High-Value Veggies: A garden investment guide to edibles that give the most bang for the buck by Mel Bartholomew

High-Value Veggies: A garden investment guide to edibles that give the most bang for the buck Reviews

• 
  thefourthvine

  Okay, so, I read this because it was available in Overdrive through my local library, and -- this isn't a book. It's an overgrown blog post. The concept here is that you get a list of the stuff you can grow in your garden (not just vegetables) that has the highest return on investment. The first chapter is how they calculated ROI for home-grown vegetables, the second chapter is their top ten and bottom ten list, and the third chapter is quick and mostly useless summaries about how to grow the stuff on their lists, plus some other stuff not on their lists.
  
  Honestly, this is pretty pointless. If you're actually growing to sell, you're going to grow based on your local market, not per-square-foot ROI calculations. (And you're also a farmer, not a gardener, but whatever.) If you're growing to save money, you'll grow what *you* spend the most on -- the stuff your family eats, the stuff that costs the most in your area. Also, a lot of these plants can't be planted in all areas or at all times, so even if you do plant out your garden based on this book, you'll need another book to help you do it.
  
  The one piece of advice that is useful here is basically the thing they say in every single intro to gardening book ever: start with herbs. They're easy to grow, they're very useful to have continually available, and you save a lot of money and/or add a lot of flavor to your food. Beyond that, it's hard to imagine what use this book could possibly be.
• 
  Sheryl

  I'm so happy I won this book! I got it opened up it last night and read it in one setting. I loved it, it's very informative and the photography was fantastic. I loved the way he broke the gardens down. I've spent more money trying to grow heirloom tomatoes than if I had gone to the farmer's market and bought a bushel full! It's a short easy to read book that's chocked full useful information. I've never had raised garden, but the information will help me with my big ole garden that I have. This is a great reference book.
• 
  Yvonne

  Even if you are just a small suburban or urban gardener, not looking to sell your veggies, it is good to know which ones are worth even bothering to grow. And after last years potato failure, and now knowing that potatoes have one of the WORST returns, we won't be doing that ever again!
• 
  James

  A fun, lightweight gardening book on selecting what to grow in your garden, mostly based on saving money (herbs win!) but other odd lists includes best kid's gardens, etc.
• 
  Aprilleigh

  This volume is a fair bit thinner than
  All New Square Foot Gardening, which is my main resource for this method, but it provides some very helpful information for anyone looking to maximize the value of a small garden. In the original book, Mel suggested deciding what to plant by first making a list of what your family eats. From there you decide how much you need, taking into account expected yields and what can freeze or otherwise put away for winter use. This book helps you decide which choices you should make when you don't have room or time to plant all of it by looking at which crops give the greatest ROI, or return on investment (the cost of raising them yourself subtracted from the purchase price at the grocery store).
  
  It wasn't much surprise to me that potatoes, which are relatively cheap at the grocery store, actually cost more to grow than to simply purchase them at the store. There are still advantages to growing them yourself, but as far as saving you money on the grocery bill, they are the first thing you should eliminate if you don't have room to grow everything. Fresh herbs, on the other hand, are very expensive for what amounts to a couple of stems, and even dried herbs are shockingly expensive if you look at the price per ounce. I've never seen a better argument for growing your own herbs.
  
  The methodology is pretty simple. He looked at national average prices and tried to take different varieties into account where it made the most sense (heirloom tomatoes are treated separately from Roma and cherry-type, for example). He takes into account the cost of seeds or starter plants, and in some cases explains what difference it would have made in the ratings if one option is chosen over another. He talks about the cost of water, which is more significant for some crops and can probably be ignored by anyone with a well, but can be a significant expense for a large garden watered from a municipal water supply. He explains how he evaluated things like the cost of tools, soil amendments, and labor (and why he ultimately opted not to include labor in the calculations). He also talks about how to modify the calculations to take into account local differences, or even seasonal ones.
  
  After listing the best and worst performers as far as ROI, he lists them all in order in a simple chart before providing a page or two about each one, including the details of the calculation, useful information about growing, harvesting, and serving each of them, and anywhere from one to four "Value Added" comments about maximizing the value of the crop through creative uses, using more parts of the plants, or encouraging more production from the plants.
  
  He also has a section, "Other Kinds of Value," that lists the 10 best plants in categories like the best vegetables for a child's garden, the best edible flowers, and the fastest-growing vegetables. There are 13 different lists to explore. This is a treasure trove of great information compiled by a retired engineer who apparently loves numbers as much as he loves gardening.
• 
  Melody

  This was a really interesting perspective on gardening, and one that I think I'll find myself referring to in the future. I appreciate that they did the research to try to figure out which vegetables are actually cost effective to grow at home, and which ones are just so cheap at the grocery store that you might as well buy them there.
• 
  Abbey Bracken

  This book was very interesting!! It gave you so much information and detail on which veggies are the best to grow as far as saving money is concerned. It suggested so many other gardening books!! I didn’t write them down, but I should’ve. Highly recommend.
• 
  Gail Richmond

  Interesting as a browsing book, and general information on plants is adequate. Best part for me was on herbs.
• 
  Erin Maynard

  This is more for folks wanting to sell their produce. I’m sure it is an excellent resource for that but not what I was hoping for.
• 
  Kathryn

  RTC
• 
  Doreen

  Confirmed what I thought I knew and surprised me on some others.
• 
  Sierra

  Good info but I had a lot of it already. Interesting & important topic
• 
  Heather

  I actually appreciate that as a "list" type book--this didn't oversell itself. So many "list" or "method" books are filled with chapter after chapter of irrelevant fluff about the author or cult-like, repetetive indoctrination--the lack of "fluff" was appreciated. The author gives his math method in part 1 --but says "if you don't care, just jump to part 2."
  
  I like the method, and this is the method I employ in "what to grow." I only wish there was more mention or a separate list of oddballs. The only missing section is "what weird item do you like to eat but never find in grocery stores or pay astronomical prices for?" My garden includes rhubarb, raspberry, huckleberry, sorrel, purslane, watercress, mache (for that reason). The list isn't intended to cover fruit, but then includes strawberries--so it makes the lack of more expensive and easier to grow items more of a slight.
  
  So thank the author for not wasting your time, read it, and take a highlighter to your veggie planting list. (And maybe a red pen to your planting list for "cheaper to buy commercially" items).
• 
  James Schmidt

  I bought this book because Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Garden is a "MUST HAVE" book if you are into gardening and high production in small spaces like I am.
  
  I run a Market Garden Farm and I thought that if this book has at least half the value as Square Foot Garden then how could I go wrong?
  
  Well, the truth is that this book does not really have the type of information I was expecting, and much of the information that I found within it's pages - simply doesn't hold true for me. In my area of the country there are certain vegetables that are high volume AND high value, and Mr. Bartholomew's book simply doesn't reflect my results here.
  
  I personally find that Curtis Stone's Urban Gardner and Jean Martin Fortiner's book The Market Gardener seemed to be a more accurate account.
  
  If you want a garden investment guide from Mr. Bartholomew - get one - heck, get two copies of Square-Foot Garden and make notes in one and keep another one as backup. That would be my opinion.