Growing my own veg?

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I have a small garden where I could put a couple of raised beds. My neighbour plants tomato’s in the summer and grows potato’s in pots.
would it work out cheaper to grow my own veg throughout the year? How big of a space would I realistically need to feed a small family?
I’m unsure if it’s cheaper to grow my own or continue buying as this would partly be to save money

If you have a garden and pots and tools and seeds etc growing your own can save money. If not it can cost more than buying them. It depends on what you grow though. I always grow the expensive things like berries and rhubarb, not the cheap stuff like potatoes and carrots.

ti feed a whole family completely would take a lots of space and a lot of time.

I’m partly worried about the pesticides that are sprayed on veg and eczema runs in the family, so I would want to grow the cheaper veg too.
I definitely want to grow berries and rhubarb as well. I was thinking about rhubarb in particular earlier it can make a nice crumble. But I want to start with the easier veg as I don’t know about growing berries. Is it straight forward?
It’s a small space so I doubt we could eat entirely off of it but it might save some money in the long run. It would be expensive to buy everything for it initially though

If you plant a rhubarb crown this year it will be ready to harvest in two or three years.

Grow the unusual stuff and stuff that travels badly; yellow, white or stripy beetroot, chard, broad beans, peas (just to be eaten straight out the pod). Courgettes (because they just keep going), unusual pumpkins.

I have a large vegetable garden and an allotment, it does make a dent in what we buy - but do you have several half days a week to do it?

The gardening board is the best place for advice on growing veg.

it will be more expensive to grow cheap veg like carrots. Tomatoes are usually worthwhile and taste better. Homegrown peas and sweetcorn are nicer too. Baby salad leaves are cheap, quickand easy to grow. Fresh herbs are worth growing and fruit. You will need good protection from slugs, caterpillars, birds and other wildlife!

I grow my own veg. I’m not sure it saves me a huge amount of money but it definitely tastes much better than shop bought.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/5044273-the-vegetable-patch-2024

There is loads of advice on the Gardening Board.

My experience is that it isn't cheaper growing your own, as a beginner you get hit alternating between gluts and famine plus even experts have to deal with veg being seasonal unlike in the shops.

As PP has suggested focusing on things you can't buy in the shops like fancy varieties or stuff that is best super fresh like peas is most rewarding.

Giving up large bits of garden to veg that is cheap and always available only to see it all eaten by caterpillars is not fun. For this reason cabbage is now banned from my garden.

Sorry - I think there is no way this will work out for you. I tried tomatoes for 2024. Grew from an existing tomato and had lots of little pots. But then as they grew, invested in grow bags - expensive for 4. I could have got 12 or so punnets for the cost of the grow bags. Then tomato feed. That was the cost of 2 or 3 punnets. Started to get a crop just as tomatoes were at their cheapest in the shops. Then blight came with some bad weather and I lost the majority overnight. Every year we potter away and get one or two squash, some berries or whatever. But the result is never anything more than a trophy. There would never be the variety or quantity to feed a family. I’d say it is a hobby but not a way to feed a family. Sorry.

I didn’t realise there was a place for gardening here

It’s not really cost effective but is enjoyable. I grow tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the greenhouse. Rhubarb and strawberries in the raised bed. Sometimes peas and beans. Gave up with root veg as they always got eaten by bugs.

Tomatoes
Courgettes/marrow
Runner beans
Potatoes
Rhubarb
Bay, mint if you can get it going, rosemary, thyme.

They are the easy things.

Broad beans are buggers for blackfly!

As a beginner, I grew potatoes, carrot, beetroot, tomatoes, salad leaves, strawberries, blackberries. Enjoyable and good for my mental health, but it would have been cheaper to just buy the produce.

It's suprisingly difficult and also quite expensive.

You'll need netting to keep off the butterflies from laying eggs on your green leaves, slug pellets to keep off the slugs. Unless you're in a sunny area or you have some sort of cover I find only cherry tomatoes will ripen - I had masses of large green tomatoes last year that never turned even orange.

Everything else is more numerous, determined and hungry than you - that's the birds/squirrels and multitude of insects.

Potatoes are fairly easy and successful though for most people.

Raspberries spread easily where I am but are not sweet like commercial varieties.

I am not very good at it though, so more experienced gardeners may make it work.

I had netting cages all over the cabbages to keep butterflies out.

I used to call them my butterfly sanctuary as there were more inside the cages than out.

Strawberries straight from the bush are amazing though.

Growing veg is actually quite hard once the first 2 years are over, and you need to fail and fail again in order to learn enough to make it cheaper than buying.

Plus it depends on space and time you have to dedicate to it.

In a small space I'd grow herbs and tomatoes. Herbs can elevate your cooking whereas potatoes are hard work, need loads of space and feeding.

It's a bit obvious but grow what you like to eat.

I grow stuff that's nicest fresh...so asparagus (needs a lot of space), sweetcorn (same), new potatoes, peas, B-road beans.

Then stuff that's easy and doesn't take much looking after....mostly fruit so berries, rhubarb etc

Stuff that is expensive for what it is...salad leaves and herbs. I use a lot of coriander and parsley so that probably saves me money.

But to feed a family would need a lot of space and a lot of time to prep and store veg. It arrives in gluts so you have to preserve or freeze it.

Not 'proper' growing (I'm planning on new raised beds by March) but I saw an online hack to cut the bottom off broccoli stalks and then put them in water on the windowsill to regrow. I've had a handful of tenderstem-like broccoli off each stalk since I started.
I also grow 'spring onions' which are just really onion sprouts from the root end of a couple of onions at a time: great for salads and ramen.

I just have a little glass trough on the kitchen windowsill. Costs nothing and does give small but useful gains.

Gooseberries and lovage are good to grow and hard to buy.

It can be more expensive and less successful to grow your own than to buy veg. I focus on what I think gives me the best return: chillies, tomatoes, courgettes, herbs, mini-salads. The mini-salads I grow inside on windowsills. I have some chillies inside and some outside. The best thing I grow is pea shoots: just an ordinary box of marrow fat peas, grown in plastic mushroom tubs with a few cm of soil. Put the peas on top, quite thickly. They shoot up really quickly, and I cut them at about 15cm. You can get several cuts from one layer of peas. And they fit really neatly on a windowsill.

Mangetout peas and climbing french beans for more expensive veg and heavy crop in a small area. Perpetual spinach/chard for cut and come again greens. Early potatoes in tubs maybe. Courgettes are easy and heavy crop, but take a bit of space.

I’ve never managed to grow peas successfully - the pigeons like them too much.

I have one raised bed in my very small urban garden and really enjoy growing veg. I don't save any money though. It's just a hobby.

As already said I wouldn't rely on home-grown to feed a small family.

you only need a couple of years like 2024 (terrible growing conditions - very little warmth in the sun and excessively wet and windy), and you'll be hot footing it down to the Coop or Aldi in despair

The best advice I can give and I'm far from the expert, is to use the coming year to experiment with some easy things like chard, rocket, tomatoes (warning, they are very labour intensive but there is nothing as divine as the scent and taste of a proper homegrown tomato), varieties of lettuce, French/Runner beans that you grow up a wigwam.

if you have young children, do get them involved, they will love growing their own veg! Different squashes and courgettes are great for kids.

The easiest things to grow imo are potatoes and perpetual spinach.

potatoes you literally stick a potato in the ground and then keep piling up the earth around it as the plant grows.

perpetual spinach isn’t actually spinach but you put in a seed and it does it’s thing and then you use it like spinach.

everything else imo is a bit trickier. Berries on bushes are easy but the birds like them. Strawberries are easy but the slugs love them as do rodents and birds.

As long as you are realistic... go for it.
Despite last year's lousy weather, I now have a freezer full of 'easy to grow' veg... rrunner beans (you only need a couple of plants as they go nuts) courgettes... one plant will do most families (I planted wayyy too many and was taking piles of courgettes to work!) , tomatoes.. in pots or the ground.
Potatoes.. just grown in buckets, or bags for life.. there is lots you can grow without tons of space. I now have an allotment but before that grew in pots ann bags in the garden.
I don't bother with peas (pigeons!) or fruit, as everything eats them before I do!
It's great fun.