Joan Swenson: A little work in the garden can save at the store
| Wednesday, Mar 04 2009 07:12 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Mar 25 2009 06:17 PM
In tough times, people grow their own vegetables.
According to the National Gardening Association, 7 million more people are expected to grow their own fruits, herbs or berries this year, an increase of 19 percent from last year.
Judging from the numbers of people I saw last weekend at nurseries, buying the last of the season’s bare root trees and picking up vegetable transplants, the gardening group is right. The group estimates that a well-maintained fruit and vegetable garden can produce $500 worth of food, when comparing the cost of putting in the garden to the price of store-purchased fruits and vegetables.
Burpee Seeds, which saw January 2009 seed sales beat January 2008 seed sales by 20 percent, says the money savings can be even greater. Burpee says that spending $50 for seeds and fertilizer can produce $1,250 worth of groceries from a store as long as you have a well-planned vegetable garden.
Well-planned and well-maintained vegetable gardens that take advantage of the long growing season in Bakersfield, including fall and winter gardens, probably can rake in those types of savings. The key words here are “well-planned” and “well-maintained.”
The garden needs to be located where it gets full sun all day. Plant appropriate varieties for the season (now is not the time to put in long-growing cool season plants such as cabbage, broccoli or peas). Prepare the soil by digging in organic material and plant according to label instructions. Maintenance is vital — you will need to control weeds, water appropriately, control insects when possible, and in the case of plants such as tomatoes, stake them to get the best production.
It’s a lot of work. But, if you do it right, you will save money.
Burpee estimates that one tomato plant will produce 40 to 50 medium to large fruits per season and if you pay 75 cents to $1 at the store per tomato, that plant will yield between $26 and $45 worth of fruit this summer. If you grow your tomatoes from seed and you grow a $3 or $4 packet that produces 25 plants, there’s $1,000 worth of tomatoes — if you’re willing to do the work of caring for 25 tomato plants. If you buy transplants instead of growing the tomatoes from seed, your cost will be higher.
I am sure that my husband’s annual tomato garden yields hundreds of dollars worth of tomatoes. We do not buy a tomato at the store from June to September — that’s as long as he will take care of the plants in the heat — and there are years where he gives away bowls of the fruit.
Production depends on the type of tomato plant, too. If you plant the common favorites that are known to do well in Bakersfield — Celebrity, Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, and just about any cherry tomato — you can pick many fruits. Heirloom and beefsteak varieties, at least at our house, tend to produce far fewer tomatoes and are riskier to grow if you're pinning your hopes on a big tomato crop.
Burpee has also done the math on bell peppers and green beans. If you grow an excellent pepper plant with between 10 to 15 peppers, Burpee says, for which you would have to pay $1.50 each at the store, the pepper plant is yielding up to $22.50. And for every dollar you spend on green bean seeds, you will reap $80 to $90 in beans.
Burpee’s 10 best-selling vegetables this year are green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, lettuce and salad greens, hot and sweet peppers, carrots, and sweet corn.
The coming weeks are prime time to plant vegetables from seed or transplants. The work will be hard, but the payoff will be in the meals you prepare with your own produce.
