Los Angeles Times - Homegrown - urban agriculture business

How does your backyard garden grow?

By David Colker, Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2008

Marta Teegen, who owns Homegrown, a Los Angeles-based garden consulting company, will come to your house and install a vegetable garden with your choice of plants. She generally puts in about four 4-by-6-foot raised beds.

The average cost — $2,000.

At that rate, and because this is Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that several of her clients are celebrities (whom she declined to name) with private chefs.

— a family’s well-tended 200-square-foot garden can turn out about 200 pounds of produce in a year, the National Garden Assn. said.

The garden group has never performed a detailed comparison of home garden vs. supermarket costs, but the National Garden Assn.’s Butterfield estimated that the produce grown in a 200-square-foot plot in a year could cost about $400 in a market.

At that rate, the economics of home gardening makes sense. If done right.

Link to LA Times story, ‘How does your backyard garden grow?’ here.

Visit Homegrown’s web site in Los Angeles here.