A garden has a curious innocent way of consuming cash while all the time you are under the illusion that you are spending nothing. — Esther Meynell
I have a friend who suggested it might be good idea for me to keep track of how much I spend on the simple self-sufficient life I am always babbling about. Can you believe anyone saying such a ridiculous thing? I patiently explained to her that in a backyard homestead economy one must spend a dime today to try and save a dollar tomorrow.
For example, store bought vegetables are expensive. A head of lettuce that erupts from a single tiny seed costs around three dollars. Carrots ring in at a dollar a pound, while tomatoes run a couple bucks a pound. Zucchini can cost two dollars a pound, while potatoes can be as much as 75 cents a pound — or even more in the spring.
Now consider that $9.95 gets you 1,000 lettuce seeds, while $4.25 gets you more than 20,000 carrot seeds, $6.95 will buy you 100 tomato seeds, $1.69 buys a couple dozen zucchini seeds and for $7.50 you can get a box of seed potatoes containing at least 15 tubers. If you plant them all you could potentially harvest 2,000 pounds of lettuce, 8,000 pounds of carrots, 1,000 pounds of tomatoes, 250 pounds of zucchini and 375 pounds of potatoes. Do the math and you’ve grown over 10,000 pounds of vegetables worth a retail value of almost $14,000 all from a mere seed investment of $30.34!
Well, provided that you’re already blessed with rich earth. If you have to buy good garden soil it will cost you at least $300 a truck load and sadly, one truck load doesn’t go very far. And of course some people will insist they simply can’t garden without spending hundreds of dollars on a rotor tiller while the next person might be just as productive using nothing more than a crooked spoon out of the cutlery drawer. Though for a family sized garden a good quality hoe is probably the best — and sanest — choice.
And what are you going to do with a thousand pounds of tomatoes? If you decide to can them you’re going to need canning equipment which isn’t cheap.
But maybe you’ll freeze your tomatoes in recycled plastic containers. Or maybe all your tomatoes will drop dead from a frost in June. Or maybe you might, oh I don’t know, start 288 broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage transplants, baby them along under lights for a month (spending money on potting soil, pots and electricity) move them into your greenhouse (another expense) only to go out on one all too memorable morning to discover a mouse has gobbled up 286 of your transplants forcing you to replace them by the six pack from a garden centre.
And yes, I am speaking from personal experience. All too personal. Little Mickey had better watch his back.
Step into a garden centre and you quickly find that it’s all too easy to spend a dozen dimes trying to save a dollar.
Ah, yes, gardening has an insidious way of dropping its tap roots deep into your bank account and sucking the coins right out of it.
A person has to be careful or instead of saving grocery money by raising your own vegetables, you can end up spending the grocery money raising your own vegetables.
You can tell when someone has done exactly that by how often they rave about the joys of foraging for spring greens.
They’ll serve up heaping bowls of dandelion, lambs quarter and nettle leaves for breakfast, lunch and dinner while prattling on about how nutritious and delicious they are. Anything tastes delicious when you’ve spent the grocery money on gardening and you’re starving while waiting for whatever garden seeds survive the frost, mice and bugs to produce something edible.
Yeah, I know what some of you’re thinking. “Hey, hold on just a minute. I’ve read this column in the past and I’ve even read some of your gardening articles. If I’m not mistaken aren’t you one of those people who are always prattling on about the nutritional value of weeds?”
Well, now you know the rest of the story.
Shannon McKinnon is a humour columnist from the Peace River country. To read past columns go to www.shannonmckinnon.com