Crop Selection – In order to maximize the value you get from your gardening you need to make wise decisions on what you want to grow. You may want to try growing many crops for the experience and that’s a fine ambition. However growing crops that are best suited for your climate, best suited for the space and type of gardening you do and crops that cost enough at the grocery store that your growing them creates a good cost to price relationship will help you approach the breakeven point more than a variety. For example, potatoes are a great crop to grow for the wonder of watching them grow. However they are mass grown so cheaply that the disparity between what it cost you to grow them and the much cheaper cost at the grocery store is far larger than is say the disparity between tomatoes you grow and tomatoes at the grocery store. Additionally, while most home grown produce tastes far better than the supermarket offering, there isn’t usually a huge difference in the taste of the far cheaper supermarket potatoes and the home garden variety.

When choosing your crops, you will also need to consider how much space they need to reach optimum yield. Watermelons are an excellent and enjoyable home crop but they require a lot of space for vines to grow and a specialized soil. It is very likely that if you are an apartment resident that a watermelon is far more expensive to grow than to buy at the supermarket. Now some vegetables that have long running vines are still suitable for a small space if they can be staked or trellised to run upwards. Beans are an excellent example.  

Crops that have a long growing season may also not suit your needs, especially if you live in a climate that such crops mean only one harvest or if you live in a warmer climate where you could get in two or three plantings of the same crop in the longer growing season as opposed to one crop of the crop that requires a long growing season.

Crops that you like to eat are automatically good choices over crops that look cool but likely will not be eaten. However if you develop relationships with other gardeners in your area that can’t grow but do like to eat a crop you like growing but don’t like eating and they are willing to swap something you do like but didn’t grow for that crop then it becomes far more feasible.

Novelty crops are a great joy to gardeners that can afford them. Growing mirlitons in Minnesota is a fantastic challenge and a great conversation piece, However it will not be a good choice for closing n on the breakeven point as it requires a long, warm, wet growing season that is simply not likely to occur in Minnesota without creating a greenhouse. Novelty crops are like very strong spices, best kept to a minimum.

CROP SELECTION

It’s impossible to state what crops you should grow in your home garden. There are too many variables including your personal preference. It is possible to discuss some crop selection guidelines that might help you get closer to the Breakeven gardening point. Naturally your enjoyment of gardening is going to trump selecting crops that are best for increasing your yield and the value of your crop. However the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You may decide that in some cases you want to compromise your desire for a certain crop in order to allow you to make your garden closer to breakeven and perhaps grow more or eat more or reduce your budget more.

Your crop selection might first off be chosen from crops that can be best grown in your climate, in your garden type and in your available square footage. Some of the best yielding crops are quite feasible in most every USDA Hardiness Zone. Included among those are Tomatoes, Leaf Lettuce, Cucumbers, Peppers, Beans, Radishes, beets, peas and squash. These favorites have been adapted to local climates by extensive breeding to create local varieties and hybrids of wide spread varieties special made for your climate. Most of these also have varieties that are good for in ground tilled gardens, no till on ground gardens, raised bed gardens and container gardens. All of these crops are also fairly high value crops in the supermarket so success in growing them can help you get closer to your breakeven gardening point. Of course there are numerous other crops that may be fantastic for helping you meet your breakeven point but aren’t optimal everywhere, in every type of garden and in every space constraint. For example the Mirliton aka chayote is a gourd that is very popular in Louisiana and south Florida and rather expensive in grocery stores when it can in fact be found. It is impractical to grow in any USDA Hardiness Zone outside of Zones 9 and 10 but quite practical in small backyard environments where a climbing, vertical vegetable with generous yield is needed. The watermelon is a popular and pretty much suitable for most USDA Hardiness Zone but it is impractical if one does not have a larger garden area where the vines can run and produce.

You may want to consult a list that factors in how much yielded produce can be expected per square foot and then pick the ones that are practical for your climate and your garden type and your square footage. Then from the list that factors in all those factors you may want to consider which crops you might want to eat or which you think you might be able to trade for something else or even sell. Then you may wish to do some rough calculations as to the supermarket value of average yield on each of them and pick those that have the highest value