Abstract  The paper examines the relationship among household agriculture, wages and household structure using panel data on urban households from 1994–2003. Experts using cross-sectional data differ on whether Russian “dachas” or garden houses are a survival strategy that households use in times of economic difficulty or a hobby of the more affluent. This analysis uses time-series data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to assess the effect of household status on the likelihood of participation in agriculture in subsequent years. These data show that households turn to gardening after the onset of economic uncertainty. Estimates of the value of the harvest from dacha gardens suggest that they are profitable and that households make economic calculations. Finally, the regional labor-market participation rate is modeled as a function of garden land to show that where gardens are more prevalent, labor markets allocate a smaller fraction of the working-age population.