DALLAS — A survey by the National Gardening Association found that a third of U.S. households now grow their own food. The pandemic created more than 18 million new gardeners, and now, due to inflation, that number keeps growing.

Dallas resident Michael Pratt started his current garden in the Lakewood area in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I got the idea of building the garden in 2019, so I was able to start to obtain some of the wood before prices started skyrocketing. Thank God I built it because you’ve seen what happened to wood. The pandemic afforded a couple of unique opportunities,” Pratt said. “Working from home became a thing. You can give a lot more attention to a home garden.”

Tomatoes in Michael Pratt's garden in Dallas. (Spectrum News 1/Stacy Rickard)

He’s been growing his own food, with a few trials and errors here and there, and saving hundreds of dollars in the process. He lived in New York, "where there was a farmers market on every corner,” before coming to Texas. That meant in order to find good quality produce, Pratt took matters into his own hands.

"I didn’t start the garden in order to save money on food. I started the garden because I didn’t like the taste of store-bought vegetables,” Pratt said. “My entire 12x12 onion patch was $9 of onion bulbs, that’s it. And I’ll have a couple hundred onions that’ll last the year out of it,” Pratt said.

Broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, peppers and many different types of tomatoes are just some of what Pratt no longer has to travel to the grocery store for. Amid the pandemic and a current inflation rate of about 8.5%, he said it’s definitely paid off.

“There's a lot of money to be saved,” Pratt said. “You're talking hundreds of hundreds of dollars a month. It's not insignificant. I can't tell you the last time I bought a vegetable.”

But that doesn’t mean Pratt hasn’t invested heavily into his garden, whether that be with actual dollars or sweat equity. Each of his plants is in a raised bed since Texas soil isn’t the best for what he’s trying to grow. He outfitted his garden with timed automated drip systems to save him the hassle. He also has a “grow room” for sprouting his seeds before giving the seedlings away or planting them in his garden.

Michael Pratt's grow room in his home in Lakewood. (Spectrum News 1/Stacy Rickard)

"There’s a misconception that gardening is going to be very expensive when you throw in all the things that you can purchase and do in order to be a gardener. While that is true, you can do that. I do it. I am at the beyond-enthusiast level. You don’t have to,” Pratt said. “It’s very inexpensive. Packets of seeds are a dollar. You can be successful. A lot of people think gardening is an art form. It's not. You just try something and you're like, 'Oh, I put that in the wrong spot. The sun's not what it needed to be. I'll put it over here next time.' And then you learn and over time, you get to be good. Gardening isn't hard."

Even his sister Debbie Pratt, who lives about an hour north of Michael in Celina, is getting into the gardening game. She lives 15 minutes from the nearest grocery store, which isn’t ideal. So she started growing things on her acre-and-a-half of land to save her the trip and some money.

“It does save a lot of money because with inflation and everything being so ridiculously priced, plus the fact of the amount of gas I have to spend to go to the grocery store. So I took advantage of it. It was kind of a 'why not?’” Debbie Pratt said.

The siblings say they often have more produce than they can eat themselves, so they’ve turned to giving it away to help others trying to lighten the grocery list. Debbie Pratt is a newbie gardener, having only started in March. If she has any advice for people wanting to become more self-sustainable, it’s to do your research.

“There's a way to plant so your harvest actually would be fruitful. So if you know that ahead of time, you'll know what to expect. I was fortunate enough to have an older brother who grows everything from seeds and he brought me eight tomato plants and five pepper plants and then I just kind of bought a bunch of seeds and just thought, 'let’s see what happens.’ Everything took off,” Debbie Pratt said.

Michael Pratt is an administrator of the Facebook group Gardeners in North Texas. He said it’s grown exponentially since he took over, and notes that many of the people in there are actively showing off their own gardens or asking for advice on how to become a better gardener.

“That group has become a massive resource of everybody sharing their trials and tribulations of what’s working and what’s not. That alone has accelerated everyone’s ability to reach success faster,” Michael Pratt said. 

About 30 people ask to join the gardening-based Facebook group daily. If you're interested in joining, Pratt says don't hesitate to send a request and get your garden growing.