It's a great hobby, not a financial fix-it.

Media outlets are fascinated with green shoots—not the signs of economic health Ben Bernanke says we should be expecting, but literal green shoots. Gardening, like cupcakes and infant intelligence, is having a moment. Articles such as this one from the New York Times tie the tilling of the earth to our economic crisis. This MSNBC piece spells it out even more. Was your pay reduced? Have you been furloughed? Then start a garden and (green) thumb your nose at the rat race as fresh food literally drops from branches.

It's a nice narrative, with a whiff of pioneer spirit and "Yes, we can!" attitude. Unfortunately, the idea that gardening is going to solve household budget woes plus the obesity epidemic, to boot, is a bunch of fertilizer. Romantic notions offer poor returns on investment, and this fetishization of manual labor is no exception.

When you look at the numbers, one thing becomes clear: Gardening doesn’t offer a great payoff. Articles like this one from the Philadelphia Daily News draw on an annual survey published by the National Gardening Association, which polled 2,559 households around the country about their gardening habits. The association concluded that the average gardener saves over $500 a year and came up with this figure by calculating that each square foot of garden produces half a pound of produce during a typical growing season. With an average plot size of 600 square feet, that's 300 pounds of food. The association calculates this as having a value of $600, at $2 per pound. Subtract the $53 in expenses the average vegetable gardener spends annually on seeds, mulch, and the like (fruit tree growers spend more, herb growers spend less), and that leaves you with a profit of $547. Or does it?

Here in the Northeast, during the peak of summer I can get fresh, local tomatoes and bell peppers for about a dollar per pound at my local supermarket. Corn goes for pennies an ear, and so-called "pantry veggies," like potatoes and onions that come in a bag, can be found for less than that $2 price point for most of the year.

The one segment of the population that might realize some cost savings are low-income urbanites, particularly minorities. Low-income residents are often cut off from the warehouse-sized supermarkets common in the suburbs (and inaccessible by public transit) and have to make do with overpriced, subprime produce in neighborhood markets. Unfortunately, the Garden Association's research shows that only a sliver of gardeners—3 percent—use community plots, which is the only way to garden if you live in a densely populated urban area.

Even if $2 per pound wasn't more than the average gardener would expect to pay for in-season produce, there's another problem with the Gardening Association's math: Americans just don't eat that many vegetables. The average American ate 417 pounds of vegetables in 2007, the most recent year for which USDA data are available. A somewhat alarming 18.7 pounds of that is in the form of either prepared chips or french fries. That leaves 398.3 pounds per capita, another 106.9 of which consists of potatoes in other forms. Potatoes aren't a particularly popular home-garden crop; they fall at number 13 on the association's list of the most popular garden vegetables, behind tomatoes, green beans, and even radishes.