Topic: Can you save money! by growing and eating your own?

[amphibian]

No.

If you are trying to account for the cost of your produce the time spent actively tending the crop has to be taken into account. Time spent sitting there watching things grow, or yapping with the gang is leisure time. Time spent cultivating the crop, watering, planting and harvesting is active hobby time but that time is essential to the production and therefore should be costed at at least  minimum wage,  if, and only if, you are trying to calculate the money not spent on food.

If I was operating a business plan.

The cost of my time is not a cost, it does not affect my bank balance, it does not create an outgoing, it is in business terms voluntary unpaid labour. Leisure time sacrificed to my allotment costs me nothing, forget 'cost' of production, all I am interested in is the money not spent, that otherwise would be, that remains in my pocket.

If it costs me £3.50 for a punnet of strawberries in my local supermarket, and my garden grown strawberries cost me only time. Not sacrificing leisure time because it costs me over £5.00/hour will mean I spend the £3.50, but no-one is going to give me the £5.00/hour for the hours not spent on the allotment. So I'm just £3.50 down.

By this valuing your own time malarchy, renovating a house yourself would not represent any saving because you could just pay a worker the £5/hour that you are allowing for your own time.

I am currently taking home about £50 worth of blackberries per week at Supermarket prices but to me they are just blackberries. If somebody offered to pay me if I gathered a large quantity I would have to cost the profit? after taking my time into account and it would be a large loss to me even though the berries hang there free to take. I have never bought blackberries and probably never will. Just an example.

Again, you're talking about profit, not savings from money not spent. I don't grow my produce to sell,  its nominal value means nothing to me. In real terms, to the money I do not spend, my produce is worth what I don't have to spend by virtue of growing it. All this business about cost of time only means anything if I am trying to profit, i am not trying to profit I am trying not to spend.

By your logic it would unworthy to collect and cut firewood if it takes me hours, when I can just buy it at huge cost.

When you cook a meal do you factor in the cost of your time making it, maybe it would be cheaper to get a take away, Clean your house? Takes hours, cheaper to pay someone. Wash the dishes? If it takes even ten minutes, that's a 83p in time, plus hotwater and detergent. Cheaper to eat off paper plates, or just get the take away which saves £5.00 in cooking time, a fortune in shopping time and no need for washing up at all.

I do gardening for a living (partly) and sometimes the job or customers get me wound up. When this happens I pack up early and go to the plot to chill out. To me the allotment is somewhere peaceful to escape to not something to make money out of.

That's fine. I don't garden to profit—increase my incomings—I garden to reduce my outgoings. However, my budget sheet shows I have more surplus cash as a result of gardening, if I stopped gardening my outgoings would go up and my surplus cash go down. It's very simple really.

My time is only money, if I would have been earning otherwise.

Avoiding paying someone else to do a job, is a very basic concept of saving, one that works in scores of applications, from gardening to building, from foraging to making fuel from vegetable oils.

[macmac]

The value of our allotment is priceless!!
I suffered a breakdown 14 years ago ,spent years in the house, got the allotment and slowly slowly crept back to normality.Lovely people who accepted and accept me , a place of calm and tranquility...and veg as well :D
p.s. i'm not quite normal as my posts show ,but as my signiture denotes ..sanity is overrated! :)

[redimp]

I think the time=money arguement reflects how materialistic and money orientated you are.

[macmac]

I think the time=money arguement reflects how materialistic and money orientated you are.

yes!!

[Eristic]

yes!!

No. I don't give a toss how much my allotment costs. It is certain insecure members trying hard to justify continuing with the allotment who are worried about balancing the books. Larger and larger tomes are being written in an effort to prove that their plot is cost effective. These are the people who are money oriented not me. I give away as much as I eat and I eat well but if I was likely to be really short of money for an extended period I would have to work more hours and give up the plot.

Without the plot, most folks here would manage quite well on less than £20 of veg a week and plots take a lot more than an hour or two per week.

Therefore allotments are not cost efficient.

I think some of you are running a bit low on protein. Venison anyone.  8)

[OllieC]

I think the time=money arguement reflects how materialistic and money orientated you are.

I think it reflects how self employed you are...

[Flighty]

I agree wholeheartedly with Macmac that the value of an allotment is priceless to the person it belongs to, and with others that it's not the cost that's important.

As the saying goes we all too often know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

My allotment gets me out in the fresh air, gives me exercise, lets me chat with plot neighbours and the simple pleasure of sowing, growing and eating my own vegetables is inestimable.

[OllieC]

Ah, but the question is not "Do you get value for money", it is "Can you save money...", and the answer is no, you could do something else and be financially better off. I think we're all pretty much of the same opinion - very few of us do it to save money and very few of us care!

[betula]

I do not save money.That is a fact.

It is a great hobby.I love my little bit of ground and would be lost without it. ;D

[Mr Smith]

I think the argument that macmac makes on an allotment  being therapeutic is a good one, a couple of people on our site took their allotments on just because of this value, I look at the fact that out of one packet of sweetcorn seeds if they all germinate and produce I have a few £££££'s worth of sweetcorn for a couple of quid, :)

[Deb P]

Do I save money overall in the year? Probably not.

Do I get incalculable pleasure/relaxation/exercise/ mental health benefits/pure enjoyment from the work involved tending my allotment? Oh yes!

Could I save money...(the original question).....probably, if I wanted to run/cost it like a military operation.....but I don't want to! Nor would it be practicable for me, I'm not a pseudo market gardener, I'm an allotmenteer!

So the answer is....no! But am I bothered? No! ;D

[redimp]

Could we factor in gym fees here? ;D

[ceres]

£950 a year according to the BBC London News today.

[Flighty]

It's interesting that no-one mentions saving money in this article

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/gardening/a-national-obsession-my-allotment-and-me-1769698.html

[tonybloke]

how can you 'price comparison check' on fruit and veg that's literally picked 5 minutes  ago?
 ;)

[saddad]

Why Redclanger... how much does he charge?  ;D

[macmac]

Could we factor in gym fees here? ;D

or a golf club membership and....we usually bring home something edible  :)