How much per month do you save growing your own food (or making

I probably save a small amount of money from growing food, but I don't grow food to save money I grow food because home grown food taste fucking great

in terms of money you probably get the biggest bang for your buck with fruit/nut trees, but that is a huge investment in time (years)

>>946462
Does paying for grocerys with money I make from growing and selling marijuana count?
Last year I cleared 70k. Legally.

>>946473
The nut and berry racket is insane. If you want to grow to save/make money thats a good way to do it. Also avocados if you have the climate for it. They will probably go up a bit in price soon, but that just means more money for Americans with avacodos.

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>>946474

>>946462
Depends on what you like to eat. Rice and potatoes are typically more expensive to grow than they are to buy, but turnips, rhubarb and raspberries will save you a small fortune compared to supermarket mark-ups. I grow mostly berries and tomatoes, because not only do they both save me a ton of money, they taste better vine-ripened rather than store-bought. Fruit just doesn't transport well when fully ripe.

>>946473
>home grown food taste fucking great
This.

>>946462
I probably save an average of £100 per month.

Eggs, poultry, veg, wood burner, wind turbine, solar panels, own water supply

>>946474
>>946499

Until President Trump moves marijuana from Schedule A (which he can do with the stroke of a pen at any time), pot remains illegal under federal law in all 50 states. Even those that have "legalized" it.

Obama could have done it, too, but for all his supposed pot-friendliness, his DEA was raiding people who'd even acquired valid business licenses and were operating according to state law, and they were doing it right up to the end.

So talking about it here is a no-no. Once fully legalized, the price will drop considerably and you won't be making nearly as much. The only way anybody will make a killing on legalized pot will be if it's legal but heavily regulated, in which case a few big megacorps with big lobbying staffs will dominate the market and small growers like you will be pushed out of business or back underground. It's just too easy to grow, a classic case of perfect competition driving profits to zero.

>>946462

My experience so far is that you homegrow food because it's fun and because quality goes up, not because you'll actually save any money once your own costs are factored in.

For some people in some areas growing certain things, sure you'll probably save. Especially if the alternative for you is top shelf produce from a luxury retailer like Whole Foods.

IMO it's still worth doing. Not every decision in life is an economics problem.

I will say that solar setups almost never save you any money, unless you factor in federal subsidies. And often not even then.

On the backyard aquaponics forum, someone recently asked the same thing and the consensus was that nobody is saving any money, that it's just fun and emotionally satisfying.

>>946552
>potatoes

Pretty sure potatoes are one of the most easiest crops to grow.

I'm also pretty sure tomatoes are cheap too. I'd guess harder to grow than potatoes.

>>946462
see
>>944669

>How much per month do you save growing your own food (or making your own fuel/energy)?

It depends on how much you eat and energy you use and how much you grow and make energy.

margins are pretty small unless you want it to be a 24/7 thing, buying nutrients for your soil and things to balance the ph and irrigation etc.

you can go 100% composting your own stuff and working the soil, picking pests one by one and spending on pesticides that won't rob your kids of some chromosomes. trimming plants etc.

fruit trees is the way to go if you have the space, then be prepared to have 100lbs of whatever you are growing all going bad in about a month after you can pick it.
gardening is a shore but a rewarding one if you ate dedicated and have the time.

>>946552
>potatoes
Nigger what?
>buy 50# bag for like $20
>plant
>potatoes for ages

>>948377
>>946583
>>946552
don't potatoes take an inordinately long time to grow? like onions and garlic, it's easy, but with bullshit multiple year grow cycles

>>948378
Not at all? 2.5 months.

>>948350
>be prepared to have 100lbs of whatever you are growing all going bad in about a month after you can pick it.
I always assumed that if you were growing your own food you were also canning it.

You can get the stuff for cheap at the store because a lot of the process is subsidized. There's no way food refined by scientists, marketed by suits, planted and harvested by expensive machinery, covered with various chemicals to improve appearance and resistance, trucked hundreds of miles in a refrigerated container and then stored at the grocery store for days/weeks that I have to drive 5 miles to is a more efficient process than me sticking some seeds in the dirt, doing some minor upkeep and eating what comes up when it's ripe.

>>948384
What do you do with things like potatoes? Obv. extremely hard to can 10 pounds of taters. Root cellar?

>>948378
ONLY IF THE CLIMATE AND SOIL permits it also proper setup aka allowing using seeds/germination processes to prevent cloning issues. Potatoes have to be grown/processes in the proper temps and growing periods. Also allow most long term growth/germinations to take more than 1 fucking year to be useful for over a decade. potatoes are decent in that they are BUILT to weather years in storage. Look up Root Celllars and such. Canning and such. Then look at all that you eat and brew. Now prepare for the bake/potato/bloom/fluff/can/process/marinate/long term good booze fun!!! Almost anything you can can you can brew if you fuck it up and that can further be brewed refined/steeped/reduced into something useful to cook/clean/marinate/preserve/burn during the winter/monsoon.... hehehehehehehmawuahahahahaahahhawhahahahahhmahjahwhahhhahahah!!!!!!

>>946462
When it comes to food, I can't say about the price but it sure is convenient. Having your own source of firewood can save you a lot of money, though.

>>948384
>>948417
It's really not hard to keep food from going bad; in my family, we make it last through the winter. When it comes to potatoes, as long as you keep them covered and lifted from the ground in a warmer area (meaning cold, not freezing; a shed or a garage for example) they will make it to spring. They'll be sprouting out their "tentacles" but they'll still be edible. And we store carrots (and you could do it with other food too) in sawdust.
As it was starting to get colder (october/november), we picked all the green tomatoes and kept them in the house, by a window so they had sunlight. In a month or so, about half had to be trashed but the other half turned red. Garlic and onions have lasted in the garage, too.

>>946552
raspberries and blackberries are the best crop for homegrown. plant along fence line, itll keep people from clibing over cus thorns. they give delicious tiny fruits, and best part is they multiply. just mow down the little upshoots where you dont want em, and make a little hedge of tasty treats that keep you safe

>>946462
Depends on location, Up here in rural new hampshire I save some money from growing my own hot and exotic peppers as they are hard to come by up here and expensive when you do find them.

>>948378
No. Potatoes grow to maturity within a single season. If you plan you gardening correctly you can have early crops and late crops of different cultivars of potatoes. Some cultivars allow two rotations in a single season.

>>948578
You grow up on a farm?

My family grows Kale, Swiss Chard, Cucumbers, and Cherry Tomatoes in a small 12' x 12' plot.

A small bunch of kale or chard at the grocery store goes for $4 or more. We get at least 3-4 bunches of each plant each week and it is more tasty and fresh than the crap that has been sitting on a shelf for days. Seriously, fordhook giant swiss chard produces leaves that are up to 2 feet long from the base of the stem to the tip of the leaf.

Good cherry tomatoes can sell for quite a bit (9 leafbucks at Costco in Ontario for a small container), and we get several good harvests of freshly ripened tomatoes a week. They taste way better than the store bought ones and it only costs $3 for the seed packet.

Cucumbers are not super expensive, but at $2.50 each it does add up, especially if you use them as much as my family does (dips, salads, veggie juice).

More than anything else though, it is about the freshness and flavour of garden-grown veggies.

>>946580
>solar never saves a user money
>solar

Of ALL the fucking resources you can consistently harvest/harness from home, you chose the single easiest and most consistent fuel source

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Kind of related
Found this growing in my garden. Is this a dandelion? It just started raining so I took a leaf and a flower with me inside. Couldn't snap a picture of whole plant. The flower was growing from the center though like it should and the leafs look the same. If so I wanna eat it and maybe grow my own dandelion patch

>>948663
Looks like it. Apparently they make good salad greens.

>>948669
There is about 5 of them. I've had them before but I've never harvested them. Apparently the roots are good too, I've heard they taste almost like carrots in a way

>>948663
I don't see a reason, just gather it from a nearby field. Dandelions grow like crazy.

>>948677
I want to have a constant supply of dandelions. They don't grow by me that often but the rain storms have brought them back

>>948682
If you spray your lawn or use pest asides you don't want to be eating them.
Most wild dandelions taste very bitter and not like carrots at all, they are eatible though.
The reason why they taste bitter is because they are left in the ground too long and they turn old. The dandelion greens you can buy in the store are harvested young.
You don't really want to go about eating the yellow part because that is bitter either young or old, just the greens and stem ( the stem is somtimes bitter too).
Hopfuly I helped with your questions : )

>>948699
I forgot to include the part about the roots, they are so thin it is hard to get them out of the ground without them breaking. There is also not much root. You are better off just getting more greens in the time it would take to gather the roots
I don't eat my wild dandelions often because of the bitter taste, but when i tried them the roots tasted like a mild parsnip

>>948707
I don't spray my lawn because I grow some citrus fruits near by and don't want to taint them. The dandelions I found are all pretty new, within a week old because I don't remember seeing I them while mowing last Saturday

I think whoever told me about the roots being like carrots meant the shape because I pulled one up and it's a quite long tap root . I'm collecting the seeds so I can plant them when the weather calms down

Thanks for your help, I made a tea out of some greens and the flower and it's actually pretty good.

>>948663
You gotta get them young because they turn bitter as they age.

>>948663
Yes, and they are delicious is you like salad greens, pot greens, fried blossoms, or dandelion wine.

>>948729
This. Most wild greens are like that but some more than others. For salad the older ones are just used more sparingly in the salad to add variety.

>>948673
The roots can be ground up and used as a coffee substitute. If you collect the seeds when the flowers go to seed you can get more than you will ever need in just a few minutes of picking.

>>946488
In other words, buy now before the price hike and resell them next year!

>>948663
Yeah, that's definitely dandelion, it's pretty easy to identify, the name comes from 'dent de lion' meaning 'lion's teeth', referring to the shape of the leaves. You can grow it, but your neighbors will hate you if they find out, because the bitches spread so easily. Otherwise, they're probably the most nutrient dense plant there is, bitter though. Keep in mind that you can't grow dandelions by themselves, they need to be planted in a grass plot. And don't pick them from anywhere that may use weed killer.

>>948814
cont.
You're also going to need a pretty sandy soil, because they like good drainage, but that also makes it easier to harvest the roots. Good luck!

>>948663
you can make coffee from their roots, no caffeine benefits but it tastes better than pee apparently.

>>948814
If you gather seeds from a place that has use weed killer in the past can you eat the plants you grow from the seeds or do you need to wait for another generation?

>>948827
I'm not certain, but I think you'd be okay. That said, you can order dandelion seeds online that are going to taste better than the yard-variety you already have. Dandelions are actually a common food in some places like France, where they're grown on purpose as a salad green.

http://commonsensehome.com/dandelion-wine-recipe/