One of the things that has really been upsetting me lately is the grow a garden to make ends meet nonsense. Clearly no one saying this ever spent time on a farm or grown much of their own veggies. Let alone preserve those veggies for winter use.
I did. And I can tell you right now growing enough veggies to feed a single person let alone a family, is hard work. You need to not work to make it work. The garden becomes a full time job. Subsistence agriculture is extremely difficult work.
When I was a kid we grew enough potatoes, carrots, peas, and beans for summer use as well as preserving. We bought a bushel of tomatoes to preserve. But to grow enough potatoes for the whole family* it was a whole family effort. We’re talking 5 or more people to feed 10 people. One person could not do it solo. Not every member of a family is going to be interested in working in the garden, and sure you can say, okay that person doesn’t get any potatoes, but that becomes a whole family issue.
It’s also not cheap. Keeping with the potato example, you need to buy or have grown your own seed potatoes as well as fertilizer (or manure) and have a way to till your land. That requires getting a tractor or hiring someone with a tractor. Again an added expense. It also requires land. You’d be surprised how much space it takes to grow enough potatoes to feed 10 people. It takes a lot more space than you’d think to feed 1 person potatoes for a whole year.
Now expand that out to the rest of the veggies you might want to eat- lettuces, peas, corn, cabbage, carrots, and so on. It all takes up space. Depending on your climate, you might have a short season or a long season. It really varies. If you have a real winter you might need a green house to extend that season.
In my opinion my goal with my garden is to supplement not replace my visits to the grocery store. One year I grew enough tomatoes that we didn’t buy any canned tomatoes at all. And honestly that felt really great, but I had 20 tomato plants and we had a spectacular year for tomatoes. It was an enormous amount of work. My wife helped with the preservation but doing it solo would have really sucked.
I can’t image suggesting to someone who works retail and lives in an apartment to “grow a garden” to help make their food bills smaller. even if they had a plot at the local shared garden space the initial output in cost is a hurdle. are you going to spend your grocery budget on seeds when you don’t know how to grow anything yet?
The whole grow your own suggestion from influencers and politicians smacks of people who have never had a garden and is demeaning to actual farmers and farm workers who do the back breaking labor of the farm work.
*My brothers, myself, my parents and grandparents as well as some to share with my aunt and her family.