What's a Home Garden Worth?

Roger Dorion, creator of the EatTheView campaign and Kitchen Gardeners International, thought this was a good question, and a good time to ask it. He and his wife decided to weigh and log all the produce coming out of their 1/25 of an acre home garden, and compare the prices to those from the grocery store, farmers market, and Whole Foods produce.

In six months time, they harvested 834 pounds of organic food that was valued at $2196.50, $2431.15, and $2548.93, respectively. You can see their raw data here. They also calculated their out-of-pocket expenses for seeds, supplies, and water. Their $282 expenses generated a total value of $2431, which means their return on investment was 862% ! Using a calculation like this of $2400 per 1/25 of an acre, you can see that an acre could gross $60,000, or roughly $1.50 per square foot.

You can't beat that!...or can you? Mr. Dorion gardens in Maine. I think it would be interesting to see how well a garden in our longer growing season would compare. I would think our numbers might even be higher! I'm inclined to try this myself...anyone else game?

You can read the entire article here.