Gardeners Are Investors

It may be unusual, but I like to decide what vegetables to grow in the same way I pick stocks to invest in.

Gardeners are investors. We invest our time—lots of time—money, energy and effort into our garden. If we plan well and tend it daily, our garden pays big dividends.

Value Investing and Vegetable Gardening

AUDIO ARTICLE: Deciding What Vegetables to Grow

I’m an avid gardener, and an investor and investment coach for one of the popular and reputable investment education programs.

Investors are always looking at value as the key component in building their portfolio. Value investing is as much about choosing stocks with good value as it is choosing companies that reflect your interests and values.

Gardening is similar. We wouldn’t grow food we don’t care to eat, (values based). Nor would we choose plants that are overpriced. So no matter if the particular offering is a stock, a bond, a piece of real estate, a business, a commodity, or a flourishing garden, many of the principles are the same.

Investors like nonagenarian, Charlie Munger and his long time partner — also in his 90’s — Warren Buffet, are known to be very particular about the value of a company. It must suit their criteria of what makes that company “wonderful”.

Planning for Planting — the Garden Portfolio

So why not approach the garden “portfolio” with the same value-centered scrutiny? As we thumb or click through the various prospects featured in our newly arrived garden catalogues and articles, we need to keep practical principles in mind.

If we apply ourselves more rationally to the selection of what vegetable to plant, our garden is more likely to flourish. Like Munger and Buffet do with their investments, we’ll reap more rewards throughout the growing season, with a little bit of careful planning up front.

Charlie Munger on Picking a Company to Win (cued at 6 minutes in)

What Vegetables to Grow

Borrowing heavily from Charlie Munger’s BBC Interview, here’s how we can begin to load in our portfolio with quality selections. 

Ask and Answer these Questions:

• Am I capable of understanding this crop?
• If it’s an unfamiliar crop or variety, can I get to know its particular attributes and requirements?
• Do I really like to eat the plant’s produce?
• Am I swayed by the promotional hype (e.g. new, bigger, better, exotic)?
• What is this vegetable’s intrinsic value?
• Can it compete and flourish through the season(s)*
•  What will this crop require of me, the gardener, in terms of management capabilities, knowledge, and time? 
• Will its cultivation fit my style of gardening (part-time, full-time, raised bed, permaculture, organic, chem-free, etc)?
• How much time, energy, effort, and garden space am I willing to risk?
• As an “investor” would I expend a sizeable part of my bankroll on this food stock?
• Is it a good fit for my area’s growing conditions?

Consider Your Climate and Microclimates

This last question of growing conditions ties into your area’s climate and, very importantly, your garden patch’s specific microclimates.

We have both a hillside garden with mostly sun, and a lowland garden nestled in the woods. Even though our “upper garden” is miles to the north and 500 feet higher in elevation, guess which garden gets the most frosts? Oddly, it’s our lower garden. 

Beautiful Vintage Garden Graphic

Consider Your Garden’s Size and Sun

1. Consider your growing space – how long will it take up space in your garden
2. How much space and time will your crops take
3. Do you have enough sun for it
4. Is your soil right for it – or what kind of amendments are needed

What Hard Gardening Lessons Have Taught Us

Like many of you, we like to try out new varieties and new techniques. Sometimes, we forget to size our experiments appropriately. Here are a few illustrations of how the “experiment in small quantities” concept should have been applied.

Squash and Pumpkins Hog Space and Attention

We had high hopes of growing a bunch of squash and pumpkins of various types. Reviewing some of our 2018 newsletter issues, it’s easy to see how much attention we poured into coaxing our crops through the ravages of squash vine borers, squash bugs, and powdery mildew.

Squash and Pumpkins Need Lots of Sun

In the end, we obtained a relatively few number of squash and pumpkins. Also, we ignored an obvious shortfall of direct sunlight combined with a restricted growing space and tried to override the conditions of our garden setting by planting in larger quantities. 

Don’t Gamble With Your Garden Space

The parallel to value investors is that most have the greater proportion of their holdings in just a few “wonderful companies” and may experiment with other companies but in relatively small quantities. This is what we’ve now learned to do in the garden. We’ve learned not to “gamble” so much as go with our proven winners in larger quantities and allow limited space for trying new and unproven (for us) varieties.

But Do Try a Few New Things

This is how the “Las Vegas” bets are placed. We’re not gamblers, and while we’re all for trying small experimental plantings, it should be no more than 20% of our garden space.

Know When to Hold ‘Em and When to Fold ‘Em

There’s a saying in the financial investment world:

“Your first loss is your best loss”.

When we see our investment dropping and have an opportunity to cut short the losses, we often hesitate to do so. After all, it might go back up, right? It might. Think of the gambler losing at the roulette wheel putting it all on red “just one more time”.

Cut Your Losses and Move On

The same goes with a garden planting that is obviously not living up to its promotional glory.

Just a little tweak, or given time, or maybe a dose of compost tea, or whatever cure… and we tend to hang on. Yes, there are exceptional recoveries, but all too often it might be best to pull the plant(s) and put in something that you expect will do better.

We actually did this with a few items like the carrots that were not faring well. They got replaced with sweet potatoes that took off and yielded well in the “carrot box”.  We did the same with wimpy tomato plants and worm-infested kale. You only have so much space, and so much time-especially if gardening in the colder zones.

It’s OK to Dream Big

As our glossy garden catalogues arrive in material or cyber fashion, there’s always a bunch of new things to try out. Descriptions like AMAZING, GIGANTIC, SWEETEST, LEGENDARY, WORLD’S FIRST adorn the airbrushed photoshopped illustrations. And that’s just the tomatoes!

Though we’ve offered our take on how best to stay rational and pick your order with care, it’s not to say you shouldn’t expend a measure of what investors call “Las Vegas” capital.

Just a little mad money to play with. A roll of the dice, a pull of the handle, a little fun. And, who knows? That heirloom black and green striped tomato may turn out to be a champ! The deal is — if you lose — you don’t lose much. That’s nearly a direct quote from another well-known value investor, Monish Pabrai.

Growing New and Exotic Vegetables Keeps Gardening Fun and Fresh 

So when you’re considering what vegetables to grow, allow yourself some fun by growing something new each season. Don’t let not knowing about it, stop you. Do your research so you’ll know what to expect and provide, then dig in!

Growing new things is like a daily treasure hunt as you step out to discover the new plants growth especially. We’re enchanted with the old favorites too, but nothing like a new garden friend to bring a childlike delight to a gardener. what’s new in the garden each day.

New Vegetables and/or Varieties We’re Growing This Year

• ASPARAGUS (not a new veggie for us but in a new location in a raised bed vs. our hugelkultur bed
  • UPDATE: too soon to tell
• TOMATOES – new (for us) varieties, e.g:
  • Paul Robeson
    • UPDATE: Did great; we will plant it again
  • Juliet grape tomatoes,
    • UPDATE: Can’t vouch for Juliet because we planted it too late to thrive
  • Solar Flare, from Amazon or RareSeeds);
    • UPDATE: Did great; we will plant it again
• ARTICHOKES –
  • UPDATE: Failed; likely not enough sun under our wooded canopy.
• TREE COLLARDS –
  • UPDATE: loving this perennial vegetable and have planted new sprouts as well as pruned and planted stalks
• CORN –
  • UPDATE: didn’t turn out so great; likely not enough sun
• KOSMIC KALE – a bicolored kale we got live plants from Territorial Seeds;
  • UPDATE: ours got hit hard by voles before we knew it, but we’re trying it again this year and we’ll be ready to get rid of voles and moles
• SQUASH – NEW VARIETIES for us:
  • Delicata –
    • UPDATE: A WINNER! this one will definitely be a regular for us. It’s delicious with edible skin and is a productive, pest and disease resistant squash
  • Tetsukabuto –
    • UPDATE: loved this hardy, disease and pest resistant squash. It cooks to a consistency more like pumpkin. It can be cubed and roasted or baked in the skin halves to scoop out mash for pies and

Sprinkling in some new plants each season keeps the gardening adventure exciting.

Vegetable Garden Design 101: Have a Plan

Circling back to the major criteria for deciding what vegetables to grow, one vital overarching aspect of a rational selection is having a plan.

Map out your garden plan. It can be mapped out on the back of a piece of cardboard, scaled on a piece of graph paper, or colorfully displayed on a software program like our favorite “Garden Planner“. 

Having a defined garden plan will keep you on track and organized and sane when the garden starts growing like crazy.

Your are the Master Gardener of Your Garden

You are the architect, the builder, and the end consumer.  Ultimately, you are the investor who’s due diligence will make it all happen. The better you know yourself, your capabilities, the garden conditions, and each crop’s requirements, the better your garden will be.

Our Garden Planner and Planting Schematic

From latest Garden Planner (Partial View) Allows us to note the performance of each crop and compile historical data.

Create Your Garden Venn Diagram

Being a visual learner, I drew up a Venn diagram that helps clarify many of the variables that affect how a garden grows. It’s by no means a complete picture or listing of all the parameters, yet it helps us glean many of the variables that influence how our garden turns out.

This “inner circle” of optimum plants will comprise around three fourths of our garden space and time. 
~Coleman Alderson, GardensAll.com

Your Best Vegetables to Grow

Your Best Veggies to Grow Are Those That Intersect Each of These Three Areas

1. Microclimate 
2. Plant characteristics
3. Personal attributes/preferences

Chances are, many of the mediocre performers are in the double layer zones where two out of three circles overlap and these will be limited in space and number. Whatever newbies come along will be tested along the margins. It’s the same thing I do with investments.

We have no idea whether Charlie Munger or his pal Warren Buffet are garden aficionados. But if all they had to work with was a patch of ground and a seed catalogue, dollars to pumpkin seeds, they’d stick with the wonderful winners.

If they were gardeners, dollars-to-pumpkins, Munger and Buffet would grow garden winners.
~Coleman Alderson, GardensAll.com

Wishing you great gardens and happy harvests!