I’ve never had my own garden before. This year, I’m hoping I can save money in my backyard
There’s a photo of a 3-year-old version of me that proves I can garden. Sort of. In it, I’m standing next to a field of tall corn stalks, and I’m beaming while holding a paper bag that contains my first harvest of green beans. (And strangely, I’m also wearing mittens that I remember I had just gotten as a present and didn’t want to take off.)
Since then, I’ve picked plenty of vegetables … from gardens my parents and grandparents had. I have never grown my own garden.
But I have seen other people garden. All my life, my parents had a large, backyard garden, where they planted rows and rows of tomatoes that we canned for year-round use. We had zucchini that grew such long, enormous green squash that both our neighbors and I got sick of zucchini bread.
My grandparents’ garden on a small portion of their 40 acres in rural Michigan was even bigger. They had corn that grew taller than I was, beets and green beans, watermelons and raspberries.
Meanwhile, every houseplant I have ever had — minus one! — has died an agonizing, brown-leaf death.
I do not have the green thumb that seems to run in my family. Still, this year, spurred by a desire to see if I could actually keep something alive for a full year, and the skyrocketing number I see on my receipt every time I go to the grocery store, I am trying container gardening.
I want to see if I can grow my own food for less money.
Emboldened by advice from Stacy Hodes at the Extension Master Gardener Volunteers in Mecklenburg County, I am starting small with vegetables that are recommended to grow in Charlotte in July.
- I bought five small, fabric containers for about $11.
- I bought four bags of container soil for a total of $30.
- One packet of green bean seeds for $1.50.
- Four tomato transplants for $20.
- Two cucumber transplants for $10.
- And a basil plant for $4.
In total, I’ve spent $76.50 … and don’t have a single vegetable to show for it, yet.
There are cheaper ways to do it, of course. I could have cleared away a portion of the backyard at the house we rent and mixed in some compost. I could have taken one of those bags of soil and just cut a hole in it to plant transplants directly into that, forgoing the $11 containers.
And I could have started all this before July, using all seeds rather than transplants and had a much smaller bottom line.
But so far, I have watered it daily, and nothing has died (yet).
Maybe I’m imagining it, but when I used some basil in a salad dressing I made last night, it seemed more flavorful than ever.
And one of my tomato transplants already has two tiny, green orbs on it. I am eager to watch them grow into something red and juicy.
This is the first time in my life that I have ever tried to plant my own garden, and I am hopeful that this is the start of something good.
This story was originally published July 20, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
