contact with other members, and by becoming a conservator.

Best bet is one of the commercial seed houses I listed.

Alternatively, I do sell seed myself. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to put together a list for this year. What I can do, though, if you want, is this. If you put together a list of what you want (i.e., tomatoes, okra, chilies, what have you) I can put together a suitable package. But be as specific as you can. What type, color, size tomatoe? How hot a chile? And so forth.

Either post it here, or PM me with the list.

My prices are $2.75/pkg, plus s&h. And you have to understand that these are what we call sample packs, containing 25+ seeds. The idea is that you use them primarily to grow a seed crop, this year, then a table crop in following years from seed you save.

Alternative 2: Probably not feasible, but I am giving a presentation on seed starting at the Clark Cty. (Kentucky) library on March 13, and will have a full display of seed for sale. You're certainly welcome to drive up for it. Might be worth the 5 hours.

Thank you for the reply KYH, I would love to make a trip to Kentucky but at the moment it is not feasible. So I would love to order seed from you I am going to think upon my list and will PM you with it as sson as I get time. Today is a killer at work, but will try ASAP.

Cathy

Hey KYH!!!

Great News, I went today to the feed store to pick out my chicks (yes I will have fresh eggs not too long from now!!!), and lo & behold there were Rutger Heirloom tomato plants for sale! The only variety of heirloom tomato plants they had, all the rest were Hybrid. Of-course I purchased a 9pk.! So far most of my heirloom seeds from Burpee have been hit-or-miss on coming up. I have about 20 plants that made it up and they are a mix of different varieties, and I really did want Rutgers! Well I just had to share the good news with you. I am so happy and I know they will do well, I'll baby them. I am wondering have you seen this new thing on growing your tomatoes upside down? What do you think of that method? Have you ever tried it? I want to give it a shot!
This Fri. is planting day I'm so excited, yesterday I set out spinach, and a few okra plants.

Cathy