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Because of the sale, Seedurday's regular newsletter is coming out today, and it's a big topic. Here goes . . .

I’ve heard and read it many times this summer: Vegetable gardening is a waste of money.

“The only thing that’s cost effective to grow is zucchini! Lolz.”

“The grocery store is just so much cheaper and easier.”

“If anyone tells you they’re saving money growing vegetables, they’re lying.”

If you’re at all plugged into the gardening internet, you’ve probably seen many such sentiments.

On the other hand, consider this:

Lettuce seeds cost about $5 for 200 seeds. For argument’s sake, let’s assume you either don’t use or kill 75% of the seeds.

That’s 50 lettuces for $5.00. I'll do the math for you: 10¢ per head of lettuce.

I don’t know about your grocery store, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a head of lettuce for 10¢.

Another one: Fancy, specialty tomato seeds could be as much as 25¢ each. Say you kill half your seedlings.

That leaves you at 50¢ for a plant grown from a pretty expensive seed. Maybe you get 2 tomatoes if things don’t go very well? The average tomato is about ½ a pound, so that would work out to 50¢ a pound. Not quite the percentage savings as the lettuces, but still cheaper than the store.

However, if you get a bumper crop, perhaps 10 pounds on a good plant in a good year, you’re getting tomatoes for 5¢ a pound. Compared to what? $3, $4 per pound for organic heirloom tomatoes? It’s not even really a close comparison.

This is a real contradiction.

--> Gardeners swearing that there’s no way to save money by growing vegetables.

~Also~

--> Vegetables grown from seeds are numerically, undeniably cheaper than grocery store produce.

What gives?

“The inputs!” you say. Yes, of course you can spend quite a lot on inputs: Fertilizer, amendments, etc. You also don’t really have to, depending on how you garden.

Composting at home is, of course, free once you have your bins, which you can also get for free (or almost free) if you keep an eye on Craigslist or facebook marketplace.

Lots of cities have municipal compost programs where you can pick up bulk amendments for free.

Anywhere there are horses will quite happily give you as much manure as you want! (There is a horse place near my house where they helpfully leave the manure in a pile by the road and label which part of the pile is already composted and ready for use.❤️)

Water is certainly an input, and depending on where you live, could be a significant cost, or could be almost nothing. If you’re converting lawn to vegetables, you’ll end up using less water.

And of course, the big one: Land, and space. Buying or renting a property that has space for a vegetable garden is prohibitively expensive for many people.

I could go on and on about how, even if you don’t have a yard, you could get a plot in a community garden, or successfully grow food in containers on a balcony, or microgreens indoors, etc etc.

It’s absolutely true that having space to garden is a privilege, and also that you can grow vegetables without your own yard. Neither of those gets to the heart of the contradiction that’s been bothering me.

You see, ALL of the people in this summer's conversation who say vegetable gardening is too expensive have gardens. They are gardeners. They spend lots of time and money on flowers, shrubs, lawns, trees, native plants and pollinator gardens. They groan sheepishly about how much they spent at the nursery the way someone else might after a big trip to the mall.

Land isn’t the problem. In fact, money isn’t really the problem either. Everyone I’ve ever heard say that vegetable gardening is too expensive is privileged to some degree. They don’t have to grow food. They have the resources to eat healthy, fresh food without ever growing any of it themselves.

For anyone who is on a true budget, who otherwise couldn’t afford fresh organic produce, and, critically, has the space to grow food, the money savings of growing your own from seed is obvious.

So, back to the contradiction: If vegetables are undeniably cheaper when they’re homegrown from seed, and the people using cost as an excuse aren’t actually budget constrained anyway, seriously, what gives?

It’s such an interesting question, with so many layers that I’ll probably only scratch the surface today. Here's my take, for now.

The first element is time. Time is money, we’ve all been taught, and growing vegetables definitely takes time. By that logic, if you "pay" yourself your hourly rate, whatever that is, the “cost” of your vegetables does go way up.

On the other hand, what else would you be doing with the time you might spend growing vegetables? If it’s cutting directly into your work hours, then, yes, it’s costing you money. However, what if you’re in the garden instead of watching TV? What if you’re in the garden anyway, and you’ve turned some of your time from ornamentals to vegetables? What if it clears your mind and replaces a trip to the therapist, saving you both time and money? Time is a slippery thing that way!

I think the time question comes down to whether you see growing food as a burden or a joy. If it’s a chore or a burden, then the hours spent doing it inevitably fall into the “cost” category, making your homegrown vegetables feel much more expensive. If gardening is a joy, or a release, or a respite from the rest of your life, the hours are leisure. Maybe they even fit into cost savings, or at the very least “time well spent.”

Then there is the skills question. No doubt skilled gardeners grow more food for less money. If you can grow all 200 seeds from the packet into full heads of lettuce, with the only inputs being your homemade compost, you’re getting your salads almost for free. But truly, how many of us are that skilled? (Not me!)

If you kill most of your seedlings, or worse yet in money terms, kill so many of your nursery-purchased plants that you get, say, one salad out of a whole season’s growing, well, yes, those are some expensive vegetables.

There is a whole industry built to take advantage of those knowledge and skill gaps, and how they’re directly related to cost savings in the garden. Everything from $15 books to hourly consultations with experts, to courses that cost thousands.

It’s possible to spend a fortune on gardening education in the name of “saving money” on vegetables.

The gardening education world seems much more wholesome and legitimate than so many other online course industries. (I’m looking at you, marketing and business coaching courses!) Gardeners truly are more likely to be sincere and straightforward people. But still, there are always some bad actors, people looking to profit from others’ insecurities.

It’s especially insidious when expensive courses are directly targeted to precisely the people who most need to save money through gardening. With promises to give you the skills to grow all your own food for next to no money, these teachers sometimes ask many hundreds (or thousands!) to teach you, and use high pressure tactics to override your natural skepticism and good judgement.

Some of the courses may be exactly what you need. But beware of claims that seem to be too good to be true. They probably are!

Finally, let’s talk about gear and infrastructure. Orta is definitely in this category. It’s all the stuff you feel like you have to buy before embarking on your activity. The range of what you can spend here is dramatic.

At the low end, you can use homemade compost (or some other free amendment), dig it into a patch of earth and plunk in some seeds. Maybe you have to get a hose to reach your patch and water it.

In the middle of the cost spectrum, you use what you have on hand, plus some materials from Home Depot, and you spend a weekend building some serviceable beds, backfilling them with your native soil and perhaps some free or purchased amendments. You hook up some DIY drip lines, sprinklers or Orta ollas. (Or you commit to a lot of hand watering.) Easily done for under $500.

At the high end, you hire landscapers to build a bespoke greenhouse and gorgeous custom raised beds with an automatic irrigation system and purchased amendments to fill them. You could get yourself into 5 figures pretty easily going that route.

Gear is a really big variable, ranging from practically zero dollars to tens of thousands.

When we talk about gear, though, in many ways we’re talking about class.

What’s a “normal” amount of consumption for your socioeconomic status? Do you have the means to spend upwards of $5,000 to have a picture perfect garden installed? Do you feel pressure to have your garden look a certain way? How would your neighbors and family feel with a DIY set-up? How about hoses and visible irrigation tubes snaking around the yard? Could you get away with tomato cages of cast-off junk? Or had they better be tidy and read as expensive?

In short, what does your garden have to look like (and how much do you have to spend?) to fit into your social expectations?

I think, fundamentally, the pressures to garden in a certain way, either through courses where you “get it right,” or through the high end landscaping and gear that symbolize status, really do make growing vegetables more expensive than buying them for a specific subset of gardeners.

But just to confuse things a little more, there is so much content about how delicious and cheap (and effortless!) homegrown produce can be, that if it’s legitimately not true for you - whether because of skills or class expectations - it can make you feel really bad.

I think that’s where these “growing vegetables is expensive” comments are coming from.

You can relieve the pressures of feeling like a failure at cost effective vegetable gardening either by calmly growing your own from seed, learning from mistakes and getting more skilled little by little, because, let’s face it, it’s a hobby you enjoy, or, if you don’t enjoy it, by writing off the enterprise entirely. So much easier to just say “too expensive” than to explain . . . all that ⬆️!

“Expensive” is such a complicated concept when it comes to gardens!

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts. Please hit reply and tell me how you think about money and vegetable growing.

In the meantime, I’m going to be doing my part for your affordable garden gear!

Everything we make at Orta is designed to pay for itself after a few uses, even if you buy it full price. Even then, I know our prices are a stretch for some gardeners.

Our end-of-summer sale offers the best prices all year. Stock up for yourself, and stock up for gifts!

The sale kicks off at noon tomorrow. I’ll be sending a pre-sale details email in the morning.

In the meantime, please don’t forget to hit reply and tell me what you think about growing vegetables and money. Especially, please tell me if you disagree with what I’ve said! It’s a complicated topic and I want to continue exploring it with you.

Happy early Seedurday,

Anne

When you’re ready, here are some more ways I can help you grow a thriving garden from seed:

1. Plan your seed-starting schedule with our ​free printable planner.​

2. Download the free ​Orta Seed Starting Handbook with all the basics you need to succeed with seeds.​

3. Take the guesswork out of watering with Orta Self-Watering Pots. (Find discounted factory seconds here!)

4. Join the Orta Seed Club to have 5 hand-picked, unusual & high-yielding varieties delivered to you every season.

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