How’s Your Garden Coming? Study Digs up Interesting Gardening Trends

We’ve all heard the threat: “Prices at the supermarket are so high and the shelves are so empty — heck, I’ll just grow my own food.”

People had to follow through on that threat when the pandemic arrived and safety protocols meant staying close to home and limiting time spent shopping. Then, the follow-up punches — inflation and supply-chain shortages — meant turning to homegrown food.

Did the threat actually work? Did we really become better home gardeners despite living in the city or the suburbs? Did we have the ambition?

Seattle-based Trees.com commissioned a study and found that pandemic-induced gardening was more than just a fad. The website for horticulture enthusiasts surveyed 2,000 Americans about their home gardening habits and found:

• 50 percent of Americans have grown their own produce over the past year.
• 36 percent report eating their homegrown produce every day.
• 33 percent say they save $100 or more a month by growing food at home.

According to the survey, the most popular homegrown food product was easily tomatoes (81.72 percent). A distant second was cucumbers (52.75 percent) and carrots (50.05 percent) were third.

“My family of seven produces about 60 percent of the vegetables we eat. We focus on growing produce we enjoy eating, so we get the most out of our harvest,” Ashley Christian told Trees.com.

“The winter months are a little thin, but in the summer and fall, we eat almost exclusively vegetables from our garden.”

Why grow your own food? The top response was physical health benefits. Combating rising costs because of inflation and supply chain shortages were also cited.

Other reasons were to start a new skill, be more self-reliant, and tradition.

“My grandma had a huge garden, Melanie Musson of Belgrade, Montana, told Trees.com. “It was a big rectangle with rows and rows of strawberries, asparagus, melons, rhubarb, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and so much more.”

This gives gardeners a lot to think about for the next home and garden show in North Texas.

Report Review: Trees.com conducted the online survey on March 8-10. Of the 2,000 participants, 25 percent identified themselves as living in the countryside, 38 percent as living in the suburbs, and 37 percent as living in the city. The report has a lot of info, definitely a rabbit hole. 🐇

Resources

• Texas Garden School’s guide on growing vegetables year-round in North Texas
• Texas AgriLife Extension’s detailed guide to vegetable gardening in North Texas
• How to vegetable garden year-round in North Texas
• North Texas Vegetable Gardeners Blog