I absolutely have always LOVED having a garden. I am guessing you live in PA if you are talking about the Amish. I'm next door in the garden state, and there is nothing in the world that is as good as a home grown tomato. I have never looked at the financial part of it thought. We grow tomatoes, heirloom, cherry and grape, peppers, eggplant, green beans, lettuce, zucchini, squash, raspberries (perennial), and various herbs. I think the raspberries save money, considering how much my kids eat, and the herbs. I just prefer the taste of homegrown tomatoes.

Oh yeah, it's my therapy.

I grow heirloom tomatoes every year (my favorite, juicy, sweet, yummy picked fresh, just sliced on buttered toast or a bagel with mayo.) One plant costs about what 2 tomatoes would in the store and I'll get a yield of anywhere from 10 (plants not doing well) on up to so many I give them away to neighbors, relatives, anyone interested. (Yield depends on variety, smaller produce more yield.) My yields are less now because I don't have the space here like back home at the farm, so can't rotate crops, lol. :D So I put lots of new fresh dirt in at planting time to circumvent the lack of real estate. A tip, put a cup of epsom salt in at planting. (I know a guy who puts sugar all around his at planting, I've not done it but he sure has tasty 'maters.)

I've done
-winter onions
-Green beans (tons of those)
-Sugar baby melons (shaped like a soccer ball and cherry colored inside. so sweet. my last crop flopped, got them in too late because of cold spring).
-DH's hot peppers (can't stand them myself). He dried and ground them, gave a bunch to friends.
-lettuce (spring mix, heavy yield from seed direct sown)
-green bell peppers (again for DH)
-potatoes (so-so luck, again lack of space)

I'm sure there are some veggies I'm forgetting.

Herbs (every year). Nothing beats snipping fresh herbs and tossing it on a pasta dish with diced heirloom tomatoes, wrapping some together, dipping in olive oil and basting meats on the grill, all kinds of uses, love my herbs!)

-Cilantro (let one plant go to seed, set it on ground, you'll get a repeat crop in same season)
-Lemon Thyme (great on broiled fish)
-Purple leaf Basil (one of my favorites, great w/pasta)
-Lemon Verbena (dried for homemade potpourri)
-Pineapple Sage (also great on broiled fish, beautiful when it blooms - scarlet)
-French Tarragon
-Chives (so good on baked potatoes, pasta)
-Spearmint
-Chocolate mint
-Orange mint
-Kentucky Colonel Mint (mint leaves good in iced tea, some in lemonade, too)
-Marjoram
-Rosemary (I plant at least 3, it's not winter hardy here)
-Lemon Balm
-Catnip (for my cat)
-Fennel
-Dill (once in awhile, not a big dill user)
-Greek Oregano
-Lavendar (for homemade potpourri)

Anything unusual I can get my hands on!

Go for it, you might find playing in the dirt as therapeutic as those of us who are passionate about gardening. ;)

What's in our garden?...Squash, potatoes, lettuce, swiss chard, tomatoes, pole beans, cabbage, peppers, eggplant, basil, garlic, brussel sprouts ;o) This year we're cutting the selection down to potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and perhaps some tomatoes.

{{gwi:44591}}

We used to do just a couple of tomato plants but last year had about 12 tomato plants (I ended up with tomatoes coming out my ears!), yellow squash, cantaloupe, green and red bell peppers and cucumbers.

This year we will do about the same. In fact, this weekend we started red and green pepper plants from seed. I have them in the sunroom. I also started catnip, mint and lemon basil, which if they do well, I'll transfer outside. I have mint out in the bed that surrounds the patio, I love the smell of it. I don't actually use alot of it but it's a pretty plant, smells wonderful, even the pup sniffs it. LOL

You will save some money and for us, it's very enjoyable. I always buy from a produce market (still do in the winter), but fresh picked from the garden is the best. I shared alot of tomatoes and also made pasta sauce which I froze. I cut up peppers and froze those too - do you know how much a red bell pepper is in the store???!!!

We may try little red potatoes (red pontiacs) this year. Something new! It's addictive!

tina

Cost effective? Probably not. But that's not why most people garden. The bigger the garden the greater your chances of saving money ... especially if you grow everything from seed and preserve your harvest.

For me it's something that feeds my soul as much as it does my tummy. I love walking out the back door and harvesting something fresh for dinner ... even if it's just herbs and lettuce or Swiss chard like at this time of year. And nothing beats fresh tomatoes in the summer! My tomato and pepper seedlings have germinated and are now in the cold frame. IÂll start potting up next week and in a few more weeks might be able to start transplanting into the garden. My garden is small and veggies share the space with flowers. In late spring/summer I grow bush beans, tomatoes, sweet & hot peppers, herbs and flowers. Come fall I grow lettuce, arugula, another crop of bush beans, more flowers and cool season herbs.

Sounds like your dh has a good plan for starting out small. Make sure you only grow the things you like to eat. IÂve given up on growing eggplant. The few times we eat it I can buy it at the farmers market. Same with cukes. TheyÂre always cheap in the summer and all pretty much taste the same.

May 2009...
{{gwi:80366}}

Does it save money?

Depends on what you are comparing it to. If you are comparing it to produce bought at rock bottom prices at WM, then you probably don't save money growing your own. But if you are comparing it to what fresh picked at point of ripeness organic produce costs, you can definitely save money.

When DH and I were newly married, we planted our first garden. One thing we planted was cantaloupe. I will never forget the night we ate our first cantaloup- I tasted it and it was so sweet and juicy I thought we had some special soil, comparable to the special wine growing areas France or something. I became very excited and said to DH that we had to start buying up land around us because we were going to be rich growing these incredible melons. He just started laughing at me and said there was nothing special about our soil, it was just that the melon was ripened on the vine.Before that night I had never tasted a melon that was vine ripened!

In the spring, we grow lettuces, spinach, radishes, arugula. As the season progresses we grow tomatoes, cukes, sweet onions,scallions, melons, sugar snap and snow peas (they are a treat- grow them on a trellis. They are like candy. Really.) DH also grows great garlic.

I also like to plant some rhubarb. It is a perennial, and I love to make rhubarb crisp.

Good luck on your first garden. Add some flowers to make it pretty- you can direct sow zinnias and sunflowers after the last frost, and pick them for bouquets.

From what I am reading here what REALLY pays is to find someone who LOVES to garden and ends up with produce coming out their ears and is looking to unload some :D.

The two gardens shown are absolutely gorgeous.....great going gals!!!!

"From what I am reading here what REALLY pays is to find someone who LOVES to garden and ends up with produce coming out their ears and is looking to unload some :D."

Well, Lisa, I'm close enough and we have more than enough produce lol.

For us, and like natal, it's not about saving $$$, it's about working the soil, tending the plants, getting out in the sunshine (and sometimes sweltering heat!), and getting exercise, to boot. I love the fact that I can just walk 100 feet and pluck something out for dinner. Roasted veggies over pasta is one of our summer staple meals. We've been gardening in one form or another for years and even though we're getting up in years, we're not planning on stopping any time soon. We still have some potatoes from this past crop.

I attempted it one years ago. It was more og a PIA for me. I didn't care for all the weeding necessary nor stepping on the brown snake one morning (ended the whole gardening thing). Also, we have so many wild critters on our property, I always found one thing or another that had been eliminated during the nite.

I usually get my fresh produce from friends who love to garden or from one of many fresh fruit/veggie stands locally.

Best of luck. I hope it works out well for you.

I think it all depends on what you grow. If you plan on canning, then the first year is very expensive.

We used to have a very large garden and I did a lot of canning. The best thing we ever grew was new potatoes and green beans. Canned together were YUMMY!

We still have a lot of fruit trees but we just eat them off the tree instead of can them.

We used to and it was fun to try.I prefer to have flower beds cause I can mulch and cut down on weeding.
My DH wanted to try again this past summer with tomatoes and green peppers so I made space in a garden. I added green chilies and tomatillos. We didn't get much yield probably didnt fertilize well. and the few tomatoes we did get tasted terrible. The chiles and tomatillos gave the best yield and tasted fine.
If we do it again we need to really amend the soil.
If you grow from seed it is cost saving and fun. I think its more fun to go to the farmers market and find it pretty inexpensive. I make jam and canned salsa stuff like that.
Have fun with it whatever you do its that time of year to plan.

lol, Lisa. Yeah, buddying up with an avid gardener is an excellent plan B. ;)

Hmmmm, well like I said above, we don't do it to save money, but I think you do save. Gosh, if I tried to figure up what all the tomatoes alone would have cost us. Even our pup gets into the gardening. A funny - she will go to the garden with hubby - you can tell her "let's go to the garden" and she wants to bring back a cucumber!

I love the small pickling cucumbers. Cucumber/tomato/mozz cheese with basil is one of our fav salads.

Natal what is that large plant/bush to the left of the purple flowering bush?

We don't have flowers and veggies together but I know certain flowers will help in preventing bugs (marigolds for one). Also Shee, mulching your garden is a good thing and will cut down on weeds.

One thing we are going to do different this year is we are going to do teepees for the cukes. Anyone else do those? We bought the bamboo stakes last year but never did them.

tina

Like Oakley said, the first year is an investment. Last year was my first "serious" attempt at gardening in a long time. I spent on landscape fabric for paths, tomato ladders, compost, mulch, a Japanese hand hoe (best twenty bucks I ever spent), a pressure canner, seed starting gear, lights, etc. Ouch!

No, you don't need to buy all that stuff...I admit I am a bit of a princess. ;-) One can garden on a shoestring, but at the very least, you must invest in your soil. They say you don't nurture your plants, you nurture your soil.

On top of all that investing I enjoyed, we had the worst summer in 40 years according to the Northeast Organic Farmers Assoc. So, I got hammered...too many weeds, too few vegetables. Definitely in the red.

But, I have to say, each cucumber I picked and ate for lunch was glorious. Digging spinach out of the snow in December blew me away. The taste was incomparable. Didn't get a lot of peas, but the ones we had were so so good. Watching the grandchildren pull raspberries and stuff them into their mouths, priceless.

This year, I am ready to go. My plots at the community garden were freshly composted and "put to bed" in the fall and the garlic I planted in October is starting to sprout. I have all the equipment I need, and a whole disastrous summer's worth of experience under my belt. It can only get easier, right?

Moon is onto something about the theraputic nature of gardening. No, I probably don't save money on food. But on those 50-minute-hours? Yep...I guess so.

I also found a gardening friend in my husband last year. I had mostly done ornamental gardens in the past with a few veggies and herbs thrown in. He was always supportive, but mostly from the sidelines. Last year, I really needed help for the first time and my dear husband stepped up and became a full participant in the endeavor. He and I really bonded in a new way in the vegetable garden. (sigh) :-)

Love the photos posted above. A beautiful sight on a deeply snow day here!

I've had a smallish garden most of my married life and those years that I didn't, I missed it. We haven't tried it here yet, but with the number of deer we see, it may be an exercise in futility.

Barb5 summed it up pretty well regarding saving money. I suspect those who have huge gardens and can or freeze a lot do save money, but for most of us, it's a combination of the experience and the taste of home-grown produce. Even farmer's market tomatoes can't compare to standing over the sink with a salt shaker in one hand and in the other, the first tomato of the season, still warm from the sun. Oh my!

And I agree: Second best option is having a friend who gardens! And he or she will love sharing with you and being appreciated!

Natal, I'm green with envy! Your garden is glorious.

Gardening is fun but not cost effective compared to the prices you pay for locally produced fruits and vegetables in season.

Two suggestions: Limit yourself to maybe two plants of each. And instead of starting your tomatoes from seed, buy the small seedlings. (This from a woman who has consistently failed at seeds.)

I canned last year for the first time in my life. The start-up costs are high, and it isn't something I would necessarily want to do yearly.

Tina, thatÂs a Sun Gold cherry tomato. The vines grow really tall ... easily 10-12 feet. Shortly after that pic was taken they started to drape down over the plant. One of my favorites! Produces tons of sweet, fruity tomatoes.

this was a month earlier...

Sun Golds in the 2 middle bowls ...

Shee, good soil is probably the most important part of a garden. Dh built our compost bins a year before we started gardening, but even at that we had to buy products to amend the clay soil for the first couple years. Now all I have to do is add compost every spring. I side dress the tomatoes and peppers with an organic fertilizer once during the season and that's it. Compost is called 'black gold' for a reason!

We've had a very small vegetable and herb garden for the past couple of years. I dug up the bed a few years ago and now just work it over with a shovel in the spring, adding compost and fresh soil, before I plant. I haven't fertilized or used any pesticides thus far. We water daily (soak with a hose) if it's dry. That's it -- very easy.

I have planted small tomatoes (my favorite plant has been Juliet -- they are a large grape/small plum size -- because they are tough and productive), basil, mint, lettuce, and hot peppers. We buy the small plants for a dollar or so apiece, and it has been very inexpensive for what we have gotten out of it -- many pounds of fresh tomatoes throughout the summer and early fall, fresh basil for pesto, fresh hot peppers for curries. Once everything is established, I generally don't even have to weed because the space is so small. I always plant some marigolds around the edge of the bed because I've heard that they protect the tomatoes.

The best thing is probably to start small with some easy things. Cherry and grape tomatoes are easier than big ones because they ripen more quickly and are thus less likely to get diseases or get eaten by creatures other than you. They also need less water than the bigger varieties.

I didn't even think about growing fresh herbs. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself now! LOL I keep thinking of more and more things.

I'm hoping this turns out to be something fun that we both enjoy. Canning doesn't sound like something we'll be messing with at this point.

Thanks for posting the photos of your gardens! I would love for ours to look like either of those! Probably not this year. :)

I'll have to let you know how it goes. Thanks everyone for the thoughts!

Wow, beautiful garden pics. Mine is not so spectacular, but it is great therapy. I am sure I spend more $ gardening than I could buy the veggies for, but it is so rewarding and challenging at the same time. I am totally organic, and swear by compost.

I grow tomatoes, peppers, chard, lettuce, kale, herbs, flowers, watermelon, sugar snap peas. Some are fall/winter crops and some are summer. Here, I can garden year-round. Fall is my favorite time to garden.

Natal: I would love to have a nice fence like yours, where do you find something like that?

Jana, we bought it at Lowe's. It was reasonably priced and easy to install. Unfortunately, it started rusting from the inside out about six months after purchase. I'm hoping to get a couple more years out of it before replacing with aluminum or wrought iron.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Zone fencing

I have a gorgeous garden and it saves me tons of money. I don't grow food (yet, I'm going to venture into that this year) but I do have a beautiful tropical garden in front of my house with canna, palm trees, brugmansia, ginger lilies, etc. I save money because I don't need a psychotherapist:)

I am drooling over the gorgeous gardens and the produce photos. Wow!

Gosh Natal, Mrs.Marv and Tex those are good looking vegetables. I'll be over this summer for a BLT. (lol)

Have ya'll ever heard of german tomotoes? They are big, juicy, meaty and sweet. I grew them once and had tomotoes growing out of my ears. I remember making wonderful salsa and Italian dishes, sometime ago.

Someone mentioned chocolate mint above. I did grow it when I was in the tomoto business (sort of speak) but didn't know exactly what to do with it. It really smells like chocolate. I guess you could use it for some kind of dessert, but I didn't and still don't know.

....Jane

Jane,

Are you talking about the German Johnson tomatoes? I attempted some last year, but they did not do so well in our heat. Of course, nothing did so well since last summer was so brutal. Hoping for a better season this year.

Jana

I was thinking of growing more vegetables this year. I usually only do one tomato plant. I love gardening but prefer the perenials, shrubs and trees. More forgiving if you are a busy person. The reason I would to the vegetables and herbs is for the freshness and the fact that you can just go in the backyard and harvest!

Jane, I tried German Johnson, but like Jana didn't have much luck. This year I'm trying German Red Strawberry. It's an ox-heart tomato, not a beefsteak, but I've heard it does well down here. We'll see.

I've grown tomatoes from seed in deck pots. I grow cilantro, parsley, chives, apple mint, monarda....mostly roses and flowers.