Home > News > Growing food to save money
Growing food to save money
Rising tuition and gas costs has some thinking of alternative ways to save their money
BY ROBERT DOWNS
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE: 78/28
TYLER SWEENEY / STATESMAN
In an era of rising tuition costs, many students are willing to go the extra mile all in the name of saving what few pennies they have in their bank accounts. Many students take drastic measures to safeguard their assets, but few have pursued a seemingly worthwhile concept: growing food to save money. According to a Statesman survey of 50 students, 46 percent of students said that they would be interested in gardening to save money, if properly informed of a cost-effective method to do it. This questioning of cost-effectiveness raises a pertinent question: Can gardening actually save enough money to be worthwhile?
Charlie Nardozzi, a senior horticulturist at the National Gardening Association and author of the book “Edible Gardening For Dummies,” made clear how gardening could be worthwhile for students looking to save money. “[Gardening] can be worth the time and effort, but it all depends on the set up you have,” Nardozzi said. According to Nardozzi, in order to make the most of your effort, an organized system must be in place. An expedient growing system entails extending the length of the typical growing season by planting foods indoors in the spring and moving them outside during the summer.
“If you want to get a real quick jump [by growing things inside], the best way would be to grow things in containers or a small raised bed,” Nardozzi said. “They’ll actually grow a lot faster than they would outside. Baby greens you find in grocery stores can be harvested within 20 days of planting. Radishes also harvest quickly, within 20 to 30 days.”
In the same survey, 53 percent of students indicated that they would not be interested in gardening because of the time constraints they deal with in college. However, some students, such as freshman Tony Koop, have taken to gardening as a hobby and as a way to grow some of their own foods. Koop grows plants out of his parents’ house most of which are tropical plants such as cacti, African violets and Angel’s Trumpets, but has also grown his own bananas and tomatoes. For Koop, the biggest problem with growing plants is not the time constraints, but the tremendous amount of space taken up by the plants.
“I have a greenhouse set up in the fall and the spring, and then move all of my tropical plants outside,” he said. “I have four gardens set up and leave some on the porch in my backyard. My parents have been very cooperative.” Other students, such as freshman Ian Rea, do not see the point in exerting so much effort in the name of saving money. “Gardening takes time away from homework, but you also run the risk of your plants failing,” Rea said. “What if I spent all of that time gardening, and they weren’t even edible? I wouldn’t take the risk.”
Some students are willing to run that risk, and according to Nardozzi, it will pay off in the end. “It does take some time and thinking, but once you get a working system down, you can produce enough food to make it worthwhile,” Nardozzi said.
