High-Yield Investments : No, money doesn’t grow on trees. But there’s more than one way to reap green. Organic gardeners who skip the supermarket in favor of the back yard get produce that’s not only fresher, but cheaper.

While many gardeners today cite great taste and avoiding chemicals as reasons to grow their own food, there is another important reason: It’s cheaper.

Even with the toil and time spent--typically five or six hours a week after the garden is planted--gardeners say they are genuinely saving money when they grow it themselves.

Keeping costs down in the garden, resulting in cheaper food than can be bought at the grocery store, is not difficult, they say. Most items, beyond seed, can be scrounged. And growing food organically is not only a health-conscious decision, but also a means of eliminating the expense of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.

Here’s how three Orange County gardeners have enjoyed the fruits and vegetables of their labor with minimal cash investment:

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“I absolutely save a lot of money,” said Douglas Stone, whose organic garden is in a space about 50 feet by 40 feet in his Buena Park back yard.

He’s been gardening for more than 15 years, since his mother introduced him to growing vegetables at the community gardens near their home in Long Beach.

He grows everything from seed, which is much cheaper than buying plants from a nursery and just as easy, he says. A few plants may be lost to the trial and error of learning what seeds should go directly into the ground and which should be started in pots first, but that’s a small price.

“Even an expensive packet of seeds is probably only about $2.50 for about 50 seeds. That’s a bargain no matter how you look at it,” he said.

“Right now you pay about 50 cents a head for cabbage at the store. I have about $10 worth growing that only cost me the $1.50 for the seed pack.”

For ease, he has broken the garden into raised beds about 8 feet by 8 feet. “I like that size because I can reach into the middle without having to compact the soil by walking on it,” he said. Scrap wood from friends and a few feet of 89-cent bender board built Stone’s raised beds. “I buy a bale of straw for about $5 to lay between the beds so I can walk out here without tracking mud back into the house,” he added.

Stone said he gardens organically both to save money and to ensure his family is getting chemical-free vegetables.

“I had a friend ask me why I’d grow something as cheap as onions. It’s because this way I know what’s gone into them, and they have a better flavor,” he said.

“There’s a good feeling in knowing that you can grow food,” Stone said. “I feel I’m not only saving money. . . . This way I can be semi-self sufficient. To be honest, I don’t know why more people don’t do it.”

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Ian Thompson is a botany student at Cal Poly Pomona and lives in an apartment in Fullerton. Although he gardened intermittently as a child, Thompson wanted to apply what he has learned about growing food in school. A vegetarian, Thompson said his goal is to grow enough food to get him through an entire year without having to buy vegetables from the store.

In March, he began gardening at the community gardens at the Fullerton Arboretum. He gardens organically and grows his plants from seed. “I didn’t want to spend the money on chemical fertilizers and pesticides,” he said. “I think chemicals have their place in agriculture, but not in a garden setting.”

Thompson took advantage of a friend’s problem with invasive bamboo to make stakes for his garden. Another friend with a horse donated 300 pounds of manure to fertilize the garden’s soil. “I bought cottonseed meal as a general fertilizer that cost about $5. I chose it because it’s relatively cheap, and it’s organic,” he said. “I spent another $6 on fish emulsion that I’ll use to feed the plants.”

His biggest gardening expense went to renting the 15-feet-by-15-feet plot at the arboretum. Annual cost to garden there is $25, which includes water, plus an additional $15 for mandatory membership to the arboretum.

“Seeds were my next big expense,” he added. Thompson bought three years’ worth of specialty seeds from the Native Seeds SEARCH catalogue, which offers seeds from plants traditionally used by Native Americans in the Southwest.

“I choose them because I don’t want to plant too many hybrids for political reasons. There’s a general movement trying to combat the decrease in biodiversity in seed stock,” he said.

The native seeds are slightly more expensive; Thompson spent $95 for about three years’ worth of seed.

Thompson had his parents subsidize the seed cost.

“They want fresh vegetables but don’t garden,” Thompson said. “That’s a great way for anyone to cut costs--have a neighbor or friend help with the costs and share in the yields.”

Among the scrounged items he uses are plastic milk containers, which he used to create a sort of time-release watering system. “I make tiny pinholes in them and then bury them between plants and will fill them with water on really hot days to augment the regular watering.”

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Eunice Messner, who recently became a master gardener after completing a course from the Fullerton Arboretum, has been growing vegetables and fruits on her 45-degree slope in Anaheim Hills for more than 20 years.

With the exception of some concrete blocks for a terrace wall and the drip irrigation, Messner said, she spent very little putting her garden together. “I was given things from friends who were tearing down buildings and such. Once you start asking around, it’s amazing how much you can get,” she said.

She also recycles household items for the garden when she can: plastic milk containers are used as mini-hothouses for pepper plants.

Now that her garden is established, Messner says, the cost of watering it is the only real investment. Her monthly water bill, for both house and the half-acre garden, averages $62 a month.

“Growing food from seed is the best way to grow things; I think everyone should do it,” Messner said. “We need that knowledge. It’s disappearing, and if there ever came a time when we had to grow our own food, most people wouldn’t know how.”

Messner harvests her own seed. If she wants a new variety, she also stays away from hybrids.

“I always get open pollinated seeds, not hybrids. If a plant is a hybrid, it means all the plants will ripen at the same time because they are not dependent on insects. Open pollination plants means you’ll have a longer season,” she said.

Messner said non-hybrids are healthier and do not attract as many damaging insects as hybrids. “That also saves money, because you don’t lose as much of your crop to insects.”

In addition to the better taste and cost effectiveness of gardening, Messner said, growing plants by seed offers the gardener a wider variety of foods than can be found at the average store.

She grows such exotics as dwarf papayas, passion fruit and eight varieties of bananas. She said growing subtropical fruit, which ripens in our winter, assures her fresh fruit year-round.

“I also don’t pay the high price of buying things out of season or exotics,” Messner said. “I grow fruit that I know costs as much as $15 a pound in the store.”