If you had asked me five years ago if I would spend part of the morning checking on tomato plants or celebrating the first strawberry of the season, I would have laughed.

Between raising two daughters with my husband and running two businesses, my days are carefully orchestrated. My calendar is full of client meetings, strategy sessions, school pick-ups, and the thousands of small responsibilities that come with parenthood. Gardening just didn’t fit the picture I had of my life.

I also haven’t been someone to meticulously track grocery prices or plan shopping trips around weekly sales. Convenience usually wins. But in recent years, even someone like me couldn’t ignore how dramatically the cost of fresh food has changed.

It’s not that we suddenly couldn’t afford to buy food. It was the realization that we were spending a staggering amount on produce that disappeared almost as quickly as we brought it home.

My 7 year old daughter could happily eat strawberries every day if we let her. Fresh herbs rarely lasted a week before wilting. Tomatoes, cucumbers, salad greens, and blueberries were staples in our house, but I felt like I was constantly replacing them.

Then my mom offered me a suggestion that completely changed the way I thought about our grocery bill.

My parents have always had amazing gardens. When I was a child, our garden was filled with flowers, herbs, and vegetables, and in recent years, it has expanded into a greenhouse growing everything from corn to melons, peppers, and more. I admired what they had built, but saw it as a retirement hobby, not something realistic for me as a busy businessman.

One afternoon, after listening to me complain once again about how quickly my daughters were finishing another container of strawberries, my mom simply said, “Why don’t you grow them?”

When he told me that their garden was saving them between $100 and $200 each month during the growing season (which runs from May to October where we live in Maryland), my perspective changed. The financial savings were impressive, but what intrigued me even more was the possibility of becoming a little less dependent on constant trips to the grocery store.

I started small

I decided to start with what seemed manageable: a few tomato plants, mint, basil, and a handful of herbs.

There was no grand plan to become self-sufficient or transform my backyard into a miniature farm. I simply wanted to see if growing some things myself would make a significant difference.

He did it.

What started as a small experiment gradually evolved into something bigger. Each season, I found myself adding another fruit, another vegetable, another lesson. Three years later, our garden is producing strawberries, blueberries, cabbage, broccoli, squash, peppers, watermelon, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, lettuce, herbs and more.

The financial impact also surprised me. During the peak growing season, our garden offsets approximately $500 in produce for our family of four each month. Items that once seemed to dominate every grocery receipt are often waiting just steps from our back door.

Fresh herbs are probably the most satisfying example. Before I got into gardening, I spent money on basil, cilantro, parsley, or mint just to use up a portion before the rest inevitably went bad in the refrigerator. Now I harvest exactly what I need moments before cooking. Nothing is wasted because nothing is forgotten in the fruit and vegetable drawer.

The same goes for tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce. Instead of adding them to every shopping list, we pick them ourselves for salads, sandwiches, or dinner that night.

Gardening is still an investment of time and money

Of course, gardening isn’t free. There are startup costs for raised beds (about $225), soil ($100), fertilizer ($60), tools ($100), and seeds and plants ($60).

There are also disappointments. Not all seeds prosper. Some crops produce more than others. Pests like caterpillars, slugs, and Japanese beetles occasionally remind you that you’re sharing the harvest with nature.

But unlike so many household expenses, the investment continues to pay dividends season after season for our family. Many plants return each year and each growing season teaches me how to be more efficient than the last.

However, the most significant return has had nothing to do with money. My daughters now understand that food just doesn’t appear on supermarket shelves. They have seen small seedlings become meals we share around our kitchen table. They celebrate the first ripe strawberry of summer. They run out to see if another watermelon has grown during the night. Vegetables become infinitely more exciting when you help water them and wait patiently for them to ripen.

As someone whose professional life revolves around strategy and deadlines, gardening has also become an unexpected form of stillness. There’s something deeply ingrained about going outside before opening my laptop, harvesting vegetables for dinner, or watering the plants without checking my phone every few minutes.

Ironically, what I once dismissed as just another responsibility has become one of the few activities that consistently draws me into the present moment.