Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

How much is your garden or allotment worth ??

Collapse

X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • How much is your garden or allotment worth ??

    I recently read this article on Growveg.com and thought the other grapes would like to read it.

    "Every now and again I get asked how much money you can save by growing your own fruit and vegetables. Of course this is a very narrow way of looking at the benefits of gardening. The exercise and fresh air, the sense of working with nature and the health benefits of freshly grown produce are all very important factors and for many people this will outweigh the economic benefits. Yet the question of monetary value is still a valid one - increasingly important as food prices continue to rise and new building developments have to balance the desirability of garden space against extra houses. So just how cost-effective is a productive fruit and vegetable garden...?

    It is not easy to put a monetary value to your garden or allotment, because there are so many variants, the size of the plot, condition of soil, seasonal weather patterns etc.

    However, it is possible to quantify what is produced and that’s exactly what Roger Doiron (founder of Kitchen Gardeners International) and his family set out to do over the past twelve months. Every time they harvested anything from their modest 1600 square foot (150 square metre) garden, they recorded it (I can certainly empathise with how tedious that must have been!) Then they compiled these figures into a spreadsheet and came up with an amazing 834 lb (380kg) of total harvest. From this they computed three sets of prices, comparing what the produce would have cost if bought:

    A regular grocery store would have charged £1500
    Their farmers’ market would have charged £1760
    An organic grocery store would have charged £1850

    Put like this these figures are rather impressive. OK, so Roger is a pretty good gardener and he doesn’t include any charge for the amount of time he and his family spent in the garden. On the other hand, seeds and materials cost him just £200 and they didn’t include the produce eaten while in the garden in their calculations (always a considerable amount in my experience!) or the money saved from not having to drive to a store so regularly (and the associated items that mysteriously make it into the basket!) Moreover, they were growing a range of crops many of which, such as potatoes, are considered ‘low value’. As mentioned in my previous blog article on Value to Space Rating, many people prefer to concentrate on growing what is expensive or tastes much better and this would have led to even higher returns.

    Even more impressive though is this fact: If you extended Roger’s garden to a larger area of an acre you would find that it yielded £43,000 of consumer-sold crop per acre. By any standards that is very high and it serves to highlight just how efficient home gardening is. We hear a lot in the news at the moment about looming world food problems, yet few people link this to the vast patchwork of land in homes and cities. When these are mentioned there is often an assumption that they would be less productive than farm land, yet this is clearly not the case. Intensive urban gardening is high-yield, high-value and highly good for the environment!"

    --------------------------------------------------
    The article infers that a 1600 sq ft plot is a modest size,well I wish I had that much growing space, but you can scale down the amounts, so even with half that space it should be possible to grow about 400lb of harvestable crops.

    What do you think is achievable on your plot??
    Last edited by DavidM31; 20-03-2009, 09:39 AM. Reason: Forgot to put in quotation marks


    Gardening should always be a pleasure and never a chore,only someone forgot to tell the weeds

    "If you don't have a plan, a goal for yourself, then you are almost certainly a part of someone else's"

    "The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dream is you"

  • #2
    1600 sq ft is 40 ft each way square. It is a lot larger than the typical garden, but the allotments I see when we drive past places they exist look to be something similar (as best I can tell driving by).
    We just grew tomatoes in growbags last few years, and never actually measured quantity, but even the blight years, we still managed all the little toms we could eat for a couple of weeks (and that is quite a lot, considering there are only 2 of us) plus 4lbs 'useable for chutney' that I picked when blight was no longer preventable (and another 10lbs or so of blight-touched fruits that were disposed of with the plants). This was from 3 growbags, with 3 plants in each, and half the plants never actually got round to producing anything before they got blighted. In a good 'clean' year I would estimate total yield about 3 or 4 times as much, perhaps more. That was grown in about 10 linear feet of housewall-space......
    Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

    Comment


    • #3
      £2000 worth of organic fruit and veg harvested last year over here, costs less than £200, so a tidy profit is very possible indeed!

      There's a thread or three about this elsewhere on the vine, plus our blog has all the details of our balance sheets for the past 2 years!
      Blessings
      Suzanne (aka Mrs Dobby)

      'Garden naked - get some colour in your cheeks'!

      The Dobby's Pumpkin Patch - an Allotment & Beekeeping blogspot!
      Last updated 16th April - Video intro to our very messy allotment!
      Dobby's Dog's - a Doggy Blog of pics n posts - RIP Bella gone but never forgotten xx
      On Dark Ravens Wing - a pagan blog of musings and experiences

      Comment


      • #4
        I haven't done the maths, but I do know we harvested around £300 of raspberries last year. I was inspired to work this out when I saw a tiny 150g punnet on sale for £3. OH's grandparents had a market garden, not vast fields of produce, just small areas of seasonal veg which they sold at the gate and supplied to a couple of local greengrocers. They also had an 'egg round' and delivered eggs to regular customers on a Friday night, those with larger families also ordered their spuds to be delivered then too. This didn't just provide a living, but actually rather a good one, their customers were getting good quality, fresh, locally produced veg at a price that was reasonable for themselves and for OH's grandparents who produced it. It's a system that was almost finished by the mid-70s when I met OH and none of their children thought that taking over the place was a valid idea. The grandparents sold the place when they retired and it did not continue as a market garden. Today with farmers' markets there might be a possibility for these types of places again, I suppose, but most, like that of OH's family, have been split for other uses.
        Into each life some rain must fall........but this is getting ridiculous.

        Comment


        • #5
          As a certain credit card ad says "PRICELESS"

          I have 4 raised beds of 3m x 1.5m each, 2 8x6 greenhouses and numerous pots.

          We are still eating h/g spuds, leeks, onions etc - so haven't bought any for yonks. Only buy when we have to out of season.

          Exercise and relaxation obviates the need for a gym membership, chickens keep us and friends in free eggs.

          To me it's a no brainer, cheaper, healthier and far more fun......
          The cats' valet.

          Comment


          • #6
            Raspberries...Still got some in the freezer,goodness knows how many were eaten by birds and how many fell off onto the ground...

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by dogsbody View Post
              As a certain credit card ad says "PRICELESS"...................



              ...................To me it's a no brainer, cheaper, healthier and far more fun......
              My thoughts exactly............and btw I like the avatar!
              My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
              to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

              Diversify & prosper


              Comment


              • #8
                Snadger, we think alike.

                The av is the smallest of my 3 cats Rosemary, who took up residence on a bird table that was temporarily out of action.

                Cat with attitude doesn't tell half the story...
                The cats' valet.

                Comment


                • #9
                  If you follow the logic at the end of the original article, I should be growing circa £200k of vegetables - what am I doing wrong ?
                  Rat

                  British by birth
                  Scottish by the Grace of God

                  http://scotsburngarden.blogspot.com/
                  http://davethegardener.blogspot.com/

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Its got to be at least worth what I would of spent on an annual gym membership - look at it like that! I am pretty useless at growing things, unfortunately.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by sewer rat View Post
                      If you follow the logic at the end of the original article, I should be growing circa £200k of vegetables - what am I doing wrong ?
                      Hi SR

                      Yes but it also says it depends on the location and you my friend are in the extreme North, and from reading your various posts, you are doing very well with what you have.

                      I agree with dogsbody, there are savings to be made in other area, like the exercise and fresh air and the satisfaction of seeing something that you've planted grow and end up with a useable crop...."priceless"


                      Gardening should always be a pleasure and never a chore,only someone forgot to tell the weeds

                      "If you don't have a plan, a goal for yourself, then you are almost certainly a part of someone else's"

                      "The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dream is you"

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        We tend to give a lot of our stuff away but I'd still say that it's priceless. I also think it's good for my mental health and wellbeing as well as physically!

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I never thought about growing to save ££'s-surely it will save you some pennies but taste,exersize and satisfaction are "priceless".

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by bluemoon View Post
                            I haven't done the maths, but I do know we harvested around £300 of raspberries last year. I was inspired to work this out when I saw a tiny 150g punnet on sale for £3.
                            For me this is the failing of all these calculations because I seriously doubt anyone buy £300 of raspberries if you hadn't grown them. I'm not singling out bluemoon just using this as a prime example that a £xx saving is really only a saving if you would have spent it.

                            If you were to buy all your own veg I bet most would stick to the simple and cheap varieties. Would you always buy the vine ripe tomatoes as opposed to the pre packaged? The advantage of GYO is that you can go for the odd variants and most expensive to buy items and have them for a fraction of the price you (probably wouldn't) pay in the shop! I'd never eat anything like as much butternut squash if I hadn't grown it myself...
                            http://plot62.blogspot.com/

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Matt. View Post
                              For me this is the failing of all these calculations because I seriously doubt anyone buy £300 of raspberries if you hadn't grown them. I'm not singling out bluemoon just using this as a prime example that a £xx saving is really only a saving if you would have spent it.

                              If you were to buy all your own veg I bet most would stick to the simple and cheap varieties. Would you always buy the vine ripe tomatoes as opposed to the pre packaged? The advantage of GYO is that you can go for the odd variants and most expensive to buy items and have them for a fraction of the price you (probably wouldn't) pay in the shop! I'd never eat anything like as much butternut squash if I hadn't grown it myself...
                              What you are saying is true, but thats why it is always recommended to people who are just starting out on GYO to grow what they and their family will enjoy. Yes you chose what varieties, those with flavour rather than quantity, you chose whether or not to grow organically. I have always looked for the bargains when buying veg and using tomatoes as an example the economy family pack, but they lack any discernible flavour, whereas home grown ones ooze flavour.
                              From what others have said in their posts, it is possible to save quite a bit of money on GYO and get that full flavoured just picked taste.


                              Gardening should always be a pleasure and never a chore,only someone forgot to tell the weeds

                              "If you don't have a plan, a goal for yourself, then you are almost certainly a part of someone else's"

                              "The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dream is you"

                              Comment

                              Latest Topics

                              Collapse

                              Recent Blog Posts

                              Collapse
                              Working...
                              X