The economics of string beans

Jen blogging:

So now that Patti and I are both harvesting vegetables regularly from our plants, I thought it might be worth looking into how much money growing my own had really saved me.

Let's take my string beans. A few months ago, I spent $1.49 on a seed packet. Since my bean plants started producing a couple of weeks ago, I've harvested about 80 beans. And it doesn't look like they're slowing down any time soon.

By comparison, the local grocery store is selling string beans from Florida for $1.28 a pound. Now that I've already outed myself as a bean counter, I'm somewhat less ashamed to tell you that I went to the store, counted out 80 beans out and weighed them solely for the purpose of this post. Eighty string beans came to about .8 of a pound. My (admittedly errorprone) math tells me that would have cost me a little over a buck at the store.

I've got no idea how many beans my plants will eventually produce, but barring locusts, I'm on track to save money and probably eat a whole lot more string beans than I would have. Which was kind of the point, right?

jen.mccaffery@pilotonline.com

P.S. Longtime blog readers may recall that early on, Patti offered to set me up with an inflatable snake named El Ssssid to fight the predators in my yard. I failed to act on her suggestion, so she took matters into her own hands and got me one. I think we'll be very happy together.

COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don't attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.