Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for August 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
After late July’s blistering heat, August has been relatively cool around Portland. Our fruits and vegetables have been producing excellent crops. Kris is constantly busy in the kitchen, canning and preserving food. We’re eating fresh salsa all the time. And hard as it is to believe, I’m almost sick of blackberries.
Fresh berries in a bowl of cereal == a great breakfast! Photo by Kris.
This is actually the best year we’ve had for blackberries. They started producing at the end of July, and there’s been a non-stop flood ever since. Sometimes — in mid-winter — I think I want to plant more blackberries. But during the month of August, I’m reminded that this is a silly idea.
The blackberries aren’t the only prolific producers this year. Our young plum tree is going gangbusters. It yielded its first small crop last summer, but this year it’s really loaded. And Kris’s cucumbers are the most eager growers of all. She has more cucumbers than she knows what to do with and has been taking the excess to share with co-workers.
Also, our tomatoes are doing much better than last year. The cool June in 2008 stunted the crop. We only had 12.88 pounds of tomatoes in August. This year we picked 31.39 pounds of the fruit — and even then we felt this was a little low.
Not everything has produced well, though. July’s heat ended our blueberries early. In fact, we’re unhappy with the blueberry/gooseberry/currant patch, so we’re going to rip out most of the plants and replace them with new ones. Our current blueberry plants are transplants from the neighbors, and they’re 25 years old. They’re weak producers. Time to put in something that will produce fruit worth picking.
Summer harvests can be beautiful. Photo by Kris.
Still, harvest season is in full swing. Here’s the complete tally from our garden in August:
- 19.34 pounds (8.780kg or 29-1/4 pints) blackberries @ $2.49/pint (~300g) = $72.87
- 3.00 pounds (1.361kg) elderberries, for which we have no value
- 1.61 pounds (0.729kg) plums @ $1.49/pound = $2.40
- 4.20 pounds (1.906kg) pears @ $0.99/pound = $4.16
- 0.44 pounds (0.200kg) apples @ $0.99/pound = $0.44
- 2.15 pounds (0.975kg) new potatoes @ $0.99/pound = $2.13
- 2.06 pounds (0.937kg) beets (~3 bunches) @ $1.99/bunch = $5.97 approx.
- 6 zucchini @ $0.49/each = $2.94
- 93 cucumbers @ $1.29/pound (about 5 cukes) = $23.99
- 0.56 pounds (0.256kg) green beans @ $2.49/pound = $1.39
- 31 chili peppers @ $0.29/each = $8.99
- 1.63 pounds (0.738kg) cherry tomatoes @ $2.49/pound = $1.84
- 29.76 pounds (13.509kg) tomatoes @ $1.99/pound = $59.21
Our harvest this month totaled $186.33 worth of produce — and that’s without some freak crop blowing the lid off the values. (Last month, we discovered that our red currants are worth quite a bit, which distorted the totals for July.)
This year, for the first time ever, Kris entered some of her produce at the county fair. Her dilly beans took first prize (out of ten entrants). When I picked them up after the fair was over, the woman who returned them to me raved about the beans. “They were so good,” she said. “I had to copy down the recipe.”
Kris’s prize-winning dilly beans. Photo by Amy Jo.
We continue to receive “free” produce from here-and-there. Friends and neighbors share their surplus, just as we share our surplus with them. Last weekend, for example, the old couple next door brought over a wheelbarrow load of pears. The seventy pounds of fruit they gave us kept Kris canning all day Saturday, and yielded 16 quarts of sliced pears in syrup, 7-1/2 quarts of pear sauce, and 5 quarts of dried pears. This “free” produce isn’t included in the totals below.
Here are this year’s totals through the end of August:
| Month | Time | Cost | Harvest | Month | Time | Cost | Harvest | |
| Jan 09 | 3.0 hrs | $131.15 | — | Jan 08 | 4.0 hrs | $27.30 | — | |
| Feb 09 | 12.0 hrs | $36.67 | $10.00 | Feb 08 | 2.5 hrs | — | — | |
| Mar 09 | 4.0 hrs | $1.00 | $5.00 | Mar 08 | 3.5 hrs | $130.00 | — | |
| Apr 09 | 3.0 hrs | — | — | Apr 08 | 5.5 hrs | $28.51 | — | |
| May 09 | 15.0 hrs | $98.55 | $5.97 | May 08 | 5.5 hrs | $110.89 | — | |
| Jun 09 | 7.0 hrs | — | $78.37 | Jun 08 | 7.0 hrs | $0.79 | $50.83 | |
| Jul 09 | 7.0 hrs | — | $243.10 | Jul 08 | 11.0 hrs | $20.94 | $123.68 | |
| Aug 09 | 12.0 hrs | — | $186.33 | Aug 08 | 8.0 hrs | — | $123.94 | |
| Total 09 | 63.0 hrs | $267.37 | $528.77 | Total 08 | 47.0 hrs | $318.43 | $298.45 |
Things are looking good! Better weather in 2009 combined with more effective efforts on our part has created a far more profitable garden project. And again, that’s even though we’re not particularly frugal gardeners.
Final word
This garden project is not a formal experiment. Kris and I are long-time hobby gardeners, and we have set ways that we do things. This year, we’re trying to incorporate some new ideas from GRS readers, but most of the time we’ll do things the way we have for nearly 15 years.
We’re not trying to be 100% organic (though we are mostly organic through our normal practices). Nor are we trying to be 100% frugal. Instead, we’re trying to see just what our garden costs and produces based on our normal habits. We hope the results of this experiment will help us find new ways to economize and to improve our crops.
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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Love the garden posts. They keep me inspired for the garden we plan on starting next year.
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Our garden was a complete failure this year. A family of rabbits found their way to one garden and decimated carrots, tomatoes. Deer took care of the blueberries and raspberries. The heavy and constant rain in June, July and August stunted the tomatoes and peppers. We have plants that have been struggling without sufficient sunlight for sevral months. The only thing we harvested was basil and parsley. The local farmers co-op lost most of their tomato plants to fungus. We done most of our produce shopping at the grocery store.
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I am having my best tomato year ever. I wish I had thought to weigh the tomatoes, but I didn’t. Today I picked a tomato the size of my hand. From my small green bean crop (first time planting them) I have frozen 7 quarts of beans for the winter. For the past few years my cukes have been pathetic, but not this year. We eat them every single day. My garden gets larger every year and I love it.
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What is Kris’s recipe for award winning dilly beans?
I’ve got a pretty good one:
http://dadcooksdinner.blogspot.com/2009/08/pickled-dilly-beans.html
But I’m always looking for new recipes, and gingered dilly beans sound delicious!
MikeV
dadcooksdinner.blogspot.com
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Our zuchinni plant got ate up by earwigs, soo much it became dead. We got one Zuchinni off it.
Our pumpkin plant got ate up dead by bugs.
Our three cucumber plants yeilded 1 cucumber. We might get a couple more.
Our two tomatos plants has tomatos, the plants grew taller than me, the first 10 tomatos off the plant were all split, too much water I suppose. The other tomatos might do better.
From free produce I canned, 21 qts green beans, 12 pints green beans, 4 pints dilly beans.
From free produce I canned 9 qts peaches.
From free produce I canned 9 qts Tomatos.
Planning to steam juice grapes in the next couple weeks, again free produce.
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Ginger Pickled Beans
2 pounds fresh green beans, trimmed to fit (standing) in 4 pint canning jars.
4 cloves garlic, peeled
4 tsp. dill seed
4 tsp pickling salt
4 1-inch pieces of peeled ginger root
2 ½ cups white vinegar
2 ½ cups water
Into each of 4 sterilized pint jars, place 1 clove garlic, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp dill seed and one piece of ginger root. Neatly pack the beans into the jars.
In an enamel or stainless steel pot, heat together vinegar and water until boiling. Pour over beans, leaving a 1/2″ headspace. Trim any beans that are sticking out of the liquid. Wipe the rims with a damp paper towel and add lids and screw-bands.
Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
So easy!
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Nice bounty! But no greens in your garden?
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Thanks, Kris!
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I’m not much of a gardener, but I just wanted to say: what great pics!
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Honestly this is the first time that I’ve ever been excited to read one your gardening posts. Two things did it for me: 1) the big vivid picture of the cereal with blackberries in it, to which I can totally relate because I love to have fresh berries in my cereal too … 2) the chart with numbers for each month and totals per year, which caught my attention because of the potential for several hundred dollars in savings over time. Thanks for opening my eyes to new possibilities.
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So Inspiring. Love it.
My garden has been hit and miss. Big thing for me this year (lets say this is my 3rd season) is growing from seed. The 21 tomatoes plants did not yield like I would have wanted, but I took notes.
Made pickles for the first time….and that made me happy.
In Zone 9, with zero to one frost days, I can plant a whole new crop in the months to come.
You guys have inspired me and I LOVE reading your posts.
As always the motivation behind my garden is to teach my kids (4 and 2 yr old twins) where there food comes from.
my victory garden is at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91287&id=722211530&l=22f6823970
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I have only one thing to say, i just love fresh berries in that cereal bowls.anyway, nice site!
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I hear you on the cucumbers — probably my garden’s best producer — I’m so sick of them!
I’m curious to know if you reseed during the summer, or if you’re going to for the fall? I just replanted sugar snap peas for the fall and am considering more lettuce.
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I always smile seeing the garden entries. My garden produced very well this year but since I live in the deep south all the produce you are harvesting at this time finished for me back in early July. Im in the process of putting in my winter garden this week but will have to wait a few more weeks to get the lettuce in. I really enjoy your posts especially the garden posts. I wish I kept such good records. Maybe next planting season.
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I just came in from picking 9 butternut squashes – anyone know what organic ones go for?
The Mrs. is busy putting up homemade ketchup. I wish I could say that the tomatoes came from our garden, but we continue to struggle with them. Only enough for fresh eating. The bulk tomatoes came from a local farmer.
Still have zucchini and yellow squash coming on. See our garden here.
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Tomatoes have been almost a write-off due to the excessive rain.. same with the beans, because the rainy summer brought out the slugs and snails in HORDES. ANd earwigs? Don’t talk to me about earwigs. However-the tiny wild black raspberries along the trails out back were tremendous! I must have picked 8 quarts at least! Some of those went into luscious wild black raspberry jam, and the rest are frozen, to be matched up with Chambord, creme fraiche and a fine butter pastry shell, for Thanksgiving, Christmas or tuesday. Mmmmmm! I love harvesting from the wild!
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Our lettuce, tomatoes, and beans rotted from non-stop rain. (A check of weather.com shows we’re outdoing Seattle by far.) The broccoli survived the flood, then immediately bolted in the 95-degree weather that came next. Anything that survived after that was eaten by the slugs frolicking about in the wet slop.
Honestly, gardening no longer seems worth it. Year after year we break our backs and freak weather takes it all away.
We made our problems worse by using a crappy, leaky compost bin that attracted groundhogs, skunks, and voles from the entire tristate area to feast on our yard.
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Wow, nice pictures and progress JD! I think it’s more economical buying your fruits and veggies, but it’s definitely more fun to grow your own it seems.
I’ve got a garden with a pear, apple, lemon, and plum tree, but man… it takes A LOT of work to keep the fruits edible due to the bugs, constant water etc. It’s nice to do, but it’s better to outsource imo!
Best, RB
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“I’m almost sick of blackberries.”
You make me want to cry. Where I live (overseas) a bag of frozen blackberries would cost $20. Needless to say, I don’t buy them, but try to get my fill of blackberries whenever I can get home to Oregon.
I can hardly stand to read garden blogs right now. My garden started well back in Feb when everyone else was stuck in rain and snow, but by May and June, it got so hot I couldn’t water enough to keep everything alive. I think I’m going to have to try an over-winter garden this time.
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Our garden is very strange this year. Here in Michigan we’ve had a colder than normal summer and more rain than usual too. The corn is slow, our 2nd planting (planted in early June) may not ripen at all. The tomatoes are slow and not all that great – kind of like refrigerated tomatoes. But I did can some tomato sauce the other day anyway. The potatoes did very well, as did the broccoli, cabbage and beans. My beans flowered a second time so now I’m picking again and plan on making your gingered dilly bean recipe. Zucchini did well and we have raspberries coming out of our ears (I’m freezing them each day after picking). Oh, and cucumbers – not so good but did manage to make some pickles. The best ones were the half sours – yum!
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Alas, the mass amount of rain we got ruined much of our garden. It rained almost all of July. We did get a reasonable crop of potatoes (red potatoes, very delicious).
Tomatoes did OK, as did the radishes and carrots. Beans, pumpkins, watermelon, squash all died.
We had about 4 solid weeks of rain. Rain. And more rain.
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I note in your list of expenses that water isn’t included. Because we pay for water here in Oregon, I wonder how much watering you need to do and what it costs? I always figured it was part of the cost of having a garden here.
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I have a hard time thinking of an Oregonian actually planting blackberries when I was busy trying to eradicate the stray vines from my yard when I lived there. My father actually lost a small cabin on the coast of Washington to blackberries (they took over and knocked the cabin down). After getting our watering schedule down, we’ve got tons of summer squash and spaghetti squash–I have no idea what happened to the acorn squash I planted, though. Also had lots of Swiss chard, the cucumbers are coming on strong, and we ate all the beets a long time ago. I planted more the other day. The carrots are doing well, too, and I planted lettuce in pots so I snip some each day. I’ve made several batches of pesto that I’ve frozen. The big disappointment was the tomatoes–six plants and finally three of them are starting to really grow and blossom, but I doubt they’ll set fruit by the time the weather changes. I’ve gotten a few cherry tomatoes, two really small “regular” tomatoes and several that tasted terrible. I bought canning jars at a garage sale last spring in preparation for canning tomatoes, but I guess I’ll be buying apples for applesauce instead. Next year. . .
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@ #2 Khürt
No rabbit and venison for dinner?
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I always enjoy these posts, J.D.! Congrats to Kris on her award-winning beans!! There’s nothing quite like the feeling of seeing a blue ribbon on one’s own work.
Shirley
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Not normally a fan of the garden posts, but I like the photos in this one. We’ll be starting our own garden next spring, although not with any intention of saving money with it.
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Just thought I should let you know. I order elderberries from Oregon, because you just can’t find them in Boston. I pay $10.78 a pound, just so you have some basis for cost.
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For the first time in my middle age life I grew tomatoes that looked like they could have come from a store. I still can’t believe they are mine.
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You can make wine from blackberries, can’t you?
Major drought here, so very little garden action. I have some figs in the freezer to make chutney with when it gets a little cooler–I try not to do much canning in hot weather because it heats up the kitchen. Did not pick any mustang grapes this year because it was just too hot, although they did still produce.
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I love the garden pictures and would definitely like to see more of them–they are inspiring! I also wish everyone would include what state they are in–it’s easier to relate to their posts that way.
Thank you from Alabama!
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I’m writing from Poland. You’ve inspired me to actually keep track of my garden produce for this year. I just started harvesting July 15, so I’ve been getting things like zucchini since then, but we’re really starting to get things now.
We were on vacation for a week and I came back to an abundance of zucchini/summer squash, tomatoes, beans, a few cukes, though most have died already, and I have some peppers ready. Lots of pumpkins coming and we ate corn on the cob yesterday. I’m writing it all down, but htis is the first year I’ve done so, so I have no basis of comparison as far as produce goes. It’s been a cool summer here, so no record breaking pumpkins.
I’ve canned 3 huge batches (5x, 6x, and 9x the recipe) of zucchini confetti relish which I tend to give away to people who are hungry and approach me about food. The idea came from a lady who made the comment once to me, “If we could feed the hungry with zucchini, we’d be all set.” I decided to try to find something they do like since many people don’t know how to fix it except fried with onions and kielbasa.
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My sense of envy of your garden project is only surpassed by my sense of amazement. I only wish I had enough usable land to start something like this. Forgive me, I am a little newer to the blog and this is the first time I’ve read of your gardening.
No matter what you do or where it ends up, I would be sure to take a step back and admire what you’ve done, because it is truly wonderful!!
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Having seen the Julie & Julia movie more times than I should admit, here’s an idea for the extra cucumbers that y’all are growing:
http://dietingmadedelectable.blogspot.com/2009/08/braised-cucumbers.html
While I’m not sure this is the actual recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking(since it calls it a “condensed version”), it looks delicious and from the blog and a couple of comments, it seems to live up to its reputation from the movie and Julie Powell’s original blog.
I, too, love the garden posts!
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And here is the actual blog entry from the Julie/Julia project. It is actually a dish called
Cocombres Perseilles
WARNING: LANGUAGE ALERT..swearage in the following post
http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/10/27.html
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Thanks for the garden update. It’s always a favorite post to read.
I made dilly beans a few weeks ago but if I get another round of beans, I’ll give Kris’s version a try. Thanks for the recipe.
I’ve had TONS of zucchini off one plant–close to 30 of them. We’ve eaten, frozen, and given them away. Tomatoes are coming on with a vengence. They are the bulk of our garden. I’ve already canned some bruschetta topping and chipolte salsa but large batches of salsa are to follow. Will be Christmas gifts for the neighbors. Frozen tomatoes, tomato juice, and tomato sauce to follow.
Carrots, peas, parsnips were a bust.
Vegetable gardening is a true pleasure–especially when there is a crop to harvest.
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This year, I decided I liked gardening so much that I teamed up with a friend and we grew extra produce to provide a kind of farmshare to two families. So far, we’ve done shockingly well with blight (a big problem in the Northeast) and have gotten a lot of tomatoes; we also had a great year with green beans, although we didn’t grow enough to distribute *and* put up.
We grew potatoes for the first time this year with good results; I’m especially excited about that because they can be grown in five-gallon buckets on the edge of a driveway or porch, saving ground space (which is in short supply where I live) for other crops.
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JD: I might have missed it, but do you plant herbs? I know we are saving $1-3/bunch on fresh basil, thyme, rosemary, and parsley this year. We’ll freeze a bunch at the end of the season and use it much of the winter.
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Hello All. The growing season in the western Corn Belt has been abnormal to say the least! This has got to be one of the coolest summers on record in the upper midwest. Other than 2-3 weeks of high heat at the end of june-early july it has been a litterly cool summer. As of last night temps were to fall into the upper 30′s in northern iowa. Rain has also been a concern. most of iowa is above normal to extreemly wet for late August. The gardens are hit and miss as you may expect. Cool season plants have done well; lettuce, cabbage, strawberries etc. Warm season plants Tomatoes, eggplant, basil, etc. are kinda stuggling. All in all not a bad year for gardens. Just wish we could get an “old fashoned” summer sometime. I would love to see what this garden could do with normal temps and rainfall. Next year I’m going to concentrate on strawberries as I sell them and try to put in more perenials like asparigus and raspberries. might cut back on tomatoes and put in more herbs, beans and peas. Also more peppers/chilies. I’m also trying to streamline some gardening so it doesnt consume so much of my time and energy. I enjoy the garden but there are times when too many things are going on at once and time is a precious commodity! Realy enjoy all the garden stories and tips. I have gardened more or less for thirty years and have still learned some new ideas on this site. Hope everyones gardens continue to grow and prosper. See ya later.
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My parents are big on planting vegetables and they like to can pickles and tomatoes. I don’t even have a house right now but when I do I will definitely be trying my hand at gardening. It’s more of a family tradition than anything.
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I was really sad to leave my vegetable garden to go work on a sustainability project in Hawaii (okay, not that sad, I left England for Hawaii and visited Portland on the way) but I came back yesterday and had a pumpkin the size of a soccerball on there, along with plenty of leaves and a happy ending to the pathetic tomato plants I put in as a last resort. I grow everything from seed to keep costs down and things have done very well this year with minimal input.
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All produce is organic
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4166
Be critical in your analysis and divorce yourself from emotion and hyperbole
Just my $0.02
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