Well, that depends. If you've paid $5 for a punnet of lettuce seed, or a packet of hybrid watermelon seeds guaranteed to fruit in a cool climate, and the snails eat the lettuces and the watermelon seeds don't germinate in a cold, wet spring, you've now spent $10 with nothing but grubby hands to show for it.

There's also the cost of the fertiliser, the snail bait, the tools, the gardeners hand scrub to remove the ingrained dirt so you don't have people staring at your black-rimmed fingernails next time you meet for coffee...

Until about 50 years ago, most gardening was free, unless you were wealthy and had a gardener or ordered rare roses or camellias et el. I grew up in a time when most people had veggie gardens, fruit trees, and chooks and the corner store definitely did not stock fertiliser, or any pesticides beyond refills of fly spray for your pump-action fly destroyer. But the gardens produced, magnificently.

Fruit trees grew from the seed of neighbours' fruit, varieties shown to do well locally. The best veg were allowed to go to seed each spring, well staked so they didn't fall over with the weight of seeds. One lettuce can give over 1000 seeds. I keep "dried on the vine" beans each year to plant their seeds next spring. As long as the seeds aren't hybrid, you'll get extremely fresh seed that hasn't been exposed to heat and storage.

Strawberries grew from next door's "runners". If it grows, it reproduces, from seeds, tubers, cuttings. Haul yourself down to the local library and find a good book on how to grow your own without buying a thing. I know they exist, because I've written one (New Plants from Old) but there are at least two other titles in print that are excellent.

Fertiliser came via the chook shed, the compost heap - usually more a pile of rubbish that eventually decomposed rather than true compost that heats up and breaks down fast. But it swallowed dead leaves, lawn clippings and all scraps the chooks or dog didn't want. There was much competition for the droppings of the retired horse that once pulled the baker's cart.

Canny gardeners suspended barrels of water with a bag of manure in it for liquid fertiliser, and also put in green leaves from thistles and other high-nitrogen plants. The result looked like weak tea, but the vegetables grew beautifully.

Most gardeners have accumulated tools, often good quality ones passed on by parents or grandparents. But you can do without them. Wheelbarrows are fabulous, but any old sheet or blanket can be spread out and weeds and other stuff piled in it and carried. For a long time I had a favourite spoon I used for putting in seedlings or rows of seeds. It was a tough, thick metal spoon, found in an op shop - modern spoons tend to bend - and did the job as well as any trowel. If you create an above-ground garden with compost on top of a thin layer of newspaper, or better still, bare ground, you don't even need a spade. Nor do you need fences unless you have free range chooks, inquisitive wombats, gourmet wallabies, possums or extremely energetic dogs who like to dig bare dirt.

One of the most important ways to have free food is to learn what to eat in what season. As I write this, the broccoli is producing beautiful large heads ready to pick, the red cabbages are starting to form the lovely heads we will be eating in spring, as well as caulies and asparagus. The carrots are winter sweet.

When you grow your own, you learn to eat according to what is in the garden rather than according to a recipe. It will also save on gym memberships or various other forms of exercise or meditation.

But yes, it needs work, about an hour or two a week - less time that it takes to battle through a supermarket. Medieval philosopher, doctor and musician Benedictine Abbess and herbalist Hildegarde of Bingen talked about the "green force" that imbued people who worked or sat or walked among green and growing things. I believe she was correct. There is both peace and energy in working in the garden, although it is all too easy to get carried away and keep going long after your knees and back are screaming "stop at once, you fool!"

Gardens flourish best if they are tended with experience and knowledge. On the other hand, they also produce magnificently if you have neither, and simply ask or look up anything you need to know whenever you meet a problem. Prepare, plant, feed, water, then eat, just as humanity has been doing for tens of thousands of years.

1. Build a chook house from recycled materials; acquire chooks; and use the fresh manure in your compost heap.

2. Start a compost heap (you don't need a commercial bin).

3. Lay cardboard or thick newspaper, well wetted so it doesn't blow away, over the lawn or weedy areas so the ground is vegetation-free for spring planting.

4. Choose the best veg to keep for seed. Stake them now so no one accidentally eats them.

5. Plant apple, peach, apricot and other deciduous tree crop seeds that need winter chilling to germinate in spring.

6. Find some gardening friends, to share knowledge and produce and the occasional pot of marmalade.

7. Hunt out the unexpected edibles of Canberra and learn how to cook or eat then, from thistle buds and leaves to sorrel, hawthorn berries, Himalayan pears, japonica fruit, crab apples, dandelions, primulas, cumquats, calamondins, and much else.