Garden Yield Estimator
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Garden Cost and Savings Estimator
Compare what a garden costs to run against the groceries it replaces, including setup amortisation, inputs and the value of your own hours.
Garden Cost and Savings Estimator
Chlorova · updated for 2026
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Yield per square foot figures are the ranges extension and intensive growing guides quote for a competently run garden of mixed vegetables, and a first attempt usually lands below them. Grocery comparison uses the price of the crops you actually grow, which swings wildly between salad leaves and storage onions, so enter a weighted figure rather than a favourite. Nothing here prices quality, pesticide free growing, seed saving, pollinators, exercise or the value of a place for children to stand, all of which are the reason most gardens pay for themselves in the ways that do not appear on a line.
The question every gardener eventually asks out loud is whether the whole enterprise is saving money, and the honest answer depends on which costs you count. Frames, soil and fencing are spent once and should be spread over the years they serve, while seed, water and amendments come due every spring. This estimator puts the running cost against the groceries a harvest genuinely replaces, then shows what happens when you also pay yourself for the hours, which is where most gardens stop looking profitable.
Testing Whether a Garden Pays
- Choose the style, which sets cost and yield.
- Enter the growing area you will actually plant.
- Use a weighted store price for your crops.
- Add yearly seed, water and amendment spend.
- Give the years the setup will physically last.
- Estimate the hours you put in each week.
- Set the weeks of your real growing season.
- Enter an honest value for your own hour.
- Read cash saved before the labor line.
- Compare your cost per lb with the store.
- Re run it with a bigger or smaller area.
- Try a second style to compare the returns.
Amortised Setup, Replaced Groceries and Unpaid Hours
Setup cost is area times the establishment figure for that style, and it is divided by the years the work lasts, so two hundred feet of raised bed at a dollar twenty a foot becomes 240 dollars, or 48 a year over five. Add the yearly inputs and you have the running cost that a harvest has to beat.
Harvest is area times the seasonal yield per square foot, and its value is that weight at the store price you entered, which is the groceries genuinely not bought. The interesting line is the last one: hours across the season at your own hourly value. A garden that saves six hundred dollars in cash can still be a job that pays you eighteen dollars an hour for skilled, seasonal, outdoor work, and that framing changes what the numbers mean.
Worked Example: Two Hundred Square Feet of Raised Beds
- Choose raised beds at 1.20 dollars per sq ft.
- Two hundred sq ft costs 240 to establish once.
- Spread over five years that is 48 dollars yearly.
- Add 150 dollars of inputs to reach 198 spent.
- Yield at 1.2 lb per sq ft gives 240 lb picked.
- At 3.50 dollars a lb that replaces 840 worth.
- Cash saved in the season is 642 dollars.
- Your own cost per lb grown is 0.83 dollars.
- That is a 324 percent return on yearly spend.
- Eighty hours at 18 dollars values labor 1,440.
- After paying yourself the figure is minus 798.
- Both lines are true, and you choose which to keep.
Establishment Cost and Seasonal Yield
What each style costs to get going and the mixed vegetable weight a competently run plot of it produces in a season, per square foot of growing area.
| Style | Setup USD per sq ft | Yield lb per sq ft | Lasts years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rows | 0.60 | 0.70 | 3 |
| Raised beds | 1.20 | 1.20 | 5 |
| Square foot boxes | 1.60 | 1.60 | 5 |
| Herbs and flowers | 1.00 | 0.40 | 6 |
| Fruit and berries | 2.50 | 0.60 | 12 |
| Homestead intensive | 2.00 | 1.80 | 10 |
Key Terms
- Amortisation
- Spreading a one time setup cost over the years it keeps serving the garden.
- Running cost
- The money spent every year to keep the plot productive and planted.
- Imputed labor
- Your own hours priced at a wage, as though someone paid did them.
- Replaced groceries
- The store value of food you grew instead of buying.
- Return on spend
- Yearly net saving shown as a percentage of yearly cost.
- Weighted price
- One average store price standing in for the mix of crops you grow.
How the Arithmetic Actually Behaves
- The crops that save money are the expensive per pound ones: salad leaves, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers and cut flowers, while a bed of storage potatoes competes badly with a bag from any supermarket.
- A garden rarely pays back in year one, because establishment cost lands before any harvest, which is why the amortisation line matters more than the total spend on a sheet.
- Yield per square foot is the number that separates a hobby plot from a serious one, and most overstated savings figures quietly assume a second or third succession that nobody actually replants.
- Counting your own hours at a wage turns every garden into an expensive vegetable, which is a fair conclusion only if the alternative was buying the same food and doing nothing else with the afternoon.
- Perennial plantings look terrible until you spread the establishment across a dozen years, and then the same arithmetic that failed on annual beds quietly works.
Common Mistakes & Fixes
- Comparing a tomato harvest against iceberg lettuce prices.
- Counting setup once and forgetting the frames rot.
- Assuming full season yield with no replanting done.
- Leaving water for a busy summer bed off the bill.
- Valuing your hours at nothing, then complaining bitterly.
- Forgetting fencing and deer damage in year one spend.
- Using a garden center price for a market garden.
- Growing only gluts that all ripen in one wet week.
- Ignoring the crops you would never have bought.
When to Reach for This
Use it before spending a season's budget on frames and soil, when deciding between a small intensive box and a large row garden, when a household is debating how much food to grow, and when you want a defensible answer to the dinner table question about whether this is saving anything. Pair it with the garden yield estimator for weight by crop, the calories per bed planner if the goal is food rather than money, the plant spacing planner to size the beds, and the raised bed soil calculator for honest establishment cost.
Garden Cost and Savings Estimator: Frequently Asked Questions
Does a vegetable garden actually save money?
On cash alone, usually yes once the plot is established, often no in the first year. The savings come from high value per pound crops rather than from staples, and a well run two hundred square foot bed can replace several hundred dollars of produce a season.
Should I count my own labor as a cost?
Only if you want an honest comparison with hiring someone or buying shelf food. Most gardeners should count hours and then deliberately ignore the result, since the work is recreation with a paycheck attached, and the same hours spent at a job and buying vegetables would leave less interesting afternoons.
What crops give the best saving per square foot?
Cut-and-come-again salad leaves, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, pole beans and cut flowers, because each square foot keeps producing for weeks at store prices of several dollars a pound. Storage crops such as potatoes, onions and winter squash are cheap per pound in shops and rarely beat them.
Why does my first year always lose money?
Because soil, frames, fencing, tools and a learning curve all land before the first harvest, and a new bed usually yields below its potential while you work out watering and spacing. Spread that establishment over several years and the arithmetic settles down quickly.
How much should I budget for inputs each year?
Seed, amendments, water, twine and a replacement plant or two commonly run one to two dollars per square foot of intensively cropped ground, less for open rows and more where soils need constant rebuilding. Entering a real figure from your receipts beats any published average.
Is a bigger garden always a better return?
No, because the marginal square foot is usually the least tended one, and hours rise with area while yield per foot falls once you cannot keep up with watering and weeding. Many households do best on one hundred to three hundred well managed square feet.
Sources & Further Reading
- Estimating the Value of Your Home Vegetable Garden Harvest — University of Georgia Extension. Grocery replacement valuation by crop and season.
- Square Foot Gardening — Bartlett, published yields. Intensive spacing yields per square foot of bed.
- Home Vegetable Garden Planning and Costs — Penn State Extension. Input budgets, establishment cost and realistic yields.
- Marketing Records and Enterprise Budgets — USDA agricultural resource management guides. Amortising equipment and treating labor as a real cost.
Chlorova Gardening Team
Builds, checks and documents every tool we publish
Chlorova editorial review
Checked against extension-service publications
Formula verified against published references · Updated
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