During 2008, my wife and I are tracking how much time and money we spend growing food in our garden. In my mind, March is filled with gardening activities. Not so much, as it turns out. I think April will also be light.
Planting seeds
Though we didn’t do much in March, we finally got to see some action from the plants. On March 1st, Kris planted the tomatoes and peppers (and some flowers). She spent 90 minutes sowing the seeds in special bio-domes. (“I don’t normally advocate one product over another,” she says, “but I really like these.”)
After the seedlings have made a good start, Kris hangs her grow lamp.
We placed two trays of seeds in our south-facing bay window. After they sprouted, Kris set up a grow-light to give the seedlings even more energy. (March is not exactly sunny in Oregon.) On March 24th, she transplanted the strongest seedling of each variety into a 4″ pot.
Can you believe they’ve grown so much in just three weeks? Amazing!
On March 15th, we fertilized the strawberries with Strawberries Alive. On the following weekend, Kris raked the leaves from the vegetable garden (we use them as a cover during the winter) and spaded one area. I’ll use the rototiller to work the earth in a couple weeks.
Through all of this, my peas have been growing slowly. (They’re so cute!)
I’m a little worried about the spotty germination, but I’m sure we’ll have plenty.
Also this month, we picked up a fully-functional upright freezer (the same form factor as a refrigerator) for free from one of Kris’ co-workers. This is a jackpot. It gives us a lot more room for food storage.
Conclusion
During March we spent $113 on organic pest controls and fertilizers for our fruit and vegetable crops. We also spent $16 to buy potting soil and a soaker hose. I used my Kill-a-Watt to measure the power consumption of the grow lamp, but it only uses a few pennies of electricity per day. Let’s call it a buck for the entire month, bringing our expenditures to $130 in March. Here’s the running total so far:
| Month | Time | Money |
| January | 4.0 hours | $27.30 |
| February | 2.5 hours | $0.00 |
| March | 3.5 hours | $130.00 |
| Totals | 10.0 hours | $157.30 |
You can read about my goals for this series in The year-long GRS project: How much does a garden really save?
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I’m actually interested in seeing how much your new freezer saves/costs you: energy costs vs. the changes to your food costs. I found that my food costs spike and fall more dramatically with the freezer, rising when I purchase a quarter of a steer or half a pig, rising slightly when I double a recipe to freeze half, and then falling dramatically on weeks when I only buy fresh veggies (I’m in a CSA).
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my husband has been gardening since he was about 8. He has a bean seed brought here from Italy from an uncle that he saves every year. He’s 48 now. I got into to gardening to spend time with him and it’s changed my life. We grow everything organically too. The act of gardening nourishes our souls, which is priceless. The food we get is a side-effect.
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Bit of a stupid question but did the bio dome come with seeds? It’s not really clear on the website.
Also got some tomato seeds from my in laws (Tomatoes in Spain are almost inedible) and planning on starting them in clean yogurt containers.
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sounds great! Though a word of caution. That upright freezer that you picked up for free may end up being worth a lot less to you than you imagine due to energy costs. I’d keep a close eye on it using your kill-a-watt.
The main design flaw in the uprights is that every time you open the door, the cold air inside the freezer spills out onto the floor, resulting in the compressor having to kick on and drag the temperature back down. (Remember that hot air rises, cold air falls) Chest freezers are much better in this sense as they don’t have an escape path for the cold air. Be sure to minimize the times you open the door as much as possible.
Also, a freezer is at its most efficient when it is full. If you only have a few items in there at the beginning of the season, you may want to bulk up the items by freezing water in old gallon milk jugs and using those to help. This is due to the frozen mass of the contents being much better at maintaining the temperature than the compressor.
Just a few caveats to be aware of. I hope your harvest is more than enough to make it worthwhile.
We will be getting a late start here, as we will not be able to start even prepping our garden until after we get into the new house the middle of May. Until then, we will live vicariously through your efforts.
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That’s good advice about the upright freeze, depending on its age it might be an energy sink for you.
This is a very clever series, I’ve always wanted to do the garden thing but we don’t get enough sun (it’s the way our townhouse is laid out, nothing to do with geography).
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I am also very excited about my garden this year. I grew up on a farm with eight siblings and we grew all our own veggies, plus we had cows for beef and milk and chickens for eggs. I am eager to reduce the chemical load in my food and get back to organic vegtables and fruits.
I’d recommend that anyone with such passions and interests invest in a subscription to Mother Earth News. The spring issues are chock-full of awesome money-savers for creating and maintaining a small garden, composting, and advice about fertilizer.
For example, I was going to rent a rototiller to turn up the soil on my 18 x 24 garden plot. But then I learned that that the better way is to cover the entire piece of land with newspapers for a couple weeks and let the newspapers kill the weeds for you.
Then you choose where your rows will be and pile on some local (usually free) compost in the rows (right on top of the newspaper), while putting down wood ships (usually free from a local stump grinder) in the paths. This totally negates my need for a rototiller and helps control the weeds all summer long.
What I didn’t realize is that when you till the entire plot, you turn up thousands of new weeds sprouts and give them exposure to the sun, thereby creating a virtual weed garden! I’m so excited that using this method will drastically cut down on my weeding time this year, plus I can use the established paths and rows for years to come. No more tilling for me!
In addition, Mother Earth News comments that many people spend oodles of money on chemical fertilizers when one of the best fertilizers is one we usually throw away: pesticide-free grass clippings. Grass clippings are also awesomely effective for weed control when you put a thick layer all around your veggie plants.
Check out http://www.motherearthnews.com…I think you’ll find that a $10 subscription will pay itself off with the first issue!
Good luck to all you fellow gardeners out there! Enjoy the experience!
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@Rob #3:
The bio-domes do not come with seeds. I often save seeds from my own garden (mostly flowers) or trade them with other gardeners. With crops like tomatoes, I grow one or two plants of many different types, so each seed package will last me several years, wrapped tightly in a ziploc bag in the fridge. Kris
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i’m also excited to see my plants getting bigger. since i’m growing in boxes on our deck, i haven’t had to buy anything but the seeds (also broke down and got tomato seedlings) and potting soil. we have had the boxes for several years.
good luck!
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I’m also a PNW’er (transplanted from a warmer clime), and have been eagerly anticipating the day I can finally plant my veggies (last year, amazing tomatoes, basil and peppers, this year adding some squash to the mix). Last frost here is soooo much later than I’m used to. . .
I’ve tried starting from seed before, but didn’t have much luck. However, I didn’t have a ‘grow lamp’. How much does this cost (other than the electricity)? Does the bio-dome eliminate the need for this?
Are you planning on canning your extra vegetables? Or just tossing them in the freezer? You may have discussed this in an earlier post, and if so, please point me in that direction. . . .
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My wife and I started a garden last year as an experiement in saving money. My grandfather always had a large vegetable garden and him and my grandmother would always can them for the winter.
Well, after adding up the cost of our garden; tiller rental, fertilizer, garden hose, hoe, shovel, seeds and seedlings. We spent a total of $235 for a handful of tomatoes, and two bags of green beans!
Not to mention all of the time we spent planting, and watering.
Oh well, at least we got the itch to start a garden out of our system.
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I’m sure the fruit and vegetables this will produce will more than pay itself off…. especially with the rising costs of produce these days.
They look good so far!
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this has inspired me to do a similar project. It’s a substatially smaller scale, I’ve spent $16 so far, and harvested $1 in parsely. How do you tally your water costs? I’m not going too this year, since watering the plants, the pavement, me and herself is my two year old’s favorite activity. Possibly the cost in oregon is negligable, but Texas is could be substantial. I was thinking I should try to figure that out for next year. I’m also considering how I should tally my savings. For instance since I am unlikely to pay for organic produce so my parsley saved at the non-organic rate. Since I always buy the cheaper items, should I tally a red pepper as saving the cost of a green pepper? Maybe two tallies- raw costs saved and added luxury benefit.
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I’m a relative gardening idiot (also completely an indoor/patio gardener), but I tried out one of those bio-dome things to sprout herbs and it worked fabulously.
Now I have more seedlings than I know what to do with.
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Great idea for a story! I just live in an apartment with a North facing window and don’t feel like it would be worth my time to do veggies in containers on the patio. I have had luck with herbs last year. This year I do have 3 herbs started from seedlings. Seeds are definately a bargain, especially if you can get them on sale!
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Great series, I will be following this one closely. My sister and I have often contemplated starting our own vegetable garden. I drive a 30-mile round-trip once a month to go grocery shopping, and we could do with some fresher produce (we often use frozen vegetables near the end of the month).
But, being dreadful gardeners, and our previous gardening attempts all having turned out quite futile, we often conclude that it might end up costing us more money.
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Just got pointed to your blog – great stuff. I’m on the learning curve with food production myself – we recently fled to a deeply rural island, where I’m trying to transform my pile of rubble and overgrown ornamental shrubs into something useful.
A previous poster mentioned the possible energy consumption issue around the upright freezer – would be very curious to hear about that. We’re on a solid grid but only wired for 70 amps, so we have to count watts (stereo+vacuum=boom, for example).
If the freezer turns out to be a big pig, would laying it on its back work? I’ve heard of people doing that with their fridges in genny-dependent situations.
I think food production is becoming critical for us peasantry. Local meat and dairy is being blocked by new inspection regulations, while big agribusiness puts on its Local(TM) Organic(TM) makeup.
If I can raise carrots more impressive than last year’s rather, ahem, puny bitter stubs, I might even try out a chicken or two.
Have to check out this bio-dome. Maybe I can make one myself (this year’s cash, if any, is reserved for flour, firewood, and dirt).
Everyone’s expenses seem high on the dirt+shovels front. Last year I spent about sixty bucks for several hundred litres of dirt, plus the cost of some seeds.
Water costs here are negligible (I live on the West Coast, up north, and it’s wet and forested here). I have a couple of hoses, some recycled buckets, some very cheap (sub-$10 each) light tools, and I’m getting along O.K. so far. I would advise people finding their overhead high to shop out of town, and buy soil and manure and the like in farm country if possible.
Anyway, I digress, as usual. Looking forward to seeing how your garden grows. It seems you’re a bit ahead of us seasonally down there – I’ve still got frost every morning and only the most tentative little buds are poking forth here and there.
Off to punch down my dough (it’s PIZZA NIGHT here hahahaaaarrrll drool slurp),
Lord Reptor.
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Kris says–
Well, some reader questions made me consult our utility bills for water costs last summer. Here in the great, wet, Northwest, we are lucky to have both cheap water and occasional rain showers during our growing season.
During the months when we don’t water outside at all, our water use runs $10/month. During the five months (May-September) that we do outside watering, our water bill averages $22/month. Subtract the inside uses and that means our irrigation outside costs us $12/month. I’d love to hear what other areas of the country/world pay in comparison.
Note: we choose not to water our lawn at all (meaning it’s crispy by August), so our outdoor water expenditures are split between the vegetable and herb beds, the fruit trees and berries and my flower beds. I’d attribute $8/month to edible crops of some kind. Our sewer provider is a separate utility and is a flat monthly fee.
Second note: We do have a shallow irrigation well that I can use until about July 1 (when it dries up). This is used mainly on the herbs. I also have a rain barrel I use to collect water for hand-watering newly planted seedlings and bedding plants in the flower garden.
I’m actually impressed our water costs are so low. When Jd & I bought our first house, we didn’t realize we had to pay for water. We watered that beautiful lawn every day the entire first month– May– until the first bill arrived. Surprise! Now we don’t prioritize a “perfect” lawn of grass, so it lets us spent our energy and money elsewhere.
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My tomato starts are really starting to pop. For some reason, the pepper seeds have been really hesitant this year.
I got too ambitious with the Portland weather in February, and put my pumpkin seedlings out, and they’re now no better than the compost.
That does seem to be a lot of tomato plants, though. I had only 4 plants last year (that were worth anything, at least), and still had more fruit than the family and neighbors could handle.
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Just thought I would add – if you’re going to give the gardening thing a shot, get biodegradable seedling trays that you can plant straight into the soil.
I got the plastic, ice-cube tray style ones and completely butchered my seedlings when I transplanted them into the soil.
Sigh…
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Is there a way to kick-start pepper seeds? I have been told that they like it warmer, so I keep a heater pointed at them while I’m home, but they’re not sprouting as readily as others in the tray. Note to self: pay attention to what comes up immediately and what takes a while.
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Where did you get the 4 inch square pots for transplanting the tomatoes? I’ve looked everywhere — Home Depot, Lowe’s, all the local nurseries. Nobody has them. homeharvest.com has them for $.29 each:
http://homeharvest.com/containergardenpotsplastic.htm
but shipping is close to $7.
grrrr….
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I really enjoy these posts, living in an apartment I get to garden vicariously through the photos and the explanations.
Not to mention it’s free for me too!
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@debtdieter
I am an apartment dweller as well – but don’t be fooled into believing that we can only do our gardening vicariously!! I am growing a huge (relatively speaking) “balcony garden” this year. I have tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, a bunch of herbs all which are going to be growing on my 6×8 balcony… You can do it too!!
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I’d love to see your balcony efforts too then ChristianPF!
We’re heading into Winter here in Australia, so I might be inspired to start my own come Spring!
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This year my husband and I decided to start a garden. We moved from a city to a place with some land.
We had a garden in the city; however, planted with plants that had already been started (and paid a pretty penny for them!). We had great luck with the zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries that year.
This year, we decided to start from seeds. I tried some seeds in a pot for a month and nothing happened. Went out and bought little greenhouses from WalMart (Jiffy brand: holds 72 peat moss pods: Cost $5.96/each), and planted my seeds, in 3 days our soybeans, greenbeans, and roma tomatoes sprouted. Today, a week and a half later, I had to take the lid off of the greenhouses because the seedlings grew so tall!
I highly recommend a grow light. We bought ours at Home Depot for $5.00, and put it in the light socket in the hall closet. The greenhouses (2 of them) fit perfectly on the top shelf along with room for my other pot of red raspberry chutes that came from gurneys.com too early (in my opinion).
One problem: I tried to transplant a couple of the soy & greenbeans after just 1 week in the greenhouses, and some of them did not do too well. I think I will have to take the advice from this website and wait until they are at least 3 weeks old. Thank goodness I didnt do all of my plants.
Our garden will consist of potatoes, tomatoes (roma, beefstake & globe), soy beans, green beans, zucchini, hot peppers, and red raspberries.
To save on room in our garden, I’ve made my own “topsy turvey” for the roma tomatoes (I have started many roma tomatoe plants because I am looking to make alot of spaghetti sauce this year). Not just one home-made “topsy turvey,” but 6 of them! The cost from TV: $9.99/2 of them. My cost: $1.25/each (containers from the dollar store, a yard of fabric from WalMart at $1.00, soil & rope to hang them). I am hoping to grow strawberries from them next year. Also, I am planning on planting my potatoes in mounds to save room.
We will see how much fruit we get from our labor.
~M
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