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Frugal Gardening – growing ‘expensive’ vegetables

by sheri
Are you still deciding what to grow this coming season? Mid-April may be a bit late to finalize what edibles you’ll be growing in your garden this season, but then again, only seasoned and well-organized gardeners tend to be on the ball on this task. For the rest of us, including myself I must admit, we often only start to think about our vegetable gardens once the ground starts to thaw. So, if you’re still wondering what to plant, I’d like to make what might seem to be a odd suggestion: plant the most expensive vegetables you can. By expensive, I don’t mean how much the seeds or plant starts costs, but how expensive the fully grown vegetable is to buy at the grocery store. Why, I have long wondered, spend valuable garden space and gardening effort, to grow vegetables and herbs that grow in such abundance when they are at their very cheapest at market at the same time they ripen in our own gardens. This would include the likes of tomatoes, zucchinis, and sweet corn – vegetables your garden friends are surely going to try to pawn off on you as they too have far more than they can consume. Why not instead plant items whose price never seems to drop much, items your neighbors rarely have extras of, like basil, fennel, and Brussels sprouts. So, while I’m the first to admit that market price is not (nor should ever be) the only reason to exclude a vegetable or herb from your garden – it does merit serious consideration. And yes, alongside this bit of advise, I still stick with my usual mantra – grow only what you truly love to eat – strive always to make the garden your own.

(And of course, if you do happen to like and plant a vegetable and find yourself with more than you need, you can always take this alternative approach.)