The Economics of Growing Your Own Food

how do you have food throughout the year being that the garden yields seasonally?

Have you seen the dude from Israel who keeps claiming he's self-sufficient on 8 hours of work... a month? ;0

i like the video... but putting compost to your earning is just wrong, because you only have the compost need, because you plant the crops, if you would not plant crops you would never buy compost, therefor its a saving but not a yield.

Take the set up cost then divide it over the life span of the various products, that will give you a more realistic annual cost to the garden

but having just vegetables is not self suficiency, what about grains? or protein? if you still buy 85-90% of food what sufficiency?

I dont know about europe but in the usa, you could get the lumber or other materials for your garden for free if you just keep an eye on construction dumpsters around your town.

as a retired person, i wouldn't count my time. it's like a hobby. i also save money not going to the gym, i get a good workout in the garden.

I started the 2025 growing season by reading your book. It has a lot of great information in it, and it was fun seeing how your brain works with succession planting.

That is around 25.000,- DKR 😮

Great video, thanks

You are a smart man, Huw. Thanks for sharing your mind with us!

I have my own vegetable and fruit garden I have stopped purchasing fruits and vegetables since 10years

Kia Ora & Good Morning from NZ ...

Thank you, it was harder to fallow because I am on American dollars but this was excellent refrence

the thing is when u have to buy in shop u need money which u make in job where is TAXED to buy food that is TAXED to make money for the shop that is TAXED not mention trasnsportation- also TAXED( job, car , gas) but if u do some labour in ur garden there is no TAX so u can save something around 40-50% in TAXES thats about money all other things are better too like quality of food or taste dont mention that if u grow permaculture u every year u do less and less work but have more and more yield

Just a quick thank you for what you do from someone who remembers a young kid doing videos showing how to propagate roses from cuttings over a decade ago. I grew up in NYC, I now have a productive no dig garden in my yard. I also have come to explore my Welsh ancestry. Wishing more and more success in your future, thank you for all the information you have shared over the years

You cannot judge gardening by how much you save at the supermarket - what value can you place on fun and a rewarding hobby. Enjoy your garden, that is what it' about.

Grabbing a jar of pickles or green beans that I grew the year or two ago from the pantry is awesome and priceless .
It gives me good memories of that garden yr and time spent with my mom canning 😊 can't say that with the store bought food .haha

How big is your space overall? In feet if possible...

Is that the price to buy organic from Waitrose?

The economics of growing your own food doesn't matter, It's much better

The mental and physical health gained from gardening and eating organic, regenerative produce, is priceless.

Interesting that you made the price comparison with Waitrose? Notably one of the most expensive supermarkets in the UK.

Great video, thanks. I think of the 'costs' as investments. It will be a while until my greenhouse and polytunnel pay for themselves, but I'm getting there. If I discount the expenses of those then my garden pretty much pays for itself now after 7 years. Once you're making your own compost regularly and can save your own seeds, the game changes quite a bit. I try to buy quality tools where I can so that they last, rather than having to buy cheap ones more often. Taking a large harvest to a farmer's market also gives me extra cash to put back into the garden. Seed swaps and bartering can also reduce your outlay, give you more variety and is quite fun.

I've only started watching, but the number one problem is to get kids to eat all those seasonal vegetables😭 (and my kids eat a really wide variety of diahes and foods, but they still have big time preferences that cancel out various seasons quite effectively:)

I was just thinking how neat everything was compared to my plot then I saw the watering cans just thrown on the floor

in my experience, things like mustard greens/asian greens grew like weeds and all the traditional market veggies took too long to be harvestable and suffered massive pest predation. the asian greens require a wicking bed solution because they become bitter if the soil is too dry. there are a lot if issues that affect the veggies. but if you were to feed it to pigs/chickens/ducks etc all of the issues of taste go away and if theres a lot of snails/caterpillars then so what, they're just enriching the chook-feed.
then theres the shelflife of veg. yes you can make preserves and other preparations and some veg can be straight up frozen with no loss of quality but its still a fact that by choosing the weeds over the extra sweet/tasty modern cultivars you can grow a lot more food and use it to raise meat, meat that will freeze or can be smoked/jerked.

If you use the compost to grow your garden, you can’t count the compost as part of what the garden produces.

And as a chef/gardener myself, there's nothing quite like growing a rare plant/herb and discovering what it tastes like fresh from the garden. It's priceless, in my opinion.

I need to garden for my mental health as much as my physical health ❤
And I find it's much cheaper and more effective than talk therapy or percription drugs. I think growing our own food is part of what makes us feel connected to the earth and our own spirit as a result.

Salutari❤❤❤

Promo*SM

You can totally grow your own food. But unless you have big amounts of land, its unlikely to be self-sustainable. The major benefit though, is that you decide what goes into growing that food. If you want it to be pesticide free, you can make it pesticide free. If you want organic, go organic.
The best part is that you have almost full control of your own food (excluding the water quality, that's dependent on where you live, unless you use a pre-filter for your farm/garden).
I personally grow some things, usually herbs and spices, and small but expensive ingredients.

I am a big fan and believer as I also grow as much as I can for self sufficiency, but, making the comparison for cost with Waitrose is absurd at best (for non UK people, it’s our most expensive supermarket - by a long shot). I’d be curious to know how it would size up against Aldi, I bet the estimated cost would be at least half!

Why are you adding the 'value' of the compost to the amount of money you saved? That makes no sense, as the cost of the compost is already included in the produce you buy at the supermarket (the thing you are comparing it to). That would only makes sense when you sell the compost, this way you are double counting it.

Good video otherwise

WHAT ABOUT GROWING FOR SALE?

Kinda sus - https://youtu.be/M2uqtWz3b5A?t=344

What people like this never factor in is the money that could have been invested in other stuff generating income.

Unfortunately this is illegal where I'm from (NZ), because our farmers are like oil barons and have way too much influence over policy.

Though everything talked here is different for different parts of the world, right?
I wonder for what portion of the world is this video accurate.

That's food for 4. So it is about 1h per person of labuor every week. Not bad too bad.

5:20 - a cheaper version of a poly-tunnel:

i guess if ones cilmate and space allowes (i am no gardener, just an interested noob) growing bamboo in one corner might be a pretty neat investment.