Gardeners Need to Understand the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Gardening is all about making decisions, but we humans can be so irrational at times. Thankfully, by applying a little economics, we can waste less time, effort and money

Most people consider economics to be a little boring, and I would imagine that most gardeners are not thinking about economics when they are out in their gardens with the birds, bees and butterflies. But it would benefit them to dabble in it a little, because insofar as economics is about how to make choices in the face of a scarcity of resources, I think it has a lot to offer gardeners.

Gardening is all about making decisions, whether they are concerning what to plant, where to plant, how much to plant, or how much land to cultivate for planting, etc. As vegetable gardeners, each year we have a given set of goals, and we make decisions about how to allocate resources in our efforts to achieve those goals. For instance, one goal might be to grow a 4'x8' bed of carrots. There are a myriad of resources required to do that successfully, such as one's time, effort, the space required, the seeds, any soil amendments that might be needed, and any monetary costs associated with procuring those or other resources needed to grow the carrots. The decision to commit any of those resources to the growing of carrots comes at the cost of not being able to commit them elsewhere - and so one is forced to make choices in the face of a scarcity of resources, since none of us have unlimited time, space and money. These choices can be difficult for gardeners, and one can spend a ridiculous amount of time dithering over them - and still get it wrong in the end!