Is growing your own Vegetables really economically viable? A good Question! About 3 years ago, I had the idea of transforming a large section of my garden into a vegetable growing plots of land. Now this might seem like a simple task, but almost all of our garden was originally covered with "York Stone" paving slabs. They were extremely hard to get up, and revealed even harder to remove old sand and cement underneath the slabs.
My Wife and I did this exhausting project ourselves, and finally finished it after a few weeks. We then filled a very large metal skip that we hired. Yes, it would of been easier to pay someone to do it, but that would of cost a huge amount of money that we simply did not have at the time.
Above Photo Taken by me ("Oil Paint" filtered in my PhotoPea Graphics Software).
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Remember, the whole point of this project was mostly to save money on buying food. Thinking back that was very ambitious, and a little over optimistic to be honest.
We went out to our local "Garden Center" and initially bought some special pots, specifically made for growing Strawberries with huge holes in the sides. The idea being that would make the Strawberries easier to harvest. We bought other small vegetables as tiny plants and seed packets.
Then we set to work, planting all our seeds and saplings anywhere that we could find some empty space. That first year we were rewarded with very little produce, and started to wonder if the "Start Up" cost was really economically viable. Also bearing in mind the sheer hard work of the constant daily watering and weeding that we both had to do.
Sadly, later that year we had Winter snow and the Strawberry Pots began to crack with the extreme cold weather. Just something else that we had never considered could happen. The following year, we got rid of the clay pots and bought square plastic ones instead. This worked much better. However, as the fruit began to ripen, slugs and other insects began eating the fruit ~ much to our dismay.
We bought "slug pellets" and other chemicals, to get rid of these pests (again costing us more money) but nothing seemed to destroy them for very long. The most effective method was to simply go out late at night with a torch and sprinkle some salt over them. However, looking at dead slugs slowly dissolving is rather disgusting.
I have now written far more than I originally intended, so I hope that you are still reading my story 🤣
So my conclusion is this: Don't expect that growing Vegetables will save you any money, the only advantage that we discovered is that the food really does taste better 😎 Just NOT Economically effective!(IMO).
Many Thanks for your kind attention, see you again soon... 🙋♂️ Andy