Product Review

Calculate the return on investment for your vegetable garden and get the most bang for your gardening bucks!

Get the most return on investment from your garden by calculating which vegetables, fruits, and herbs give the highest payback. To make the selection process of what to grow easy, Mel Bartholomew--author of the best-selling Square Foot Gardening--has a new book to maximize your garden's ROI. High-Value Veggies is an easy-to-use reference book helping gardeners choose edibles that make the most financial and spatial sense. Explore the thought processes and math behind growing vegetables and herbs in order to craft the best plan for your produce.

Maximizing your garden's yield is no simple task. Consider the tomato; most people think it's a safe bet for a high-yield return - but which variety? Heirloom tomatoes typically cost $5 or more a pound at farmers' markets. You can beat that price by growing Cherokee Purples from seed at a net cost of only 80 cents per pound. If you plant purchased seedlings, the cost will go up to about $1 a pound--and that's including the cost of water and fertilizer. High-Value Veggies makes this cost evaluation for each vegetable easy.

Whether you're interested in growing tomatoes, pumpkins, cabbage, corn, or anything else, it's wise to consider the invisible dollar signs sown along the way. The relative ROI for each veggie in High-Value Veggies is calculated based on dollar value generated for each square foot planted. You don't need to be a math whiz to plan your next vegetable garden. Bartholomew has done the math for you, and he has cost-effective answers.