Want to Save on Groceries? You Can Grow Your Own Garden

This story is part of How We Get By, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the full series here.

If you’ve been feeling the sticker shock of grocery prices these days, it’s not just you. The cost of food at Bay Area grocery stores went up by almost 6% in the last year alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Scouring the shelves for deals, buying off-brand or purchasing items in bulk are some options for reducing your food bills. But here in the Bay Area, with our year-round good weather, you could consider growing your own food — even if you’ve never done it before, or don’t have a big yard.

So how can you get started growing your own garden, and what could you grow here in the Bay Area that might help reduce your grocery bill? We talked to the experts for their top tips and practical information for starting your own garden, no matter how small.

Jump straight to: 

• Three simple foods to grow here in the Bay Area
• The beginner mistakes everyone makes (that you can avoid)

Why grow your own garden?

Take it from the experts: Growing your own food at home isn’t just beneficial to your wallet.

“Almost as important as saving money on your food is, what you grow is likely to be healthier,” said Maggie Mah, one of the University of California’s Master Gardeners who specialize in helping people grow their own food here in the Bay Area and nationwide. The food you grow is “going to be fresher,” she said.

You can also have greater control over the food itself, she said, by growing a pesticide-free garden and producing the fruits and veggies you know you’ll eat.

“But on top of that is really the sense of being empowered,” Mah said. “I find that it’s just great to be able to go out and pick big handfuls of green beans that I grew myself, or tomatoes or whatever it is.”

“It’s a sense of reclaiming yourself in this day and age,” she said.

Start small

The first thing you should do, Mah said, is assess how much space you have and let that determine your gardening potential — and your path forward.

And don’t worry: You don’t need all that much space. All it takes is some access to the outdoors, even if that’s just a windowsill or railing which can hold a pot big enough for basics like herbs, some lettuce, tomatoes or even potatoes.

Then, advised Mah, decide what you want to grow. If your square footage is small, consider plants that produce a lot of fruits or veggies relative to their size — like tomatoes, rather than a space-intensive plant like a watermelon.

And if you’re really pressed for space, remember you can always utilize vertical space for crops like pole beans or squash. You could even try inter-cropping or companion planting, which is pairing similar plants to make the most of your space.

“Start small, and then as you build success and you build learning about your particular location and what works and what doesn’t work, you can really build upon that,” Mah said.

Plants like tomatoes or broccoli thrive even in somewhat small pots or buckets. And lettuces need just a few inches of soil. Arugula in particular is a very quick, easy and nutritious crop, Mah said.

“You throw the seeds in the ground and a couple of days later, you’ve got arugula — and you can keep on harvesting it,” Mah said.

Assess conditions

While you can work with different space limitations, one nonnegotiable when it comes to growing your own food is consistent access to sun, Mah said. “It takes six to eight hours of sun to be successful growing pretty much anything,” she said.

Also, “you don’t want to plant something that’s going to take a bunch of months to be able to harvest,” Mah said — so you’ll want to look for varieties that mature quickly, and that might depend on exactly where you’re located.

You can find that information on the seed packet itself — but be aware that how quickly your food will grow is entirely location-dependent. And the Bay Area’s fog and microclimates, which can create dramatically different temperatures just a few miles away, can heavily influence a plant’s timeline.

Before choosing a plant, you should also consult a planting calendar, Mah said, and make sure you’re planting something that can grow at this time of year. The calendars are location-specific and often available where seeds and plants are sold or lent, so be sure you’re looking at information for your specific geographic region.

Prep your soil

Once you’ve decided on a plant, make sure your soil is prepared. You can get soil and — more importantly — compost from many different sources. Compost is decomposed organic material that helps add nutrients to your soil and boosts its health, and as a result, boosts the growth potential for your plants.

For one, you can get free compost via giveaway programs like the one for Berkeley residents at the Berkeley Marina.

Eddie Mendoza, who works at the marina, said the compost is usually delivered on Fridays from the Central Valley and that the supply lasts through the weekend. They sometimes also have woodchips and mulch available, which can also boost the health of your soil or help with drainage, he said.

But you have to bring your own tools to the marina — Mendoza suggested you pack a shovel and a few buckets — and it’s best to get there early, especially during peak weekends during the summer, he said.

“By Monday morning, it’s all gone,” he said.

You can even make your own compost pile, although Mah warned it might take a few months if starting from scratch. It’s easier than many people imagine, said Maggie Owsley, whose East Bay group The Velveteen Bean produces and sells small-batch compost and teaches people how to build and maintain their own compost piles.

“There’s a myth that you need a huge bag of compost to start seeds, to start a garden,” Owsley said. “You actually can do a lot with what you’re making at home or what your neighbors are making.”

Decide whether you’ll choose seeds or plants — and get to know your local resources

Seeds are the least expensive option when it comes to starting your garden — but be aware that where they lack in cost, they more than make up in time. So only go the seed route if you’re not in a hurry to harvest, said Odette Pollar, executive director of the East Bay-based Plant Exchange.

If you have the time, “seeds are always the easiest, the least expensive way to go,” she said.

While you can purchase seeds at a garden store, you could also head to your local seed lending library for free seeds, where you’ll be highly encouraged to then harvest seeds from whatever resulting plant you grow and donate them back to the library (more on this below). The San Francisco Public Library system maintains a Seed Lending Library at its Potrero Branch, as does the Oakland Public Library and many Peninsula libraries.

The Berkeley Ecology Center, too, now hosts the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, which is open Wednesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m. and also does periodic seed exchange events, where participants can come learn about seed saving and shop for free seeds.

“It’s really cool to see these little things go in the dirt and you think, oh, this is never going to happen,” Mah said. “Then, all of a sudden, ‘boom.’ It’s really fun.”

There is one advantage to starting with a plant: “You know they were alive when you brought them home,” Pollar said. You can get plants for relatively cheap at nurseries or at large stores like Home Depot.

You can also find free (albeit mostly non-edible) plants at places like The Plant Exchange, along with the pots to grow them in. While this East Bay group isn’t fully operational anymore since executive director Pollar retired in 2023, the group still promotes grassroots exchanges, cohosts events with other organizations and throws one-day plant sale events every few months.

At sales like these, you can find an abundance of tools like rakes and shovels, soil, decorative rocks and pots — and they’re all priced to sell, Pollar said.

“Our goal is for all neighborhoods to have exchanges,” Pollar said. “Just do it — throw it in your driveway. It’s a great way to get to know neighbors, but also to reuse and recycle and rehome.”

Pollar also suggested scouring thrift stores, secondhand stores and online forums like Craigslist for free or low-cost gardening supplies.

But the most effective way to lower your overall food costs at home, Pollar said, is to start growing plants like herbs that take up relatively little space but tend to be expensive at the grocery store.

And from there, you can graduate from herbs to experimenting with slightly bigger plants like tomatoes, and even dwarf citrus fruit trees in pots.

Lean on community

The absolutely best free resource you’ll find, Pollar said, is people with experience in gardening.

You might find them at your local nursery or garden store, or even at your local gardening club, where Pollar suggested you can meet people with experience and get your questions answered immediately. “And then that keeps you motivated as well,” she said.

You could also source expertise from your neighbors or your local community garden, Owsley said.

“Connect with people in your neighborhood,” Owsley said. “Connect with your community garden. Connect with someone who has nice pots outside their house. They are probably more than willing to talk to you about it.”

“Gardeners are also extremely generous, and they’ll generally give you a clipping if you ask for it,” Pollar said. “They’ll usually offer — ‘do you want some?’ That’s a great way to start.”

Alternatively, you could draw wisdom from a UC Master Gardener like Mah. She’s one of a whole staff that is available to help people grow their own food, for free. Their planting calendar, books and other no-cost resources are on hand to help anyone start a garden here in the Bay Area and beyond.

The UC Master Gardeners’ best resource is their free help line, which “will give very detailed personal responses to people who call in with problems” about gardening, Mah said. You can reach the help line at 650-276-7430 for San Francisco and San Mateo counties, or 510-670-5645 for Alameda County. You can also reach the master gardeners via email or by visiting their office in person.

With the right advice, struggling gardeners often end up with the opposite problem: an overabundance of what they’ve grown. And soon, you’ll be the one giving back to the community, Mah said.

“Start small, and focus on what you and your family are going to eat reasonably,” she said. “Because it becomes kind of addictive.”

Once you have one successfully producing plant, you can propagate it for your or others’ future use — or find out how to save seeds to use in the future or donate back to your local seed library.

If there’s one thing Rebecca Newburn, who founded the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library, has learned from growing her own garden and the gardening community, it’s generosity, she said.

“You plant a lettuce plant, and you’re gonna get 500 from one,” she said. “It’s the most generous part of the universe — just planting a seed.”

What not to do when gardening

Mah said the key to gardening — and where many new gardeners get tripped up — is putting “the right plant in the right place.”

That means not only keeping your plant healthy, but also giving it the particular balance of sun, drainage and compost it needs to thrive.

Pollar warned about over- and under-watering, especially for beginner gardeners. Bugs can also be a problem, she said, but growing a garden in a planter or on a deck can help mitigate pests.

Keep your expectations realistic and start slow, Pollar said: “What you want to do is have fun with this and not say, ‘OK, now half my vegetable intake I will be growing immediately,’” she said. “Maybe not so much.”

But if you’re really intent on making a dent in your food bill, you’ll need to plan ahead, Mah said. “There’s a rotation to pay attention to — what you’re planting and when,” she said.

Rotating your crops not only ensures you’ll have food all year round, but it is also critical to keeping your soil healthy. Luckily, even “cover crops” — the ones intended to replenish the nutrients in your soil, like fava beans — can be delicious.

How to grow three simple produce staples at home in the Bay Area

Broccoli

You can grow broccoli both in the spring and the fall, so no matter when you get your garden started, the planting season won’t be too far away.

You can even start your broccoli seeds indoors to avoid any near-freezing temperatures — which may stunt the growth of young plants — then transfer them outside after six weeks into a bucket or planter at least 1 foot deep.

Make sure your plants are 12 inches apart (or maybe just start with one plant) and that your soil has adequate drainage and enough water, watering two to three times a week or less if leaves begin to turn yellow. And always harvest broccoli as soon as it’s mature and firm. You can keep harvesting even after you remove the main head, as smaller offshoots will start to form.

Be sure to rotate this crop — by planting something else or moving its location between seasons — to avoid pest buildups.

Specific UC Master Gardener broccoli guides for:

• Marin County
• Santa Clara County
• Sonoma County

Tomatoes

The big thing to know about tomatoes is that they’re sun-lovers — they need at least 6 full hours of direct sunlight per day — so make sure you can provide that.

You can start your tomatoes as seeds or full plants, but wait to put them outside until daytime temperatures are regularly above 70 degrees and nights are above 50 degrees. Until then, keep them indoors.

Tomatoes should be planted in at least 18 inches of soil to let them take root and need to be watered consistently, so don’t let them dry out. You may need stakes to support the plants if they’re especially tall.

Harvest tomatoes when they have a little bit of “give” to them and aren’t rock hard, but before they’re fully soft. The more you harvest them, the more fruit they produce.

Specific UC Master Gardener tomato guides for:

• Alameda County
• Santa Clara County
• San Francisco

Potatoes

Perhaps the most fun and easy staple to grow is the potato, which can be planted all the way through the spring and summer, depending on your local microclimate.

You don’t even need seeds for this one, as you can actually plant an entire potato or just a piece of it. Just make sure any potato chunk you plant has an “eye”: the discolored, pocked part of the potato.

Just dig about 8 inches down into a bucket or planter (it should be at least 18 inches deep with soil) and place your potato pieces around a foot apart.

Keep adding soil once the plant starts to grow and water the tubers once or twice a week — but only lightly to avoid rot. Once the leaves of the plant have gone yellow, use your hands to dig up the potatoes and discard any green ones, as those are toxic.

Specific UC Master Gardener potato guides for:

• Marin County
• Santa Clara County
• Contra Costa County

Not interested in any of these veggies? Take a look at the Alameda County month-by-month planting calendar for more ideas.