I have a goal in mind for my vegetable garden this year. I have a similar goal every year but this year I think it’s especially important. I want to make our garden into our grocery store. I’m being realistic with this and in no way think I can completely eliminate the grocery store trips but I would really like to reduce what we have to buy. Prices in the stores have gone up considerably for everything from milk to bread and anything I can do to reduce our grocery bill helps our finances!
As I go through the grocery receipts and analyze the foods I can find quite a few items that can be grown completely in the vegetable garden. I recommend that you do the same and go through your receipts and select the most commonly used items to see if it’s something that you could grow at least partially in your garden.
Take spaghetti sauce for instance. A typical marinara uses garlic, onions, tomatoes, and some spices. We use basil and oregano in our sauces mostly. We also enjoy roasted or sauteed red peppers with garlic to add to the sauce. We’ll eat a spaghetti style meal just about every week. We change it up a bit and add sausage or a meat to it every now and then but it may also just be pasta and sauce. A ready made sauce will cost you $2 for a jar at a minimum and to feed a larger family you may actually need two jars.
To make a sauce yourself from ingredients bought at the store would cost you about $4-$6. $2-3 for canned tomatoes, $2 for the pepper, and about a $1 for onion, garlic, and herbs or spices. The garlic and spices usually can be used for several meals since you only need a couple cloves per batch of sauce and a few tablespoons of spices. Every one of these vegetable ingredients are easy to grow in the garden. If you buy the organic products (which I try to do) in the stores you’ll be paying even higher. Of course growing vegetables organically in your garden will actually cost you less!
If I can grow enough of these vegetables to supply us throughout the year either through freezing or canning we can easily save between $4-$6 per week. It doesn’t sound like much right off the bat so let’s multiply it out by 52. We come up with 2 numbers $204 and $312. That is just saving money on making spaghetti sauce. The vegetable garden can do so much more.
We use onions and garlic in our dinners very frequently. It’s a near disaster when I discover the pantry has given me its last onion! That happened last week and I had to improvise. My intended onion vinaigrette ended up becoming an avocado vinaigrette! It was very good by the way – I’ll classify it as a fortunate accident.
Beans are a great vegetable to save for use over the winter. Dried beans can be kept in the pantry and pulled out for use in chili, soups, or other bean dishes. Pretty much anything that you can buy in the stores you can grow at home. All it takes is a little planning and dedication.
Even if you aren’t able to grow a garden you can still buy the produce when it’s in season locally then preserve it for the winter. Farmer’s markets and CSA’s are great places to find local produce.
This year I’m targeting a few areas and setting a few vegetable garden production goals. I plan on increasing our food preservation for nearly everything I grow in the garden from herbs to the vegetables.
How much food preservation do you do from your garden?
My goal last year and continuing this year is to eat fresh veg from the garden every day. I turned into a salad junkie. What most people don't realize is lettuce and greens can give you the most poundage per square ft of space. Some days tho I would have too many tomatoes so I'd have tomato salads; chopped tomatoes with marinated olives and mozzarella or feta. I'm actually trying to can and preserve LESS and eat more fresh right from the garden in it's season
I've managed to get going to the grocery store down to a bare minimum of once or maybe twice a month. We grow what we can. Preserve what we can. Mostly though, we eat in season. We're fortunate that our climate is mild, so we can usually grow something year around. Most of what we can't grow ourselves, or run out of, we source from local farmer's markets, or farms whenever possible. Grains and flour of course are the exception. I actually get angry walking around the grocery store. $3 for canned goods, $5 for bread, $4 for milk, and little of the grocery store food is great quality. Nothing like home grown/made. Most of what I'm buying now is milk, but in a month, our first goat will be in milk once she kids, and maybe I can then cut those last one or two trips to the store a month out completely! I think you'll be surprised how much you can produce yourself, with careful planning. Good luck!
I've gotten into canning, and I think that's a great way to save money. I've been accumulating jars, and I'm planning on doing tomatoes, peach & strawberry jams, and pickled onions this year. I'd like to do diced tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and bloody mary mix with my tomatoes.
I doubt I'll be able to grow enough, but that's what farmers markets are for!!