Garden value vs. cost of vegetable garden

Calculating the value of the vegetable garden has been an ongoing project this summer, though it's been difficult to keep track of every last bite we pull out of our yard. For the purposes of pricing what this stuff might be worth at the market, I'm using prices for regular commercial produce at the regular chain supermarket. The stuff I'm growing is organic, but I'm ignoring that to just focus on the basic price of vegetables at the store vs. what I can "save" by growing this things myself. I might consider revaluing this when I tally everything up at the end of the season.

The local farmer's market and whole food, for example, are charging an arm and leg this season for field tomatoes - compared to what the Shaw's charges for its hothouse tomatoes. To date, we've harvested:

• 8 lbs green beans (pole beans and haricot verts)
• 10 lbs of tomatoes (heirloom, yellow and regular red)
• 4 pints of red and yellow grape tomatoes
• 16 cucumbers (mostly marketmores, with some persians)
• 10 jalapeno peppers
• 2 sweet peppers
• 1 green bell pepper
• 8 bunches of carrots
• 3 lbs of snap peas
• 5 pints of strawberries
• several bags of bibb lettuce, spinach and mache
• 4 bunches of basil

That's $131 worth of food from the garden. Balance that against this year's cost of $208 for soil amendments, seeds and plant starts. It's difficult to calculate capital investments from years past for things like shovels, trowels, wheel barrow, etc., or for things like water and time.

We still have the corn, zucchini, leeks, red onions, pumpkins, more beans, chard, more lettuce, eggplants, more peppers, more cucumbers and loads more tomatoes yet to come....

The winner in terms of value of crop vs. total space and time consumed has been the green beans, particularly the haricot verts, which have taken very little effort, very little space and produce quite a lot.