Home gardening - how do you rate?
Mother Nature Network continues to be one of my favorite sites. Today their newsletter led me to this graphic describing home gardeners in the U.S. According to their statistics, I fit the mold pretty darn well.
Stumble It!
- College Graduate
- Age 45 or (ahem) older
- Average amount spent per household: $70 (seeds, seedlings, supports, etc.)
- Average return on investment: $530 ($600 dollar return - $70 investment = $530)
- Most common foods grown: tomatoes, beans, summer squash, lettuce, peas, peppers.
If I'm honest, my cost is a bit closer to $100. I invested in starter soil for seeds, a mini-greenhouse, and organic heirloom seedlings, all of which cost a bit more than the average. I believe it will pay off in quality, if not quantity. It's not the $64 tomato, but it's a sizable investment.
Time spent: their average is 5 hours a week. I'll say it varies. Between watering, weeding, and making compost and chasing away the critters, I spent at least that. The time spent is an investment in the garden and its food output. This time is also an investment in my own peace of mind. While I'm weeding and watering, my mind is wandering. I'm thinking and processing all kinds of random thoughts, sometimes working through problems or writing whole blog posts in my head. There's no dollar amount to attach to the mental health benefits of caring for a garden. I call it priceless.
Labels: garden, it's not easy being green, Random Thoughts
Stumble It!
posted @10:48 AM
2 Comments:
College graduate is about the only one I fit--everything else is too old, too expensive, or too little (the return on investment, the size of the garden, the time spent working in it, and the common varieties grown, which is everything).
I'm used to not fitting the standard demographic for anything, though.
Well, I skew a little young here, but this is interesting. Gardening shouldn't be an elite sport! What's up with that???
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