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Sure, but I don't have to pay for the food they produce, just some seeds. Seeds are way cheaper than whatever is available from the local grocery.
It might yield a relatively small amount but I'm not feeding a city. I only need enough for me and my family.
If I can save a couple hundred bucks over the year, not buying produce at the shop, I'll fucking do it.
The economy isn't doing me any favors.
There are associated costs to even small homegrown crops. Unless you're planting them randomly in the wilderness and hoping for the best.
It depends on what and how much you grow in your garden. Growing up and even when our kids were young and at home, we grew a large garden to save money. Growing things that store well, like potatoes, squash, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and other root crops will save you money because they require no very little to no extra processing to store.
Tomatoes, while VERY tasty straight off the vine, often get highly processed into sauces and jarred to preserve. That is time consuming and expensive. But, if you have enough freezer space, you can freeze tomatoes and peppers very easily. But you need enough freezer space for them. Growing string beans are also fairly efficient crops that require little processing to freeze. But, there is still some extra work to be done with them. Sweet Corn take a lot of room to grow enough to make it worth your while preserve.
But best of all is to garden because you want to and you enjoy it. I no longer grow a large garden - me and Grandma don't need much anymore, but I still grow tomatoes and peppers, turnips, green onions, and amaranth. Amaranth is often used as a background plant in flower gardens, but the whole plant is edible. From the roots to leaves to the seeds. It has a wonderful nutty flavor and is stupidly easy to grow.
Whoa, Black Betty, amaranth!
Agreed, my wife and I had that conversation recently, as it happens. Though, for some things, there are other benefits. Herbs is the best example, even the fresh, packaged herbs that you can buy at a grocery will be noticeably not-as-good as something that you picked fresh in the backyard 2 minutes ago. Dill, basil, thyme, mint, what have you. I've found the same to be true of things like bell peppers and jalapenos.
If my home was on several acres of fertile land and I had modern machinery to cultivate it, I could reach pretty good production levels. But then I'd have way too much that would simply go to waste. If I had a small garden just big enough to sustain my needs, I would have no waste and not need as much land or resources to cultivate it.
The only thing I grew at home (in a pot, because dogs) was chili, because it's more scarce in stores than stuff like onions. Some do fear that the store ones are all "GMO" secretly, or even manufactured from some petroleum products, like my stepmother, who once learned that things like milk powder, egg powder, and meat powder exists, but she thought they all weren't made of the real things, because she couldn't believe the Earth could feed this many people, and the rich hoard all the good stuff for themselves.
This only true in places that aren't environmentally supportive of agriculture. My family never had to buy vegetables. Granted we had about 2 acres of farmable land. We didn't sell produce, we harvested and froze until we needed it
Edit: Initial start up is definitely not as cost effective as buying from the grocery, but once you're able to harvest your own seeds, it's not that expensive to sustain your production
Ironically Jerusalem artichokes