DIY Gardening: How Home-Grown Produce Saves Up to $600/Month

In this day and age, it’s important for us to find ways to save money wherever we can. While some methods are a bit fishy, other methods – like gardening – can prove to be a great solution if you manage to stick with them.

Depending on the kind of gardening you do, and how serious you are about it, you stand to save a lot on certain products. But how does it help save you money?

How to Save Money by DIY Gardening

Fruit and vegetable gardening

While fruits and vegetables can’t be relied on for every part of your meals, they’re valuable staples. While you’re not likely to be able to replace fruit and vegetable costs at the grocery, at least not right away, it can make a bit of a dent in grocery costs.

Another great benefit of this is that you don’t have to worry about where your food is coming from, or whether the cost of fruits and vegetables is going to fluctuate. Additionally, growing your own product honestly makes fruits and vegetables taste all the better for it.

Medicinal herbs

It’s important to take care of your help, and medicinal herbs are a good way to keep your health in check. They can be used in conjunction with other health remedies. Additionally, you can also look into growing medical marijuana, depending on the state you live in.

When using medicinal herbs, do make sure that you understand potential side effects of their use. Additionally, be sure that you understand that just because medicinal herbs are natural does not mean that they are necessarily safe. When planning to use medicinal herbs, be sure to discuss this with your doctor, who can tell you exactly how safe a certain herb may be for you.

Flower gardening

While flowers are not a necessity by any means, they’re certainly nice to have, and make for a great gift. Instead of having to fight with people to get a beautiful – and expensive – bouquet of roses for Valentine’s Day, you can grow them for yourself. Being able to grow your own flowers allows you to make a beautiful backyard that improves your house’s value and is also great value.

Selling your harvest

Beyond the benefit of not having to buy certain fruits, vegetables, and flowers you’re growing, there’s also great potential to make money from your harvests. Granted, it is not without labor, so be prepared to do the work if you’re hoping to make a pretty penny on what you’re growing.

Another issue, of course, is how you’re going to distribute and sell your harvest. For some, it may be viable just to sell to your local community, while for others, you may have to go out of your way to find customers.

Additionally, if you’re worried about whether you need to get a license to sell your harvest, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. For example, different states have different laws and regulations that manage this. For example, Minnesota only requires a Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) license if you use off-farm ingredients or produce acquired from other farmers.

How to grow a garden in an urban environment

While growing a garden is a great thing, if you have your own backyard, it may be a lot more difficult to do it in an urban area. Thankfully, there are still options, mainly for the creation of a kitchen garden. You can grow plants in plant pots, and you can get a surprisingly bountiful harvest from doing this if they’re growing in the right conditions.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a Garden?

While growing a garden provides savings in the long term, there are still short-term expenses that you need to consider. And these expenses are going to vary depending on how big you want your garden to be, and the kinds of food you want to grow.

When starting out with a fruit or vegetable garden, you should start out with something small, like 60 feet. This is ideal for a beginning gardener, and you can expand the garden further once you’re ready for more. If you’re aiming for this kind of vegetable garden, you can expect the costs to be around $200 in total. Additionally, maintaining the garden will cost money down the line, and may vary from $50 to $200 over time.

Maintenance of your garden can be broken down to include: water, compost, soil amendments, pest controls, tools, and seeds.

How to Cut Costs on Your Garden

If you want to save even more money, there are some great ways to do so. For example, instead of discarding the seeds you get from your crops, you should save them and replant them. This helps you avoid having to buy new seeds to replace the old crops. Additionally, you can also make compost using scraps, which saves a considerable amount of money.

Other Benefits of Gardening

Gardening is great to make your own fruits and vegetables, but it’s also a great way to keep yourself fit and active. Gardening is hard work, so for those who find it more difficult to be active outside of the house, having a garden in your own backyard is a huge boon.

For people who take gardening very seriously, they can even contribute to a great sense of community in their neighborhood. Your neighbors will always appreciate getting fresh fruits and veggies as a gift, and a good friend will be sure to pay it back in some way or another.

How Much Money Can You Save By Making a Garden?

On average, it’s estimated that the produce is approximately 300 pounds, and is worth approximately $600. This estimate was accompanied by an estimate of $70 in maintenance.

Thus, even if it is on the upper end of expenses, you can still expect a decent profit. As you expand the garden, so too can you expand your potential profits and savings, especially if you use more valuable produce.