this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Home gardening at scale can definitely be cheaper than store bought. But as you've said, most people don't have the space.
Yeah you'd probably get more than 1KG per plant. They grow so much so fast.
I must be doing something wrong. Half the time I only get one cucumber from a plant. Sometimes I'll get a good plant and get three cucumbers. Never more or faster than we can eat though. But I'm only planting a couple of plants.
Do you manage to stagger or store a lot of it so it can last you through the year?
And do you have a good way to deal with pests? One issue we have is caterpillars in the broccoli, so we tend to only grow it over the winter.
On the pest front my old man (who used to be a commercial market gardener for a few years) recommended derris dust for the brassicas. We haven’t used it (and there is mixed opinions on its health impact online) but that’s potentially an option. Insect netting is the best for us though.
We’re currently planting to build a fully netted area in our garden around 50sqm for that reason.
I think the netting option is best. I've heard of people building frames over their gardens for the netting (it sounds like that's what you're doing).
To be honest I'm going off growing brassicas, in favour of things you can't get for dirt cheap. It's hard to make growing broccoli worthwhile when you can get giant ones for $2 at the right times.
Fair enough too. Probably depends on motivation as well - we grow our own for many reasons including a goal of self sufficiency and a better understanding of what’s in the food we eat so it’s not just economics for us.
We’ve obviously invested a fair bit in getting the garden set up, but once you can grow from seed (and especially saving your own seed) it might be just a few dollars for a few hundred seeds (depending on the crop) and some plants (beans, tomato’s, watermelons etc) that are super easy to save seed from. We’re even self sufficient for things like popcorn (and have a couple of kilos worth of seed left - some which we’ll still eat) so that makes a difference too.
Lastly though we just love gardening, and I really enjoy showing my kids the lifecycle and getting them involved in the process. They get to choose and manage some crops of their own, and always speak with pride when we eat the things they’ve contributed to.
That's really cool. If we had more space I'd like to think we would grow more.