Money-saving strategies for the vegetable garden
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I was recently chatting with a non-gardening friend who is planning on breaking ground on her first vegetable garden this spring.
The reason? To save money on grocery bills. But can a vegetable garden really save you money? Well yes, but many factors come into play, including the size and style of the garden.
For example, if you’re building new raised beds and buying lumber, soil and compost, it may take a few years before you see any savings.
Budget-minded gardeners can get started with a less initial investment by using on-site materials, like rocks, old bricks, or logs to make a low-raised bed. Turn over the sod and add compost or aged manure to fill the garden.
You can also buy bulk or bagged garden soil (not potting soil) to fill the bed. Bulk soil, sold by the cubic yard, is the best bang for your buck.
Avoid black earth, a material sold in bags that is marketed as a rich soil amendment. It’s not. It’s a low-quality peat moss and a poor soil for growing vegetables (and most plants).
It’s also important to note that you don’t need a big space to grow food. Planting in pots, fabric planters, window boxes or other containers allows you to grow most types of vegetables and herbs. Just match the size of the pot to the mature size of the plant and fill the containers with a blend of potting mix and compost.
Once you’ve figured out your garden set-up, it’s time to decide what to plant. It’s best to grow what you like to eat, but there are a few ways to maximize your savings. Here are five money-saving strategies I use in my garden.
• Plant high-yield veggies - High-yield crops produce the most food per square foot of garden space, often continuing to crop for weeks or months. These include pole beans, peas, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, Swiss chard, carrots, cucumbers and kale.
• Grow high-value veggies - These are vegetables that cost a lot to buy but are not difficult to grow. My favourite high-value crops include salad greens like lettuce, spinach and arugula, as well as snap beans, garlic, hot peppers and herbs like basil, parsley and oregano. Berries like strawberries and high-bush blueberries are also high-value crops and offer years of homegrown harvests.
• Grow zero-waste crops - Zero-waste crops are those that have more than one edible part. Perhaps they have edible fruits and flowers or roots and leaves. Examples of these high-producing vegetables include beets (roots/ leaves), turnips (roots/leaves), radishes (roots/leaves/seedpods), carrots (roots/leaves), coriander (leaves/seeds), broccoli (flower buds/leaves/ stems), garlic (bulbs/scapes) and squash (fruits/flowers/ shoot tips).
• Succession plant - The key to a non-stop garden is succession planting. This is simply following one crop with another. When my spring lettuces and carrots are harvested, for example, I then sow seeds for summer crops. I also plan for a fall and winter harvest by planting cold hardy vegetables from mid-summer through early autumn. Season extenders like cold frames or mini hoop tunnels are handy if you wish to stretch the season into winter. Late-season crops include carrots, lettuce, spinach, kale, beets and scallions. Learn more about season extending in my book The YearRound Vegetable Gardener.
• Plant a pantry garden - Growing vegetables that can be frozen, dehydrated, pickled, fermented, or canned is another clever way to keep your pantry stocked year-round. That means you have to grow and preserve the food, but the quality and flavour can’t be beaten. I freeze crops like beans, broccoli, peas and chard and dehydrate all my herbs as well as cherry tomatoes and peppers. Local expert Elizabeth Peirce is the author of You Can Too, an excellent book on preserving the harvest.