Food-growing garden can make healthy dent in grocery bill

In the summer, Mawusi doesn't buy any vegetables or salad greens -- she picks them from her garden. She also enjoys homegrown strawberries and blueberries.

Fresh garden herbs like basil, sage and rosemary flavor her food, and lemon balm makes refreshing tea. The Eastside woman freezes green beans and green peppers for cooking later in the year.

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"We definitely save on our grocery bill in the summer months," said Mawusi. Her garden filled up her whole backyard in the Martindale-Brightwood area, but this year she has cleared and is using a vacant lot, made available through Indianapolis' Urban Garden Program, at 2415 N. Rural St.

With ever-rising food prices, often for fresh fruits and vegetables, getting down and dirty with your own food garden is becoming attractive to more and more people.

You can certainly save money by gardening, but it's not a given. Gardening experts say you must be smart about it and forgo fancy, expensive supplies -- if your goal is savings.

Mawusi gardens, first of all, to feed herself, her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, and her mother, Janie Wells, who taught her to garden before Mawusi went to graduate school at Loyola University in Chicago.

But she's also created space in her Living Well Urban Farm for her Eastside neighbors, including six adults and eight children, to garden. All are first-time gardeners, looking for ways to cut costs and get fresh produce in an inner-city "food desert."

Saving money on food is the second-most common reason U.S. households garden, according to a 2009 study by the National Gardening Association. Only enjoying better-tasting food -- cited by 58 percent -- was a more prevalent reason.

"If people have the goal in mind to save money through gardening, it's possible," said Steve Mayer, educator-horticulturist with Purdue Extension-Marion County.

The potential savings depends a lot on the supplies purchased, such as a $200 tiller, gardening tools and wood borders for raised beds, and the number and size of transplants, he said.

According to the nonprofit National Gardening Association, a well-maintained garden can produce a half-pound of fresh vegetables for every square foot of garden space. At the average in-season market prices, that produce is worth $2 per pound.

With an average U.S. food garden size of 600 square feet, that would mean an estimated $600 return. The association says the average gardener invests $70 per season for topsoil, seeds and supplies, so the net return is $530.

Mayer said the extension's 700-square-foot demonstration garden last year produced 558 pounds of food, making the harvest worth more than $1,100, without subtracting costs.

"That's a dent in your food bill," he said.

Mawusi believes people can absolutely save money, but how much depends on what they normally buy and how they grow their produce.

But what's more important, she said, is "What you're getting out of the ground is going to be a much more valuable product."