Sixty years of Missouri gardening boiled down to one chart: what a square foot of dirt is really worth, crop by crop. Print it and plan next season around it.
One basil plant by the door replaces a $2.99 clamshell every week from June to frost.
A $3.50 packet of lettuce seed grows more than thirty bags of salad if you cut and let it come again.
About twenty cents a square foot. Ruth will tell you plainly: buy it.