Is Gardening Cheaper Than Groceries? Eggplant ROI

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Eggplants are one of my favorite things to grow inside my apartment.

Maybe it’s a nostalgic thing.

When I was starting to grow larger vegetables, eggplants gave me a lot of trouble so whenever I see one in my gardens now I feel a small sense of pride.

Eggplants are also so unique.

There are hundreds of fun eggplant varieties that you’d never come across IRL unless you grow them yourself.

I love these fun purple pumpkin ones, these pretty stripped globes and these dark Japanese types.

I get another surge of satisfaction knowing that my homegrown eggplants literally aren’t for sale at any conventional grocery store.

And overall, the eggplant growing process is very satisfying, from start to finish.

Eggplant flowers are delicate and pretty – more so than any other vegetable flower. Although eggplants can be hard to get going initially, once they produce, eggplants produce.

I’m overflowing in eggplants these days.

And eggplant plants are long lived – unlike tomato plants, an eggplant can keep churning out eggplants month after month.

My current indoor garden has 5 eggplants all over a year old. They look like mini tree shrubs at this point!

But are eggplants worth the time investment?

Let’s look at the ROI of growing eggplants indoors.

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I typically grow eggplants in these floor gardens, but any large indoor garden would work!

Do Indoor Gardens Save You Money?

Today’s post is a continuation of my series on Indoor Gardening vs Groceries.

You can read my initial post here, which covers how to measure the value of a indoor garden, calculates the return on an indoor herb garden and compares which Aerogarden gives you the most bang for your buck.

Gardening can be an expensive hobby.

While skeptics love to jump to conclusions and say that indoor gardens aren’t worth the money, the truth is gardening can be an expensive hobby, whether you do it outdoors in soil or indoors with a hydroponic system.

Anyone whose shopped for wood and compost at the store will know that building a healthy outdoor garden bed can easily cost hundreds of dollars upfront.

Indoor gardening is much the same.

Read more: How to Start an Indoor Garden

It can be as low budget or high-end as you like, as DIY or fancy and high-tech.

As I’ve built out my indoor apartment garden over the years, I’ve experimented a lot!

I’m always trying to grow as much healthy, pesticide-free food as possible for the lowest reasonable cost.

Calculating ROI for various vegetable categories helps me get a sense of what’s ‘worth it’ to grow at home over buying at the grocery store.

So let’s examine eggplants.

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Is Growing Eggplants Indoors Worth It?

I love growing Asian eggplants.

They have thinner skins and less seeds than American eggplants, so they taste much sweeter and better in my opinion!

I also love growing eggplants in fun colors, like white, orange, green and deep purple black, as well as eggplants in unique shapes.

Here are some fun eggplant varieties I’d recommend:

  1. container eggplant
  2. Thai eggplant
  3. Japanese pickling eggplant
  4. Japanese round eggplant
  5. Chinese string eggplant
  6. striped Italian eggplant
  7. Rosa bianca eggplant
  8. Turkish orange eggplant
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japanese-pickling-eggplant
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You can grow all different types of eggplants in different indoor garden setups.

And because eggplants need quite a bit of space, I’d recommend growing them in large hydroponic gardens:

  1. Lettuce Grow Tower
  2. Letpot Max
  3. Aerogarden Farm
  4. Aerogarden Bounty Elite

Lettuce Grow Discount Code

Use SHER125 for $125 off any farmstand

 

LetPot Discount Code

Use INFLUEN10 for 10% off Amazon

Use SSG15 for 15% off site wide

 

Is It Economical to Grow Vegetables Indoors?

To calculate if eggplants are ‘worth it’, we can use the concept of ROI:

ROI (return on investment)

ROI = (Harvest value – Costs) / Cost

Harvest Value

At my local grocery store, organic Asian eggplants cost $3.99/lb.

I’m growing two varieties of eggplants in my Aerogarden Farm: this long skinny Chinese eggplant and this medium Japanese type.

Eggplants start producing 60 – 70 days in, or around 2.5 months in. Once they get going, they’re quite heavy producers and continue to push out new eggplants every 2.5 weeks or so.

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harvesting Asian eggplants that I grew inside my apartment

Conservatively, each month I’m able to harvest 3 Chinese eggplants weighing ~152 grams each, and 6 Japanese eggplants weighing ~62 grams each.

In total, that’s about 828 grams of eggplant a month, or 1.83 pounds.

I’ll estimate that my first full harvest occurs in month 4 and continues consistently through the end of the year.

In the first year, I can grow $107.64 of Asian eggplants.

growing-eggplant-roi

Production value:

= 1.83 lb of eggplant x $3.99 value x 9 months

= $65.72

Eggplant Growing Costs

A pack of heirloom eggplant seeds costs $3.99 a pack.

I purchased two packs of different Asian eggplant varieties. I planted just 5 seeds in my indoor garden, so the individual seed cost is pretty negligible.

Other supplies for indoor gardening include the seed baskets, sticker labels, humidity domes and sponges.

I re-use all of these from planting to planting except for sponges. Hydroponic sponges cost 5 cents each, or $0.25 to grow 5 eggplants.

In total, supplies cost me $8.23

indoor-gardening-where-to-buy-seeds-kitazawa-asian-seed

Supplies cost:

= $3.99 /seed pack x 2 + $0.05 sponge x 5

= $8.23

Electricity Cost

The main cost associated with growing vegetables indoors is electricity.

The Aerogarden Farm 24 uses 126 watts of power and costs $8.98 to run each month. I used a Farm 12 to grow eggplants, so the electric cost for growing eggplants is half this, or $4.49.

(You can find an in-depth breakdown of Aerogarden electricity costs here)

12 months of electricity costs for the Harvest total $53.88.

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Electricity cost:

= $4.49 cost x 12 months

= $53.88

Eggplant Garden ROI in Year 1

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5.8% ROI

$65.72 in produce value

$53.88 in electricity costs

$8.23 in supply costs

Growing eggplants in an Aerogarden Farm is just slightly profitable in the first year, with a 5.81% ROI!

It’s a good thing I get a lot of joy out of growing eggplants, because they’re essentially a breakeven crop in the first year due to the heavy cost of powering the Aerogarden Farm.

Let’s look at year 2.

I’m now in my second year of growing the same eggplants and they’re still as productive as ever.

Without the cost of supplies, the ongoing ROI of growing eggplants is just electricity.

Eggplant Garden ROI in Year 2

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22.0% ROI

$65.72 in produce value

$53.88 in electricity costs

Growing eggplants becomes more profitable with time, once the seed and supply costs no longer factor into the equation.

It would also be cheaper to grow the eggplants in other hydroponic machines!

Smaller systems like the Letpot Max or Aerogarden Bounty use less powerful LEDs and cost less in electricity.

The Lettuce Grow tower grows up to 36 plants with one set of lights, so it’s also more economical.

Overall, despite the low to medium ROI of growing eggplants, as long as I grow hard-to-buy varieties I still feel like I’m getting my money’s worth :)

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