Can You Replace Your Grocery Store Run with the Garden?

Growing enough food to replace your trips to the grocery store is harder than you might think, but there certainly are things you can stop buying from the grocery store forever once you start growing them in the garden. You might not eliminate your grocery store bill entirely, but you can sure save some money on each trip.

To clarify, I'm not talking about homesteading or living off the grid and hunting squirrels for protein. Uh-uh. I'm just talking about some simple things you can grow in a very small space, spend about five minutes a day tending, and then harvest enough of to meet your family's needs for the entire year.

Here are six things you can start growing right now and never have to buy from the store again.

Organic Chives

Let's start off with one of the easiest things to grow in the garden: chives. You can replace chives from the grocery store with very little effort. These plants are so forgiving and grow abundantly.

There are actually two types of chives you can grow. Garlic chives have flat stems, and onion chives are hollow tubes. Either way, they're so fresh and delicious. Trust me, they're going to be way more flavorful than the stems you buy in those little plastic pouches.

Chives are perennial, which means they're going to come back in the garden year after year. It's totally worth buying a little plant from a local nursery if you're not up for growing chives from seed (which is doable but takes forever). The plant should only cost you a couple bucks, and from that, you're going to have chives for life.

Plant chives in your raised beds or a container as soon as your soil can be worked in the spring, and then you can take your first harvest that very day. You should be able to continue harvesting chives through the spring, summer, fall, and maybe even winter—basically until there's a really hard frost that kills them. Chives will hang in there through light and moderate frosts. In the mild climate of Nashville, I can harvest chives from March all the way until December.

The magical thing is these things come back every spring! The minute the soil warms up a bit, chives start growing again. And then—get this—they multiply themselves. Your chives plants will spread out. You can divide those plants into two or three new plants and transplant them to new parts of your garden. Then keep doing that year after year until you have your own little chive farm.

Harvest from your chives each and every week, and when you harvest, cut some leaves for today and some to save.

How to Save Chives for Year-Round Use

Wash and dry your chives and then put them in an airtight container in the freezer. That's the easiest way to save chives. Another way is to preserve them in olive oil. Chop them up and then freeze them in an ice cube tray with some olive oil. Once the cubes are frozen, transfer them to a freezer-safe bag. Use the cubes to season your winter soups and stews.

You can also dehydrate your chives in the oven or a dehydrator. Chop up the dried chives and put them in a clean spice shaker or jar for future use.

Whichever method you use, you'll have a supply of chives year round. There's no reason to buy any from the grocery store because they're coming straight from your garden or from your pantry or freezer. Even if you're in an apartment, you can grow chives in a little container on your balcony. It's an easy, small plant.

Organic Kale Leaves

Kale plants are biennials, so they can stay in your garden for up to two years. During their active growing time, you can harvest so many leaves from just a couple plants. Kale is what we call a cut-and-come-again plant, and taking some of the older leaves encourages the plant to produce new leaves. Basically, the more you harvest the leaves, the more leaves the plant will grow for you.

Start kale indoors in winter, transplant it to the garden as soon as your soil can be worked, and then take double the leaves you need throughout the spring and fall, when kale is thriving. Use half your leaves fresh and save the rest. I give way more details in this post on growing a twelve-month supply of kale in the garden.

How to Save Kale for Year-Round Use

All you have to do is freeze your kale leaves in a ziplock bag to have frozen kale all winter long.

Frozen kale leaves can be used for pretty much any dish requiring kale (smoothies, juices, sautés, frittatas, omelets, soups), except for fresh kale salads. Your salad bowl is the one place you might miss fresh kale and consider buying kale from the store.

Organic Oregano

Oregano is a perennial herb from the Lamiaceae, or mint, plant family. Like chives, oregano comes back year after year and is an aggressive grower. Oregano is from the Mediterranean, so it loves sandy soil and lots of sun, though it can actually do just fine with less sunlight. It's what we call a cut-and-come again herb, and actually, the more you cut from oregano, the more it'll produce.

Grab a little oregano plant from your local nursery. (It'll quickly pay for itself.) I planted four tiny oregano plants in my kitchen garden here in Nashville, and I probably harvested at least four pounds of oregano last year. It's crazy prolific.

Harvest double the oregano sprigs you need every week. Enjoy half of your oregano leaves fresh, and then store the other half.

How to Save Oregano for Year-Round Use

Oregano can be dried or preserved in oil.

To dry oregano, you can hang up stems to dry or put them in a dehydrator. I love dried oregano because it's so flavorful. I actually have so many dried leaves right now that I ran out of jars for them—that's how much oregano you can get!

To preserve oregano in oil, chop up the leaves, put them into some ice cube trays with olive oil, and then freeze the cubes, just like you did with chives. Use the cubes next time you're making a sauce.

So no more plastic-wrapped oregano from the grocery store for $5.99, okay? You just need one plant from your local nursery for $2.99. Harvest from it every week, save half of your harvest, and you'll never ever have to buy oregano from the grocery store again.

Organic Spinach

Spinach is another leafy green that you can get from the garden and never have to buy again. You can sow spinach seeds directly in the garden or in a container when it's nice and cool outside and begin harvesting baby leaves in about 30 to 45 days.

Again, you'll do the double harvest thing. Harvest some spinach leaves to enjoy today in a salad or smoothie and save the rest. Do this throughout the spring and then again in the fall (or over the winter if you're in a warmer climate).

When you hit summer and the temps go over 75 to 85°F, your spinach plants will bolt (in other words, they're done). Spinach does not like growing in hot temperatures. You could replace it with other greens we call spinach that aren't really spinach (like longevity spinach or New Zealand spinach). If you only want true spinach, no worries. You've got all the spinach you'll need saved for just this moment.

How to Save Spinach for Year-Round Use

Spinach freezes really well, and you can use the leaves in many different ways when it's too warm outside to get fresh leaves from the garden. All summer long, you're making spinach smoothies and spinach casserole and spinach frittatas with your frozen spinach from the spring harvests. And just when you're about to run out of your frozen spinach stash, the weather is cooling off for fall and it's time to plant more spinach. By the time your garden shuts down for the winter months, you'll have rebuilt your supply of frozen spinach leaves thanks to double fall harvests.

If you follow this system—spinach from the garden in spring, from the freezer in summer, from the garden in fall, and from the freezer in winter—you can go a whole year (and many more years after that) without ever having to buy spinach from the grocery store.

Organic Garlic

You read that right. You never have to buy garlic from the store again.

Garlic grows in such a magical way. You put it in the garden in the fall by breaking a bulb into individual cloves and then planting each little clove about 4 inches apart. That garlic is going to sit in your garden over the next 6 to 9 months before each clove turns into a brand new bulb. Nature is amazing.

Garlic is what I call the lazy woman's plant. You really don't have to do anything to it. Throughout the winter, it'll put down roots; in the spring, it'll send up greens; and in the summer, you can pull up complete garlic bulbs.

After you pull up your garlic bulbs, you'll enjoy them in the kitchen, but you're going to save two or three cloves from each bulb. Guess what you're going to do with them. You'll plant them just a few months later (around October or November, depending when your first frost is).

How to Save Garlic for Year-Round Use

Garlic can just hang out in your pantry until it's time to plant the cloves you've saved from each bulb. If you use about one head of garlic a week in your kitchen, then you'll need 52 garlic heads for next year. You'll need to save and plant at least 52 cloves to have a year-round supply of garlic.

Once you pull up your 52 heads, you'll make sure to pull off a couple cloves to plant in the fall each time you enjoy your bulbs from late summer through next spring. By the time your garlic runs out, you'll be pulling the bulbs you planted in the fall. Repeat again and again.

You'll buy however many garlic bulbs to be able to plant 52 cloves of garlic, and then you never have to buy garlic from the grocery store again.

Organic Mint

I love mint tea. I drink one or two cups of mint tea a day. When I first started drinking tea, I would go to Whole Foods and buy their peppermint rooibos tea. Twenty dollars later, I'd ask myself, "What did I just do?" Since then, I've learned to grow mint so that I can make my own organic mint tea year round. And you can do the same.

Seriously, if you love the flavor of mint, you have to be growing your own mint. Grab a little mint plant from your local nursery to get started. Mint grows so easily that you actually want to put it in its own pot or container (otherwise it'll take over your other plants). Mint just grows and grows and grows. The more you cut it... you know the rest now.

Treat your mint just like oregano. Do a double harvest of the stems while your plants are thriving, some to enjoy fresh and some to save for later.

How to Save Mint for Year-Round Use

Mint is easy to dry. Once it's completely dried, the leaves will have a crunchy, papery texture. Break them off the stem and crumble them into a jar or sealed container. I like to use a dark container so that light doesn't get in and cause the leaves to lose flavor. That's all there is to having enough leaves to make as many cups of mint tea as you desire this winter.

There are other ways you can preserve mint. You can freeze the leaves whole or chop them and freeze them in olive oil or water. You can make a simple syrup with them if you're into making cocktails.

By the time your supply of mint leaves dries up in the late winter, it'll be time to enjoy fresh mint once more. Depending on your climate, you may have to start with a fresh mint plant. In warmer climates, mint should bounce back after winter.

Take These 6 Items off Your Grocery List

So we've got two plants from the onion family (chives and garlic), two leafy greens (kale and spinach), and two herbs (oregano and mint) that will no longer show up on your grocery store receipts. I covered these six plants, but there are actually many more herbs and veggies that you could easily grow a year-round supply of without being a homesteader or having a huge farm or spending all your time gardening. You can produce these 12-month supplies by gardening for just 5 minutes a day.

A year-round supply and all you have to do is harvest for fresh use and harvest for saving while the plants are thriving. The garden isn't just feeding you for today; it's giving you something for today plus tomorrow. When you see your garden this way, you start harvesting in a way that truly allows you to replace some of your groceries.

I'm not a homesteader. I'm not a canner or preserver. But I have replaced these six things in my kitchen with harvests pulled from my garden, and if I can do it, I know you can, too.

I'd love to help you grow these things. You can find grow guides for all these plants in my book, Leaves, Roots, and Fruit. Download your free 2024 Garden Planting Calendar to know when you should plant kale, chives, oregano, spinach, garlic, and mint in your garden based on your climate.

Thank you so much for helping to make it ordinary for all of us to grow a little bit of our own food at home once more.