This post is part of a 30 days series called the 30 steps program to financial independence. You can check the list of other posts here.
On the same line as performing maintenance on your vehicle, growing a garden is pretty easy, can save you money, help you eat healthier and be a super cheap hobby.
So where to start? I’m not really experienced with gardening, I have mainly obeyed directives from friends and family when helping them out with their gardens.
I would love to have a small patch of land when I buy my house, to grow vegetables. I would start with a mix of the basics I eat the most, like potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, garlic, onions and carrots, and then add the vegetables that are quite expensive to buy, like asparagus, leek and the like. I often skip the purchase because of the price and really would enjoy having a big batch of it.
I would also look for ways to prepare big quantities, like preserving and freezing them to eat some for the rest of the year. In the countryside where my grandparents live, I remember times when we would eat the same vegetables over and over again at harvest time, it gets boring!
So with a deep freezer, and cans of tomato sauce and pickled vegetables, I would have a diverse diet all year. My costs to run a garden would pretty much be the same as buying from the supermarket a lower quality produce. And on the plus side, I wouldn’t suffer the price ups and down when there is a shortage of a specific vegetable.
My garden is still at the dream stage, but I think it is a very real project that I will start soon, on my way to financial independence.
I’d focus on the expensive veg first, you get a better return on your investment of effort. Would you believe you can have so much fresh sweetcorn you can’t face it anymore! In the UK asparagus and leeks are easy – asparagus is a perennial so it keeps on giving though is a bear to keep weeded because you don’t clear the ground annually. Sweet peppers are also easy to grow but dear.
In Guatemala you can probably grow everything five times as fast as in Europe 😉
I heard some trees grow as fast as 8 times faster here, because of some incredible soil on top of the spring like climate all year. Unfortunately where I live is a more humid and hot part and torrential rains wash the soil, then comes the burning sun… apart from the luxurious jungle, not much grows. My flowers are all dead, lemon and avocados look like they are going to make it, but in how many years, a friend was growing tomatoes but stopped because of the effort it was to keep them alive when they are 20p a kilo at the market… garlic looked promising but rotted.. I was so pumped up with the garden but now it is stalled, at least until the works on the house are done, I can’t do it all at once.