Why garden?

My budget these days is about $3.30/person/day. That includes all food, clothes, household items, diapers, garden, family gifts, minor home upkeep, and anything else I think we need. So if we need trash bags, seeds, lightbulbs, socks, or other non-consumibles, I have to keep our average meal under $1/person--less, really, when you add in the hospitality meals. Not easy, especially as grocery prices continue to climb.

George thought I should write a book, but it's really not about the recipes; it's about having a different perspective. For example: if I can grow it in my garden, that plant or seed costs far less than buying its fruit in the produce section. When I compare the price of the seeds to the cost of the produce, I'd rather overplant and give away what we can't/don't want to use than not plant the seed and buy just one pumpkin/pepper/what have you. But really I have to remember the replacement value when I decide what to grow/u-pick, because I would not normally buy, say, snow peas. Since I do have them producing fruit in my garden, however, they obviously replace something else in our diet. So their real value is connected to whatever they are replacing--in the case of snow peas, a little more lettuce in our salad. Not a great return, but I also didn't invest anything in them (seeds were free, not more than a few minutes to plant them, less to pick them). Eggplant, on the other hand, may cost $1.50 per plant. I would never buy them in the store, but when I compare them to the cost of the food they replace in our diet during the summer, I figure each eggplant is worth at least $1. So if each plant only produces 2 fruits, I've made a return on my investment. But I'm not banking on that, since sometimes a particular type of plant just doesn't do well--our 3 bell peppers last year only gave us a total of 2 small fruits. But when I add together the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, crookneck squash, snow peas, carrots, beets, radishes, lettuce, spinach, acorn squash, pumpkin, marjoram, basil, asparagus, butternut squash, shell peas, cantaloupe, chamomile, sunflowers, cucumber, and corn (did I forget anything?), I no longer mind if one or two of those crops fail completely since I know the others will more than make up for the failures. Add in the freebies from neighbors and friends (rhubarb, Egyptian onion, strawberries, sage, raspberries, thyme) and the plants we've planted in the past which continue to save us money at the store (oregano, mint, parsley, chives, tarragon) and I can only benefit by planting as many edibles as we can possibly keep up with in the garden.