Originally Posted By: NM LeonIrish, any seeds etc that you currently have are already paid for.
Any seeds you would try to obtain after an energy price run-up would be more expensive due (at a minimum) to increased transportation costs. Besides the transportation costs for fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, they are very energy intensive to produce and will be correspondingly more expensive.
As Stu mentioned water costs will be more expensive whether you are buying it from the municipality or paying for the electricity to pump it from your well.
You can of course (perhaps) carry buckets of water from the river, pull weeds by hand, pluck aphids/grasshoppers/ladybugs/etc off your plants by hand, but time is worth something as well, and all the time you would spend in your garden is time you can't be working and earning cash for other things.
I guess I'm a different case. I disagree with just about everything you say. We save seeds from one year's harvest to plant the next. No cost. Fertilizer comes from compost, which comes from our animals. No cost. Pesticides and herbicides - make our own pesticides cheap - $2 a year - herbicides, $15 a year.. Good gardening practices. Water from rain and rain barrels. Spending time in the garden is something done after the work day is over. Could sit in a chair and watch tv. Don't. Therapy, exercise, family time. The returns in product and family togetherness is worth WAY MORE more than the cost, which is next to nothing.
