2-3 weeks ago I noticed something at the local grocery store as you are able to probably find where you shop: higher prices. From my shopping trip one week to my trip the a few weeks, prices on lots of items increased 20 cents. Among the most astonishingly high prices: produce. It kills me, for example, so see red peppers at $2.99 per pound. That equals about $1.50 for a single pepper.

I've a hedge against these rising prices: I grow plenty of my own, personal produce. You can grow your own personal as well, and find a hobby that could oftentimes lessen your grocery bills by a huge selection of dollars a year.

For the sake of comparison, a deal of fresh basil-that's a clump of whole plants wrapped in plastic and ready for use-costs about $2.69 in a grocery store. You should buy a deal of basil seeds for about $1.59, and a bag of potting soil for $2 or less (off-season, I bought bags of soil for 75 cents apiece). Plant just a couple of seeds in an empty yogurt container, and you'll match the grocery store basil in six to eight weeks. (A pack of grocery store basil contains about several plants growing in a 2-in cube of potting soil).

If you plant a yogurt container every two weeks, you'll have ten or twelve going in one package of seeds, that's plenty to season many meals, and possibly even make some pesto sauce.

Grocery store basil: $27 for 10 meals. Home-grown from seeds: $3.59 for a year's supply.

When for sale, tomatoes inside our local grocery store cost $1.99 per pound. Since an average-sized grocery store tomato weighs fifty per cent of a pound, I'd pay one dollar per tomato when they're on sale. An appartment of young tomato plants (six plants which can be already growing and ready to transplant in to a garden or flower pot) costs around $3 in the beginning of the growing season. Transplant one among those plants and raise it to maturity and it can produce from 25 to 100 pounds of tomatoes (depends on length of growing season, size of number of tomatoes grown, number of water applied, and diligence).

If you have space in your yard for a tomato plant, pessimistically you can harvest $50 worth of tomatoes from that plant. If you grow all six plants from an appartment, you might harvest, perhaps, 200 pounds of tomatoes worth $400. Some tomato varieties might produce 100 pounds of tomatoes per plant, so six plants would provide a plant worth $1,200!

But here's a sad truth about grocery store produce: Your chances of purchasing a good tomato in a grocery store are close to zero. Sure, you can purchase very nice grocery store tomatoes, but these are distant cousins of good tomatoes. The worst ripe tomato you grow in a home kitchen garden is dramatically juicier, sweeter, tastier, and all-around more fun than the most effective grocery store tomato.

Grocery store tomatoes: $60 for 10 weekly tomato salads. Home-grown tomatoes: $3 for an appartment of plants.

Basil and tomatoes offer an inkling of the savings you can realize by growing your own personal produce. If you have enough space, you can grow lots of types of vegetables and fruit at similar savings over grocery store prices. In many cases, what exactly you grow taste dramatically better than what you buy in a store.

Even though you have little space, you can grow some produce at home. One great way to get started is to locate and visit by having an experienced gardener. Help out, if they'll allow it, and take what you learn back once again to your own personal gardening projects.

If you can't find someone to work well with, purchase a good book about how to create and manage a house kitchen garden. There are numerous good titles--even some focused specifically on your region (methods vary considerably according to climate). Also, peruse the web sites that teach gardening. You can find tens of thousands of blogs about gardening, and even whole communities of "garden-bloggers." One good starting place is Growing the Home Garden that has a massive number of useful information and lists several best gardening blogs for beginners to explore. When you discover a home gardening site you prefer, don't just read what's already there, ask questions. Most gardening web sites' owners are happy to greatly help along with your gardening problems.