this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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I'd disagree, my grandparents were very very poor, but they grew up in farming country and had an acre. They wouldn't be able to have had a garden if it meant putting in more money than buying.
Even with my own gardening expirence I've put a lot of money in personally for longevity and ability to move my garden in the future, but I 100% could have tilled up soil and planted some tomatoes for very cheap.
Sounds like they already had something that dramatically changes the cost/benefit analysis, compared to someone considering gardening from scratch.
Someone with a few raised beds isn't going to be able to compete with the economies of scale of a full acre of farmland.
I mean they didn't farm the whole acre, their garden plot was maybe 10 x 10 ft.
More than I can do in my town home, but not crazy.
Also economies of scale is a poor argument when it comes to farming. Prices on many crops is fixed by the Government. So yes they can produce food much cheaper, but they fix the price to be higher. If it wasn't for the government corn at our current rate of production would be nearly free, but it's artificially inflated.
I wanted to come back and address a few things in an edit. It seems like you're trying to imply they weren't poor and I'd like to address a few things. Firstly in the deep south, especially 50 years ago when they got the property, land was cheap and available. Many people owned some land and not much else. Hence the concept of "land rich" "cash poor". Plus selling your home is not a smart way to pay the bills. Secondly, they got the land after my great grandparents died the land was generational anyway. Thirdly, sure they had a house, but that didn't stop them from having to pick and choose between food and medicine. That didn't change the fact that my grandfather had no shoes for a period. I bought him a pair when I found out, but that's how he was. He'd rather do without than ask for help.
To adress the second part of your attempted "gotcha" yes having space to garden is a prerequisite to gardening, then uh yeah it is. The other option is leasing some land for a small garden, and yeah of course that's going to be expensive
I'm saying that whatever it was your grandparents had 50 years ago, the costs (including opportunity costs) are totally different.
I can work an hour at McDonald's, for $18, and earn enough to buy 10 pounds of tomatoes at $1.80/lb. Growing 10 pounds of tomatoes is gonna take me a lot more than an hour of work, even if the land is free. The tradeoffs for me in this moment are going to be different from what your grandparents faced in the 70's.
Either way, whether it's worth the effort to drive for Uber depends on whether you already own a car. Whether you can publish a cheap indie game on the app store or steam depends on whether you already own a laptop. And whether it's cost effective to grow your own food depends on whether you have access to land, sun, soil, and water.
For small scale food gardening it absolutely matters. Picking berries, planting seedlings, spreading compost, getting rid of pests (either through pesticides or things like ladybugs), productivity per worker hour depends a lot on the scale. It's really, really hard to be cost competitive with the grocery store in just pure worker hours, even if your own time is worth less than $5/hour.
I mean they gardened 10 years ago and I garden now. It's not that expensive.
I never said this was supposed to replace your full time job. And you can count labor costs per hour if you want but it doesn't count for literally every other task I have to do to continue living other than my actual job. Like I don't do an hour analysis breakdown of cooking a good meal from home. If I calculated cook time, cleaning, prep it would work out bad too. Yet it's still financially cheaper to eat at home. Because my domestic labor isn't compensated.
If i have $10 I can grow you more than $10 worth of grocery store tomatoes. If I pretend it's a job it'll be less per hour of course, but if I don't have another way to monetize that time it's a net gain. Honestly thinking of every facet of living life in terms of hourly wages is fucking depressing.
My grandparents also had a garden plot of food plants, and my parents too. It didn't take much money or work.