How much did I save by growing food in my front garden?

Anyone can enjoy growing their own food, whether they are growing in an established kitchen garden, a small raised bed, a balcony garden or just attempting to grow their first easy-to-sow and grow vegetable plants.

In February 2023 I set myself a challenge, to turn the tiny front garden of the former council house where I live into a food-growing space. I did this to prove a point – that you can absolutely save money by growing the right edible plants and prioritizing quick turnaround edible crops.

SPOLIER: How I did the maths.

I wanted to provide this breakdown – to give you an idea of the maths that I have done each months to show you the results on the screen. I believe that we are trained to automatically discount small savings – but these small savings really do add up.

Here are a few examples for you:

November Crop Value: £44

Mixed Salad £14.00 – Equivalent of 3 bags of supermarket salad per week.

Cut Herbs £6.00 – Equivalent of 1.5 packs of cut herbs per week.

Kale £12.00 – Approximately 2.5 supermarket bags of Kale each week

Spinach £12 – Approximately 3 bags of supermarket spinach each week.

Sharing this story was one of the most exciting things that I have done while growing. I have loved sharing this empowering message that growing your own food in a front garden space, it takes back control, it’s empowering, it makes you feel more grounded in your local community and it’s so much fun.

Thanks so much for sharing this story with me.

In 2023 I set myself a challenge to see whether or not I could save money by growing in the tiny front garden of the former Council house where I live here in the West Midlands in the UK the garden is only around 3 m by 3 m and

This video tells the story of how I did this build why I did it and stick around for the end I’m going to reveal whether or not I saved any money back in 2023 there was a real sense of Crisis food prices were soaring I couldn’t believe the prices in the supermarket some

Budget supermarkets introduce rationing which made me really angry at people on lower income for having to make difficult decisions about what quality of food to buy I broke one of the rules of social media and posted while angry as I was posting this video talking about food inequality the number of

Followers on my account soared I’d clearly hit a note I decided to dig up my front garden to prove a point to prove that anybody can grow their own food and you can save money by doing so straight away I hit a bit of a problem there was loads of Hardcore Rubble

Buried just underneath the surface of the garden I’d originally planned to dig directly into the ground but I had to do raise beds instead I managed to salvage some anti-weed fabric from a nearby skip put that down to create some paths this needed to be a low maintenance Garden I

Have a very very busy job and I didn’t have the time to maintain it I actually bought some wood this was the biggest expense of the entire project and I started building raised beds in the front garden that I would be planting into I don’t have any DIY experience but

I really enjoyed doing this project slowly the garden began to take shape I drew a plan and I plan to include five rais beds I left enough space so I could walk between the rais beds I feel majority of the race beds using organic material and a thin layer of top soil

And I split the cost of the bolt bag with a neighbor keeping the costs down remember this project is all about proving a point to prove that you can save money I then took a break from the DIY and sewed some seeds indoors on window sills salad herbs like wild

Rocket and soon they bloomed it’s so good to see those seedlings coming up up the garden was really starting to take shape I managed to salvage some black paint and made it look smart some bark from a local tree surgeon and then it was time to plant out the seedlings and

Get the garden growing a little bit I really look back fondly on those early days in the spring garden chil days planting those seedlings outside but conditions were pretty good and the beds were set up properly and quickly the plants began to grow I also set up a

Compost bin this was £25 that I bought on Amazon and it was important for me to get the compost going get it cooking to fuel later growing later on in the season spoiler I’m really pleased with the results of that cheap purchase I contined planting out more crops I

Purchased some established plants as well to give myself a head start and facted that into all the budgets and I’ve accounted for that right at the end of the video planted out broad beans spinach and salad herbs like Banette salad winter turned to Spring and spring turned into late spring the garden just

Exploded into life I’m always was amazed by the acceleration of growth that happened I started to harvest crops I was amazed by the level of harvest that I was getting so early broad beans you can see me harvesting here were particularly productive and it became a

Lifestyle for me instead of going to the shop I would pop out into the front garden and every single time I made a harvest I made a note of the value of the crop based against a budget Supermarket value remember I’m doing this as an experiment so I began a very

Geeky spread sheet showing the costs and the value of the harvests from my front garden I spent really precious moments out in the front Garden but more importantly the time that I spent sharing it with people on social media were really precious to me I really was

Sharing a message that anyone can do this and the garden continued to bloom into summer warm summer days just increased the yield of French beans Banette salad beautiful salad herb you can see here and the Harvest just continued as we started to change what we ate in the kitchen too we started to

Eat more plant-based materials put extra spinach and French beans into dishes we felt amazing for it it became a routine harvesting ingredients showing them off to the camera sharing that real positive message I was sharing my front garden with millions of people and I really

Hoped I could make it work in terms of the numbers we made a few unplanned additions to the Garden too planting a blueberry bush in an old Barrel turns out blueberries are really expensive and Kate loves them we got such good crops off that blueberry bush and I also added

Some relatively expensive herbs like Thai basle in small pots and we were harvesting them really regularly too as the seasons changed you can see the French beans gave into the wind I became acutely aware that I needed to get the garden ready for Autumn to keep it

Productive and that meant a huge change around it meant sewing loads more varieties in the summer ready for Autumn you can see me here clearing out all the tired summer crops in early September ready to replace with the young fresh seedlings for Autumn it’s so important

To realize that the Autumn can be really productive I’m dividing some salad herbs here this is plans for free you can see me dividing Bonet salad and these are all crops that are really super productive throughout the Autumn removing all the crops of Summer to be replaced with fresh seedlings varieties

For Autumn but I wanted to optimize things more so I added covers to several of the raised beds to really boost productivity through the winter and wow was I impressed with the results the plants grew away in October November and December underneath that cover and it was absolutely amazing you can see how

Happy they are in December and that’s reflect in the amount of crop that I was able to get and that brings me on to the point of the video did I save any money by growing in front garden I’m going to take you through it month by month and

You can see here for the month of March the cost of the garden is effectivly the setup cost the majority of this cost came from the fact that I was buying wood the cost of the top soil but I was able to reuse a lot of materials Salvage

Out of Skips which was a lot of fun despite keeping costs very minimal finished the month of March with a balance of-1 there were some more costs incurred in April as I bought some more seeds and the compost bin but I actually got to start to harvest some crop especially

From the ready grown plants that I planted and the early seed sewing so by the end of April I’d improved the balance but I was stillus 154 as a result from the garden in May the garden really got going those minimal expenses I bought a few seeds a

Little bit seedling compost but I harvested so much from the garden and I really the balance back by the end of May I was only minus 86 June was another really productive month with really minimal expenses just a few seeds purchased but I was harvesting mixed salad spinach broad beans cut herbs and

By the end of June the balance was down to a deficit of only £32 it’s important to be honest and by July I was so burned out from doing my job and i’ dropped the ball slightly I’d forgotten to sew as many seeds to replace the or original

Spring crop as I should have and so the output from the garden dropped a little bit in July but I still harvested a lot of crop from the garden and I actually broke even in July I had a saving of £23 from my front garden August was a

Change over month in the front garden the weather was absolutely perfect and the plants that were already established were cropping heavily varieties such as blueberry peas kale cut herbs was harvesting so much of them and it was also a change over month where I was very much concentrating on

Rewing bares ready for Autumn there was some minimal cost involved buying seed but the crop from August was really good and by the end of August I was actually making a saving from my front garden an overall saving of £69 September was another transition month as I was sewing crops for Autumn I

Still managed to harvest £ 48 worth of produce from the garden and I want wanted to take this opportunity to explain how I’m doing this math of that £48 £18 of it was mixed salad crops and that might sound like a lot to you but to put it into

Context that is only three or four bags of salad every single week to make that saving it adds up really quickly doesn’t it and by the end of September I’d actually made a saving of up to7 from the front garden I knew this was a modest saving and to get people’s

Attention I really needed the garden to stay productive for the autumnal months the autumnal months are always more productive than you think and actually in October I still got a really good crop from the garden the cost that you can see here was a lot of reused

Materials but to make some purchases in order to build the frame that went over the crops and increased productivity in October November and December nevertheless I continued steady progress and by the end of October the saving was up to £152 the covers on the raised beds paid dividend and in November I was

Harvesting loads of cut herbs mixed salad kale spinach I continued the progress and I knew that this would make orate the project and by the end of November the saving was up to £196 likewise the covers really boosted productivity we had some good weather in December and I was so delighted to get

40 worth of produce from front garden in the month of December which brought the total to £236 at the end of the year there were lots of doubters when I first announced this project people that said you couldn’t save money by growing in such a small space I am so delighted to have

Saved £236 doing this project that adds up to a monthly saving of £1 19967 P but that’s really really conservative because you’re not factoring in the cost of traveling to a budget supermarket and that’s if you’ve got access to a budget Supermarket many people don’t anyway I’m so delighted with that as a

Result but the result of this Garden was actually a lot more than just what you see on the screen I had so much fun doing it I had so much fun sharing this project with so many people over the course of the last year and looking back

Making this video what do you think guys have you enjoyed watching this and are you persuaded to try and grow some food in the coming year I really hope that you are persuaded because I really firmly think that this is a way that you can take back control give yourself some

Security and save yourself some money along the way really hope you enjoyed the video guys