Growing a Vegetable Garden – for Fun or Profit

So you decided to start a vegetable garden. It may be just a hobby or a supplement that will help the home budget situation. Whatever be the case, it can be easy or hard – depends upon you and your approach. It can also be costly if your plan is to be featured in the Better Homes & Garden Magazine. In the scenario of saving money, one must consider the cost of produce at the local store plus the cost of transportation to get the kitchen supplies and the produce to prepare them. This applies to items required in order to keep your vegetables for use in winter cooking – so adding the cost of canning equipment should be included.

Foods You Can Grow Cheaper and Better Than Grocery Store Produce

The price of food has made everyone redo their budget. However, there are ways to cut corners and still get the food required for a balanced daily diet. And with the art of home canning coming back – probably because of the economic atmosphere, and the fact that foods taste better when prepared in the home, gardening is becoming more than a hobby. Sally Herigstad writes in her article 5 Foods It’s Cheaper to Grow …

I’ve dallied with gardening on and off for years, but with prices at the supermarket higher every time I go, it’s time to get serious. I want to grow a garden that saves a significant amount of money. There’s one catch to that plan: It’s easy to spend more on a garden than you will ever get out of it. Seeds are cheap, but they are just the beginning. William Alexander, the author of “The $64 Tomato,” learned that the hard way. The title says it all, but the dirty details reveal he spent $16,565 building the perfect garden and $735 maintaining it for one year. Amortizing the initial costs over 20 years, adding this year’s expenses and dividing the result among all his produce, he figured his 19 Brandywine tomatoes cost $64 apiece.
Whether you save by gardening depends largely on where you live, what you grow and how well you resist slick gadgets and miracle solutions. If you’re looking to save money rather than to start a hobby, here are five garden crops likely to give you the best return:

Is Bush Administration Planning An Air Strike Against Iran in August?

Asian Times, Bush Plans Iran Air Strike by August, Muhammad Cohen, May 28^th 2008 …

Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear. The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC’s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds’ stated mission is to spread Iran’s revolution of 1979 throughout the region. …

Political Snippets – May 29th 2008

Investor’s Business Daily … [quoted from Patriot Post]

Back from the front, Gen. David Petraeus called on Congress Thursday to begin considering a drawdown of U.S. troops after five years of war. Violence in Iraq has plunged to its lowest levels since 2004, and al-Qaida is a tattered shadow of its former self—key leaders dead, successors weak and recruiting down. ’My sense’ Petraeus said, ‘is I will be able to make a recommendation (in the autumn) for further reductions.’ This is no Saigon-style exit, but a coming victorious end of a long conflict. U.S. forces have pounded al-Qaida into irrelevance. Using highly disciplined Special Forces strikes, advanced intelligence and communications, and local allies in the right places, 155,000 U.S. troops have been crushing a vicious enemy motivated by no rational forces in a war with no precedent. They are winning against all odds, overcoming not just terrorists, but other obstacles such as a lumbering Pentagon bureaucracy and weak-kneed Western intelligentsia whose media toadies trump every military error and harp on every isolated bad deed. Now proven wrong, these same critics retaliate by ignoring what is a very big story. Worldwide terror attacks have fallen off 40% since 2001, according to a study by Canada’s Human Security Report Project, and support for al-Qaida in the Arab world has collapsed. The study found terror attacks had been over-counted because Iraq War atrocities distorted the figures. Security gains elsewhere included even sub-Saharan Africa, where the improvement was called ‘extraordinary.’ Just as the conflict in Iraq is coming to a close, two related terror wars—in Spain and Colombia—are also seeing signs of victory… From the deserts of Iraq to the villages of Spain to the jungles of Colombia, these victories against terrorist groups are all linked. They are the result of using proven tactics, holding together resolutely, cooperating with other nations to share and deliver intelligence, and forming united fronts. When this happens, terrorists cannot flourish. Recent successes show that these wars are winnable.