How much do you reckon to save by growing your own?

[Aberdeenplotter]

You can't buy that warm feeling when you look at your plate and think I grew that, nor the smug grin...……….nor the taste either, put a price on those.

I'm with you on that matey

[PepperMonster]

Veggiechicken - that's an interesting way to work it out. I might try keeping track of that, plus total estimated crop value separately and then comparing them later in the year. I enjoy record keeping and lists.

[veggiechicken]

I'm hopeless at keeping lists so I'm going to simplify this even more for my little brain - into a 5 bar gate record - no money complications.
Each item replaced counts as 1 unit.
In my basic standard day, that's 1 for breakfast, 1 for lunch and 2 for dinner - so that would be 4 a day.
If I fed someone else the same food, it would be 8.

Frozen/preserved food doesn't count until its eaten.

Now, I need a catchy name for the "unit".

Any ideas??

[Thelma Sanders]

It's quite radical - but how about calling it a portion Mwahahahaha!

[veggiechicken]

Hadn't thought of that, Thelma

I've been looking at the "Eat 5 a day" guidelines for portion sizes but its just another complication so I've decided on simple bars and gates. 5 bars = 1 gate and aim for 1 gate a day from the garden. May struggle with that at the moment but in summer it should be easy.

[Thelma Sanders]

It doesn't matter what 'their' portion size is - some of them are really daft IMO. What you usually eat is a portion, in my book, I mean who thinks you need 12 cherry toms to make one portion?

Not veg, I know - but who decided that a portion size for pasta is 75g ? for goodness sake! That would be ok for a first course, Italian style, but can't they see how little that is on the plate, even after it is cooked - for a main meal? It's madness.

Ooops! sorry, gone off topic, even more than usual.....

[veggiechicken]

I agree - daft!
IIRC half a cup of shredded raw veg was a portion - how many shredded kale leaves can you shred into half a cup? About 1 maybe 2. Just not real food at all.

[Runtpuppy]

From what I understand, a portion of a food item is not supposed to be all you need to eat. It's the amount of that particular food that would be considered an optimum amount in your meal.

So, a portion of pasta (i.e. 75g) combined with half a cup of shredded kale leaves (the thing that confuses me here is if it's cooked or uncooked, coz that's a big difference!) with a portion of a few other veggies and a portion of protein would make a meal-sized portion for a person.

The idea is to include a lot of different items in optimum quantities instead of 1-2 things in big quantities. Variety in your diet, as they call it.

As for what the thread is about, I don't think I make any significant savings with growing my own. Since my husband isn't a great lover of fruit, I sometimes feel guilty buying fruit that only I will eat. He gets annoyed when I say that, and I do buy fruit when I feel like it, but this way, I can have that much more without feeling bad.

I do it because watching things grow makes me happy. I do it for the thrill of watching a seed germinate into a productive plant, or a flower visited by bees turning into a plump berry.

'Playing with mud' introduces healthy bacteria into your gut which can then improve your mental well-being (which I need). It may not give me a huge amount of exercise consistently, but spurts of intensive workouts are supposed to be better for you anyway, and it does give you gentle exercise all year round.

Being out in the sun (not suddenly in the hottest part of summer but consistently for short periods of time starting in spring to get your melanin going) makes you healthier and happier. I was reading an article about how the amount of Vitamin D in your body might be a marker of how much sun you're getting and therefore how healthy and happy you are. So, essentially, eating VitD supplements might not be as good for you as being out in the sun for 15 minutes every day.

Finally, for me personally, gardening/growing stuff is a hobby. Like all hobbies, I do it for the joy of it, not for profit. I read books and they cost me money. I like to paint and the paints and brushes and canvas cost me money. If I could make money through my hobbies, that would be great, but I don't choose my hobbies for that reason.

[PepperMonster]

Portion size, hah! What a minefield. I think I'll spend the next few weeks working out roughly how much of something I personally eat in one go and work from there.

[Snoop Puss]

I thought a portion of veg was 80 g? Mind you, that's not very helpful either unless you like to weigh everything you eat.

And... we're down to 125 g of spaghetti between the two of us. It doesn't look too bad if you serve it with a lot of sauce made of vegetables. I'm not sure what the response would be if it were carbonara. I'd have to start using small plates for it not to look ridiculous.

And VC, this is such a complicated scheme you've cooked up that I can't see it lasting long. Why not just carry on growing, eating and enjoying?

[muck lover]

Well growing my own food means much more to me than a hobby. But even if it were just a hobby most people spend money on hobbies and don’t expect to break even or make a profit. With physical and mental health benefits and helping the planet the rewards are multiple.
I would never factor in the labour costs at any rate- more likely to PAY to pursue my ‘hobby’

[veggiechicken]

And VC, this is such a complicated scheme you've cooked up that I can't see it lasting long. Why not just carry on growing, eating and enjoying?

Do my schemes ever last long?
I was trying to think of a way of not weighing and pricing everything that was grown and making it more relevant to what is actually eaten in the home.
For example, last autumn I left boxes of apples and tomatoes at the front gate for passersby to take - free.. Putting a value on something I have grown but for which I have no use seems meaningless to me - its not a "profit" over the cost of running my "plot" - its a surplus to be written off.

I started the year with a little book that lists what I spend on the garden (plants, seeds, compost etc) and what I harvest - and what I do with that harvest - like eat, freeze, pickle etc. The shop price for these things isn't really relevant as I wouldn't buy them unless they were yellow-stickered.

Bet that's made it sound even more complex.

[bikermike]

You can price for taste/smug feeling etc.
It's effectively the differential between the costs you are willing to spend (including your time) over and above the cost of getting it from a supermarket (see "Goodwill" in business accounts)

i.e. if a tomato cost £10 when you add up all your time/plot rates/depreciation on tools/fertilisers/fuel/etc, and a shop bought tomato costs £0.50, you are effectively valuing the benefit of growing it at £9.50 (provided you did it again once you knew the numbers).

The problem with any valuation is that it always full of assumptions, and is only really useful as a comparator. Only the sale price is actually transferrable - if a tomato is for sale at 50p in the supermarket, that is a set number. You can value the tomato at any price you like (and thus decide if you want to buy it or not), but that will not change the price it is sold at.


The problem manifests itself in the price of labour: if a premier league footballer and a roadsweeper grew the same tomato and valued it in the above way, the "value" of the tomato to the footballer would be hundreds of pounds greater if he used his footballer wage-rate, so it's only meaningful as a comparison to yourself as which you would rather do - ie if you are paying a 50p home-grown premium on a tomato, would 100 home-grown tomatoes give you more pleasure than a ticket to the opera. But your tomato-growing footballer might be comparing 100 tomatoes to a new Bugatti Veyron.

I have a friend who is an accountant, and had a number of museums and galleries in his portfolio, and thus used to say that phrase "there is no accounting for taste" is demonstrably wrong...

[PepperMonster]

I enjoy keeping records and working with data so this is a fun part of the hobby for me.
But I did a degree and briefly worked in a field that is...pretty much completely that so it kind of fills the hole between science jobs.

[greenishfing]

We have had our allotments for a good number of years so it is rare we have to buy any tools etc. So apart from rent our expenses are mainly seeds (50p sale mainly) or self saved and half a load of manure a year. £5.
We do however put in a lot of effort but then again we don't have to pay for gym membership.
How do we value our crops? We give lots away to our extended family and other allotmenteers when we have gluts but you can't really value goodwill although we have indirectly received tangible benefits from our generosity.
I know my husband's doctor (not the one he gave a carrier bag of PSB to) has told him under no circumstances give the Allotment up!
All in all we probably save no money by growing our own but there are so many other benefits.