Backyard AbunDance
- Jizzy Green
- Aug 18
- 3 min read
This blog made me do a happy Dance in my Kitchen! Call it abun-dance!
🌱 Our Backyard Supermarket Project – One Year of Growing Kai 🌱
What started as a simple project to satisfy my curiosity — and to see just how much food we actually grow — has blown my mind! I always knew our backyard provided a lot, but now that the stats are in front of me, I’m humbled and awed at what a small patch of turf can produce.
Back in August 2024, I suggested to my husband that we log every single bit of food we brought in from the garden for a year. Armed with an accurate digital kitchen scale, we tracked the date, type of produce, and weight. Sometimes we forgot to weigh produce before giving it away, but mostly we remembered to do it. It was a year-long project, at times tedious, and then at the end of it all, adding up the pages and pages of numbers felt like brain gym and eye-weightlifting — but the results were definitely worth it!
On our ¼-acre section (not all dedicated to food — there’s still the house, sheds, driveway, water tanks, lawn, etc.), every available space has been turned into edible landscaping. Around 50 fruit trees and bushes, plus 10 raised veggie beds provide us with 60–80% of our veggies depending on the season. It isn't a huge set-up, but certainly more than enough for our needs.
So what did we achieve from August 2024 to August 2025?👉 1,147kg of fresh, nutritious kai!
If we’d bought that produce at $10/kg on average, it’s a saving of over $10,000. That’s money literally growing on trees — money many households could use for bills, kids’ needs, or the bank-draining mortgage.
Of course, it’s not all easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! This year my cauliflowers were decimated by slugs. One bitterly cold night, while others were tucked up beside the fire, watching their favourite Netflix series, Mike and I were out there with a head torch hand-picking 470 little blighters off the plants. They didn’t see the next sunrise — but at least they’ll return as compost for the next crop!
And yet, the wins far outweigh the losses. After two previous years of disappointing tomato crops, this year was a bumper one:
🍅 83kg of tomatoes (my freezer and pantry can vouch for it!).
🥒 40kg of cucumbers (not counting all the gherkins I forgot to log).
🥒 61kg of zucchini, including some hefty Rampicants weighing 1–3kg each!
Why did we do this? Because saying “we grow a percentage of our food” never felt convincing enough. So now we have facts to back it up — and a renewed sense of awe for what can be achieved in even a modest backyard.
I hope this inspires you to start your own “Backyard Supermarket.” It saves money, builds resilience, and puts real food on your table. Now… if only I could figure out how to grow toilet paper! 🌿
What started off as a long term project to satisfy my curiosity and to help me share the benefits of growing our own kai, has ended up blowing my mind! I knew we grew a lot of our food, but now that I have the stats in front of me, I am humbled and awed that a small patch of turf (our backyard) could produce such an abundance of food!
🎉 Our Backyard Supermarket – One Year of Growing Kai at a Glance🎉
🌱 Project Goal: Track every harvest from our ¼-acre backyard (Aug 2024 – Aug 2025).
📏 Method: Logged weights of produce using a digital kitchen scale.
📊 Results at a Glance
🥬 Total Food Grown: 1,147kg 💰
$ Value Saved: ~$10,147 (at average $10/kg)
🍅 Top Crops
Tomatoes: 83kg → worth ~$1,162 (at $14/kg)
Zucchini (incl. Rampicants): 61kg → worth ~$671 (at $11/kg)
Cucumbers: 40kg → worth ~$800 (at ~$20/kg)
💡 Why It Matters
Equivalent to saving $10K a year – money that could cover bills, mortgage, kids’ needs, or sports activities.
Grows food resilience: fresh, nutritious kai at your fingertips.
Shows what’s possible on even a modest backyard!
😂 The Ups & Downs
Win: After years of disappointment, a bumper 83kg of tomatoes!
Loss: 470 slugs decimated my cauliflowers
🌟 Takeaway Message Your backyard can be your own supermarket. It’s not always easy, but the rewards are huge — for your wallet, health, and community resilience.
✨ Backyard Supermarket Totals 2024–25: 1,147kg @ $10 per Kilo = $10,147 saved ✨Sweet! Who want's an extra $10K a year for a holiday fund? Get growing!!
