What vegetables (and fruits) are really worth growing, given price in stores and ease of garden cultivation?

Answer 1

For fruit, I love blueberries (which have beautiful fall color in additon to the fruit you will get) and strawberries (which can ramble and root). For veggies, spinich, radish, green onions, and leaf lettuce are all super easy and love cooler weather. Other vegetables, though good fresh, are more economical to purchase, although I have to agree there is nothing quite like a vine ripened tomato.

Answer 2

Each and everyone of them. You won't save any money but the taste and satisfaction of walking out to the garden and getting fresh vegetables outweights the cost. Also, gardening is a very rewarding past time. Honestly, you can buy most things in the supermarket cheaper than you can grow them yourself but until you have had frest produce right from the garden, you have never had good produce. the difference is like night and day.

Answer 3

There's a whole world of vegetables out there that are "to tender to ship" and are just not available in the market. The best example of this is almost all tomatoes. Store bought tomatoes are almost always picked green and often gassed to make them red. You just can't match a home-grown taste.
You also find that some veggies, like sweet corn, taste so much better if they are prepared almost immediately after picking.
If cost was just the issue, we'd all have our pantries full of 33 cent cheapo canned green beans.

Answer 4

Most fruits and vegetables aren't worth growing. By the time they are yielding the fruit or vegetable is in season and cheap to buy. However tomatoes, cucumbers, have a large yield from a plant a long season and are fun to grow.

Answer 5

It depends on where you live. The best vegetables I have found to grow in the midwest are tomatoes. Home grown tomatoes are the best, you can even smell the difference! You get a ton and are so easy. I recommend spending the extra couple of dollars and buying a bigger plant, then you get veggies right away and lots of them. Peppers are also easy and fast. if you don't have a lot of room stay away from squashes--zucchini, pumpkins etc, they will take over your garden. I hope this helps...good luck!

Answer 6

If you have a small garden like we do, then you can't really save any money by growing your own vegetables (though perhaps you could with fruit trees that live for years). You have to do it for the pleasure of gardening and hopefully the good taste.

Answer 7

The issue is less about retail, grocery store cost comparisons than it is about storing produce, grown or purchased, in some BULK situation.

If you're "into it" self grown is always better. As a species one of our prime directives should be self sufficiency.

Example: Assume you buy even a single tomato plant, for um $1.98? ( I haven't bought on in awhile) BUT assume it produces even just 1 dozen viable pieces. If you had to purchase them at a market they might cost you twice the plant purchase price? A small amount probably in the thinking of most people.

I think it has to be more a feeling of what it's all about in self production rather than so much about costs.

Think of fruit bearing trees. Certainly a mature one takes years to produce their product, but once an Apple tree, etc. is producing, you might get hundreds of apples in a season.

I live in Florida. I think, even with the destruction of valid groves, OJ in Florida should be FREE, or really inexpensive, but that isn't the case. In a single season My tree might produce more oranges than I'll ever use, but I can share them with others.

Steven Wolf

Answer 8

Probably none. The real reasons I've found in having a garden is that I know what was used, the vegetables are as fresh as you can get and the pleasure in helping something grow. It is good for your soul and your waistline.

Answer 9

Probably none are cost effective based on WalMart's prices and the cost of seeds equipment fertilizer etc.

That said, homegrown taste better are fresher, cleaner and free of unwanted insecticides plus the pride of growing your own is worth something.

Answer 10

Green Peppers...and if you leave them on long enough they become Red. Have you checked the prices lately??? They cost .79 a piece! Red ones $1.00 and more!