Gardening: It is Not About The Money

If your main reason for growing your own herbs, vegetables and flowers is to save money, you may well be disappointed.

Seeds and seedlings are often quite inexpensive and tomato plants, for example are a real bargain. I can often buy six plants for under two dollars and teach plant will produce more, much more than, two dollars worth of tomatoes. However, it takes weeks for the plants to produce one edible tomato. In addition, I need to care for them regularly, possibly on a daily basis if they are in containers and the weather is hot which tomatoes like.

I do not grow tomatoes to save money, I grow them for two reasons; one is taste, the other, well I will get to that in a minute.

First, taste, a tomato picked off the vine of a plant that is growing on your patio, balcony or backyard simply tastes better than any other tomato. Tomatoes I buy at the farmers’ market, grown by local farmers come close, supermarket tomatoes are a dismal experience at best.

This goes for cucumbers, green beans and so on and is especially so if the plants were grown from heritage seeds.

Now I do begin to realize savings when I save seeds, but that is another story.

The second reason I choose to grow my own vegetables, herbs and flowers is more complicated. It has to do with my need to be directly connected to the source of my food. Now, I cannot do this with all that I eat but I can do it for some of the food I need and enjoy.

This connection also serves to keen my awareness of nature and the relationship between the elements, (rain, sun, soil, air) to the food I eat and thereby to myself. Gardening also enables me to create space for the other creatures who inhabit our ecosystem and many of whom are necessary to keep my garden growing.

If the soil is fouled or lacking in essential minerals the food we eat is similarly affected. This also applies to the water and the air.

Of course, without the sun, photosynthesis would not take place and there would be no food available.

I do not garden to save money, I garden because I enjoy fresh food and I garden because that is what I see my role on this earth to be, a gardener; someone who looks after, cares for and tends the land.