Gardening to Cut Your Grocery Bills

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Veronica Lorson Fowler

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Why pay top dollar for produce that isn’t half as good as what you could grow in your garden?

Want to save $5, $10 – even $25 – a week on your grocery bill? Consider adding fruits and vegetables to your garden! You can grow much of the food you regularly purchase for a fraction of what you pay at the store. (And if you normally only buy organic produce, the savings can be even higher.)

Of course, there are additional benefits to growing your own food. For one, you’ll always have a variety of produce handy, which means fewer last-minute grocery trips. And chances are you’ll be eating better, too. After all, you’ll have a bounty of produce right at your fingertips! Perhaps the biggest advantage of all is you’ve got control of where your food comes from, which means you won’t have to worry about unwanted pesticides and salmonella outbreaks.

The list of fruits and vegetables that the average gardener can grow is practically endless. Here are some of the easiest ones to plant, tend and harvest. (Unless otherwise noted, all need full sun.)

Lettuces and greens (especially gourmet types). You can spend as much as $4 (or more) for a bag or box of mixed spring greens, baby spinach or arugula at the supermarket, but you can grow it at home for a lot less! Growing greens takes up very little space (you can even do it in containers), and it’s easy to do from seed. For the price of one packet (just $1-$2), you can have lots of beautiful salads.

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You can spend $2-$3 on one container of cherry tomatoes at the store, or you can buy one tomato plant and enjoy a season-worth of (better) flavor.

To get the most of your leaf lettuces and spinach, trim off the leaves an inch or two above the ground rather than pulling out the entire plant. The tops will regrow quickly, giving you at least one extra harvest in less time than it takes to replant the crop from seed. While lettuces do best in full sun, they’ll grow nicely in light shade, too – especially if it’s afternoon shade.

Tomatoes. Almost everyone knows homegrown tomatoes just taste better, yet scads of shoppers pay through the nose for pithy, flavorless supermarket varieties. If you insist on flavor but don’t grow your own, you may end up purchasing your produce at a farmers’ market or fruit stand – better than a grocery store, but sometimes still expensive. Buying an entire tomato plant is so much cheaper (not to mention more rewarding)! You can usually buy a few plants for under $5, and you can grow enough tomatoes for delicious BLTs all summer long for a family of four!

Tips

Consider preserving your bounty to enjoy year-round. You can freeze or dry many herbs and fresh produce. (While frozen or dried fruits and veggies may not taste the best in salads, they’re great in recipes like stews and pies!)
To save the most money, select what you grow with your mind focused on your typical grocery bill. You may love potatoes, for example, but you probably won’t save a whole lot by growing your own since they’re pretty inexpensive. On the other hand, red bell peppers can cost as much as $2 each. Buying and planting a three-pack of bell pepper plants will yield dozens of tasty red peppers – and you’ll save some big bucks!

Facts

In addition to giving us great food, flowering fruit trees are gorgeous. Plant them instead of shade trees on your property and they’ll do triple-duty, providing shade, food and beautiful spring flowers. Note: In some cases, you’ll need to plant two trees (or two different varieties of the same tree) so they can cross-pollinate and produce fruit. Always read the plant tag for details.
If space is an issue, look for plants that grow well together. For example, Native Americans traditionally planted the “three sisters” – corn, vining beans and squash – in the same bed. The corn provides structural support for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen from the air (which the corn needs for optimum growth), and the squash scrambles around the ground as a living mulch (keeping the soil cooler and reducing weeds).

Resources

Some fruits and vegetables grow better in particular seasons. What you can grow when also depends on where you live. You can find more information on various fruits, vegetables and herbs in our Edibles section.
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