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.

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.