{"id":1532,"date":"2008-01-06T11:10:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-06T19:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2008\/01\/06\/year-long-grs-project-how-much-does-a-garden-really-save\/"},"modified":"2023-12-07T11:20:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T18:20:20","slug":"grs-garden-project-how-much-does-garden-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/grs-garden-project-how-much-does-garden-save\/","title":{"rendered":"The GRS garden project: How much does a garden really save?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kris and I are huge fans of gardening. We grow our own flowers, herbs, fruit, berries, and vegetables. We’re not able to supply all<\/i> of our needs, but we do what we can. For the past two years, I’ve argued that this is an excellent way to save money if<\/i> you have the time and the space. But is it really?<\/p>\n During the next year, Kris and I plan to track all of our work and expenses in the yard. I’m not going to tabulate how long it takes to trim the laurel or the boxwood, but I will track the following:<\/p>\n For example, when Kris places her seed order in the next week or two, I’ll note how much she spends for a packet of tomato seeds. I’ll keep track of how much she uses her grow lights (using my handy Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor<\/a>), how much water and fertilizer we consume, how many tomatoes we harvest, and how much that would have cost us at the store.<\/p>\n I’m going to compile a whole lot of data.<\/p>\n On the last Saturday of each month, I hope to provide an update of our progress. At the end of the year, we’ll see our savings, and how much it cost us to save it. This isn’t going to be a precise experiment \u2014 there are too many variables involved. But our results should be able to tell us just how worthwhile our gardening hobby is.<\/p>\n Past entries on gardening include:<\/p>\n Our first step? Browsing the seed catalogs to decide what we want to grow this year!<\/p>\n January is always a slow month in the garden, but it’s also full of promise. It’s time for our first chores of the year!<\/p>\n Early in January, Kris and I spent fifteen minutes together in the yard re-staking our fruit trees. We have two apples, a pear, and a prune. They’re inclined to grow a little crooked, so every spring we make sure they’re securely fastened to their stakes. It looks like we should also be doing this every autumn. Cost: $0. Time: 0.5 work-hours.<\/p>\n Last weekend, I pruned our grapes and caneberries. This is always a little scary \u2014 I don’t exactly know what I’m doing. But once I get started, I’m able to fake it. With the blackberries and raspberries, it’s obvious that last year’s canes are dead. With the grapes, I just make it up as I go along, pruning the vines back to the wire, leaving a couple buds on each spur. This is a fun job for me. I love to prune. Cost: $0. Time: 0.75 work-hours.<\/p>\n In the middle of the month, Kris placed an order for seeds. As usual, she exchanged ideas with a couple fellow gardeners, and they pooled their resources. A packet of seeds contains more than we need, so it’s nice to be able to share the cost with friends. Kris says she won’t plant anything until March, but I know that as soon as we get a sunny day or two, she’ll be itching to get to work. Here’s a glimpse of her spreadsheet:<\/p>\n “How long did it take for you to order the seeds?” I asked Kris when I started writing this article.<\/p>\n “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe three hours.”<\/p>\n “Three hours<\/i>?!?!?!” I was flabbergasted.<\/p>\n “It’s not like it’s hard work,” she said. “I’m just sitting there with the catalogs, dreaming.” That’s my wife: dreaming about seeds. For our purposes \u2014 and in order to get a nice round number at the end \u2014 we’re going to say that she spent 2.75 hours selecting and ordering seeds. Her cost was $27.30.<\/p>\n (Update:<\/i> We use Totally Tomatoes<\/a> for that fruit, and Territorial Seed<\/a> for most everything else.)<\/p>\n January was quiet. We spent 4.0 hours working on our fruit and vegetable gardens, and spent $27.30 total. February will see more action. We need to fertilize certain plants, prepare our indoor planting material, and prune the fruit trees. Best of all, we’ll plant the peas. Things won’t get really time-consuming until March, however. (Well, there’ll be plenty of other yard-work \u2014 it just won’t be food-related.)<\/i><\/p>\n Like last month<\/a>, there’s very little to do in February. It was still quite cold at the beginning of the month, but by Valentine’s Day, the bleak Oregon winter relented. We had some gorgeous sunny days with highs near 15c (59f). This was a cue to do our first serious yardwork.<\/p>\n We spent about 15 hours in the yard in February, mostly cutting back our 60+ rose bushes, pruning the boxwood, and picking up winter debris. But we did find some time to work on our food-producing plants, as well.<\/p>\n First, we picked up the oak leaves that had buried our strawberry plants. The strawberries are allowed to run wild in the rose garden, sending their runners to-and-fro. A friend gave us 50 plants for free when we moved into this house in 2004, and now we have too many to count. We fertilized the berries last fall.<\/p>\n We also pruned our fruit trees \u2014 the plum, the pear, and both apples. Afterward, we weeded the potato patch and pulled ivy from around the blueberries. To finish up the weekend, we put up the pea trellis, and planted 72 seeds of Oregon Sugar Pod II. Come June, these will make a tasty snack, and at very little cost.<\/p>\n Last week, we took the time to test the pH of the soil around our blueberry plants. Blueberries like acid soil, so we’ll have to give them some special fertilizer in the next week or so.<\/p>\n Despite many hours spent in the yard, only 2.5 of them were devoted to our food-producing plants. We spent no money on this project in February.<\/p>\n So far in 2008, we’ve spent $27.30 and 6.5 hours caring for our fruit and vegetable gardens. March will see more action. We need to fertilize certain plants, prepare our indoor planting material, and plan the vegetable garden. And any day now we’ll see our first peas poking through the earth:<\/p>\n In my mind, March is filled with gardening activities. Not so much, as it turns out. I think April will also be light.<\/p>\n Though we didn’t do<\/i> much in March, we finally got to see<\/i> 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<\/a>. (“I don’t normally advocate one product over another,” she says, “but I really<\/i> like these.”)<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n On March 15th, we fertilized the strawberries with Strawberries Alive<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Through all of this, my peas have been growing slowly. (They’re so cute!)<\/p>\n Also this month, we picked up a fully-functional upright freezer (the same form factor as a refrigerator) for free<\/i> from one of Kris’ co-workers. This is a jackpot. It gives us a lot more room for food storage.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” \u2014 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities<\/u><\/i><\/p>\n April finally saw some action in the yard, but not the sort we’d hoped for.<\/p>\n Most of the month was quiet. Our vegetable starts continued to thrive under the growlights. By the end of the month, the tomatoes had been transplanted into gallon-sized pots and were over two feet tall! Kris was itching to get them into the ground.<\/p>\n Average last frost is about April 15th, but this year, especially, has been strange, with snow<\/i> in the Portland area in mid-April. Kris checked the weather forecast for night time lows and decided that it was worth the risk. Keeping the plants indoors any longer was also a risk; left inside, they would grow spindly as they stretched for real light.<\/p>\n Kris had the day off last Monday, and the weather was sunny and warm; she couldn’t resist. She spent two hours planting her tomatoes out in the vegetable garden. She dug a deep hole for each, mixed in a bit of fertilizer, gently patted the plants in, and placed the tomato cages around them.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, things took a turn for the worse. As I was leaving to drive to my presentation at Western Oregon University<\/a>, it began to hail. The hail wasn’t big, but it fell heavily for ten or fifteen minutes. A fierce, cold wind battered the garden. “Yikes,” I thought. “Kris’s tomatoes are in trouble.” To make matters worse, Kris came home sick with a nasty head cold that kept her in bed the rest of Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Her defenseless plants were left to the elements.<\/p>\n Sure enough \u2014 the plants have been shredded. Most of the branches are broken and drooping on the ground. The slugs, sensing their weakness, have moved in to finish the job. Kris still holds out hope that a few days of sun (which we’re slated to receive) will help the plants pull through, but the truth is we may have to pay cash to buy new starts. And if we do, they won’t be the heirloom varieties she’s nursed from seedlings. (Kris’s note:<\/b> I’m playing nursemaid for a week or two before I decide what to do. Today I sprayed the ailing tomatoes with a foliar fertilizer to see if that will help revive them. Nine of the ten plants still have their growing tips in fairly good condition, but all the side branches are sad. Woe is me!<\/i>)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the slugs have devoured her cucumber seedlings, too. Kris is not happy. (In fact, distraught may be a better word.) The peppers and acorn squash look okay, and the beets are sprouting nicely. The potatoes we started from the end of last year’s harvest are doing well. Ironically, most of the flower transplants look like they coped well with the hail and wind. Still, tomatoes are hardy things, to a point, so they may just make it afterall.<\/p>\n What started as an excellent month for the Get Rich Slowly Garden Project ended in relative disaster. Still, it’s early enough to still make an investment in nursery tomato plants, if necessary, to have a productive harvest later on.<\/p>\n Aside from the setback with the vegetable garden, we spent some more time in the yard during April, preparing our food-producing plants for summer. I spent half an hour hanging pest traps on the fruit trees, and Kris and I combined for an hour of work tying up the berry canes. (The raspberries and blackberries have gone berserk, by the way. They love<\/i> the moderately warm, very<\/i> wet weather we’ve been having. Wow.)<\/p>\n We did make a few small purchases during the month. We spent $25.98 for a new hose, as well as $2.53 on a couple of herb seed packets. (We spent $21.50 at the annual plant show yesterday, but that’s an expense for May. If you hope to grow a garden this year, now is the time to check for plant sales in your area.<\/b> They’re an excellent way to find quality vegetable starts and expert advice.)<\/p>\n Also, our strawberry plants have begun to blossom. Some of them are enormous. In just a month, we’ll be harvesting our first produce!<\/p>\n During April we spent $28.51 on garden-related expenses. We spent 5-1\/2 hours working on our crops.<\/p>\n We have a lot of yardwork ahead of us in the next few weeks, including much that is food-related. I’ve learned that I didn’t prune my grapes properly, so will have to repeat that task. I need to plant my corn (possibly this afternoon). We may need to replace the tomatoes. And with luck, we’ll harvest our first strawberries before the end of May!<\/i><\/p>\n Today I picked the first two strawberries from our garden. They weren’t particularly good strawberries \u2014 there’s been plenty of Oregon rain lately, and they were rather flavorless \u2014 but they were strawberries, the harbingers of summer. They signify the start of five months of food harvest from our yard.<\/p>\n As you’ll recall from last month’s update<\/a>, April ended with a bang. A late-season hailstorm damaged Kris’ tomatoes. We were worried that they all might have been destroyed, but in the end only two needed to be replaced.<\/p>\n During the first weekend of May, we visited the Oregon Master Gardeners plant sale. Though Kris starts most of her vegetables from seed, she cannot resist a chance to wander the stalls looking at other options. This year she spent $21.50 on jalape\u00f1os, zucchini, basil, oregano, and thyme.<\/p>\n We also placed two garden-related orders online this month. We spent $23.59 at Park Seed on supplies for next year. (We’re counting this as a cost for 2008 in order to compensate for the material we purchased in 2007 but used this year.)<\/p>\n We also placed a $65.80 order with Spray-N-Grow to purchase a variety of fertilizers, as well as a product called Sluggo<\/a>. Unfortunately, the Sluggo isn’t working very well so far.<\/p>\n In Oregon, slugs are a nuisance. (They’re our unofficial state animal!) We can’t use the ever-popular beer traps because the rain renders them ineffective. Our garden is too big to use copper tape \u2014 it doesn’t seem to do much good. Nothing organic seems to work either, when it’s raining daily. The slugs have been chomping Kris’ cucumbers as fast as she can plant them. My corn is beginning to sprout, but the slimey beasts are licking their chops over that, too. (And then<\/i> the corn has to make it past the blue jays.)<\/p>\n Kris and I both spent time in the vegetable garden this month, but not as much as I had expected. She spent about four hours planting things and applying a foliar fertilizer. I spent an hour spading the soil (no rototiller for me this year) in order to prepare it for the corn, after which I planted the seeds themselves. I also spent half an hour weeding the grapes. Combined, we spent only 5-1\/2 hours working on fruits and vegetables in May. (Kris says she would have spent more time if it hadn’t rained so much!)<\/p>\n I keep expecting the time we spend on this project to explode, but so far it hasn’t. Just wait until blueberry season arrives, though. It takes forever to pick those things…<\/p>\n Sally Herigstad at MSN Money highlighted our garden project in her recent article listing five foods it’s cheaper to grow. The foods? Fruit trees, lettuce, herbs, vine vegetables, and bell peppers. She also lists five to leave to experts: potatoes, carrots, celery, asparagus, and wheat. Thanks for pointing to our project, Sally!<\/p>\n While Kris and I may not be putting a lot of work into the garden yet, the plants have shifted their efforts into overdrive. They loved the warm, wet Oregon May. The berries are bearing, the fruit trees are fruiting, and the vegetables are growing like gangbusters.<\/p>\n Last week, Kris took the camera outside to photograph some of her favorite plants. First up is one of the tomatoes:<\/p>\n “This picture is sad,” Kris told me. “Look at how the plant is still missing most of its lower leaves!” I’d like to point out the tomato paraphernalia: the sturdy tomato cage and the two-liter bottle staked next to it (for watering during the summer). In the background, you can see an acorn squash beneath a plastic cloche.<\/p>\n The second photo shows my beloved caneberries: blackberries, raspberries, and marionberries. This probably looks like a wall of green to you; that’s what it looks like in person, too.<\/p>\n If you could see through that wall of green, you’d spy a twenty-foot row of grapes. Around the corner, we have four fruit trees: two apples, a pear, and a prune. This looks like the first year we’ll get a sizable fruit crop.<\/p>\n Finally, here’s a photo of Kris’ pride and joy, her red currant bush. The berries are green now, of course. That’s okay. We can wait.<\/p>\n There are many other plants we could show you: the herbs, the potatoes, the peas. Ah well \u2014 maybe next month.<\/p>\n During May we spent $110.89 on garden-related expenses. We spent 5-1\/2 hours working on our crops.<\/p>\n “I don’t know,” I said after tabulating the numbers tonight. “We’ve spent $300 on the garden already \u2014 there’s no way that’s going to pay off.”<\/p>\n “But most of the monetary expense is done now,” Kris said. “All that’s left is caring for the plants. From now on, it’s all about the harvest. I think you’ll be surprised.”<\/p>\n I hope so. To date, we’ve spent 21 hours and $296.70 on our garden, and all we have to show for it are two watery strawberries!<\/p>\n It was a miserable June for gardeners in northwest Oregon. The first two weeks weren’t just wet \u2014 we’re used to that \u2014 they were cold, too. The local media dubbed the month “June-uary”. Residents were quick to embrace the term. The cool weather pushed back a number of crops. Strawberry farmers groused. Blueberries and raspberries are three weeks late.<\/p>\n But now the sun has arrived. We’ve been harvesting strawberries and peas all month, and I picked the first blueberry this morning. (Not very good \u2014 it wasn’t quite ripe.) Raspberries should be on in a week or so, I think, and judging from the copious blossoms, we’re going to have a bumper crop. Meanwhile, the pear, plum, and apple trees have set loads of fruit. By the end of the July we may even have some vegetables.<\/p>\n In short, though the month got off to a slow start, we should be rolling in produce before long.<\/p>\n Our gardening chores have become more routine. Now that all of the crops have been planted, all we do is:<\/p>\n Between us, Kris and I spent about seven hours this month performing these tasks. I’ll admit that Kris is the weeder and the fertilizer. We both harvest, which is a chore I enjoy. There’s something zen-like about moving among the strawberries. (And just wait until I pick blueberries \u2014 I find that highly meditative.)<\/p>\n We harvested our first strawberries on May 31st, though we’ll count them in June’s totals. (Likewise, we harvested our first currants<\/a> today, but will count them for July.) During the past few weeks, our harvest has comprised:<\/p>\n This will seem like a bounty to some of you, and like a pittance to others, but it’s what our garden produces. It’s what we have space for. Actually, I believe both crops were substantially reduced this year due to the weather. Even the peas struggled. (Peas don’t usually struggle in Portland.)<\/p>\n Snow peas at the local grocery store were $5.99 per pound throughout this month, so our harvest was worth $14.08. The strawberries are more difficult to price. Purchased from Safeway in two- or four-pound containers, they could be had for $2.50 per pound. Kris picked twelve pounds at a local farm for 85 cents per pound. But I’m going to use the grocery store’s one-pound price ($3.99) because our harvest came in roughly one pound increments. That’s another $46.84 worth of food. (I welcome advice and debate over this methodology, by the way \u2014 I don’t actually know the best way to compare prices.)<\/p>\n In total, we harvested $60.92 of food from our garden this month.<\/p>\n During June we spent 79 cents on the garden (for a packet of lettuce seeds at Winco). We spent seven hours working on our crops.<\/p>\n Last month I wrote that I doubted we could recover our expenses on the garden. This month, after only small harvests of peas and strawberries, it seems like there’s no question that the garden will save us money. I’ll bet we harvest $300 in tomatoes alone!<\/p>\n After six months, we are $236.57 in the hole on this project.<\/p>\n Earlier I mentioned that Kris picked twelve pounds of strawberries at a local farm. U-Pick produce is an excellent deal if you don’t have a garden of your own.<\/b> A family trip to pick berries can be an excellent outing for children, and it can yield some delicious jams and syrups.<\/p>\n It was a berry, berry good month at Rosings Park (as we call our happy half acre). Gloomy June faded into memory, the sun came out, and the berries ripened. This is the time of year when there’s little to do in the garden but water the plants and harvest the produce. There’s plenty of work to preserve<\/i> the food, however: canning, freezing, and drying.<\/p>\n At the beginning of July, we discovered we had no raspberries. We usually get several pounds from our over-zealous canes, but this year we only got a few nibbles \u2014 they weren’t even worth weighing.<\/p>\n We’re still not sure what went wrong, but the most likely cause of our raspberry disaster is poor pruning on my part. Our guess is that I either pruned the canes back too hard, or, more likely, pruned them too late. We do expect to see a fall crop (and probably a good one), but our summer crop of raspberries never materialized.<\/p>\n This project is interesting because it has forced us to decide how to classify certain costs and “profits”. For example, we don’t actually grow cherries on our property, but the neighbors let us harvest 12.5 pounds (5.649kg) of fruit. Should we count that in our totals? At about $2.99\/pound, that’s $37.38 of cherries!<\/p>\n We’ve decided instead to keep a separate tally for produce received through other methods. There’s certainly a cost savings involved, but we didn’t actually grow it ourselves.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we’ve found a way to deal with our excess berries while also compensating for our inability to grow carrots and lettuce. We’re trading berries for greens grown by one of Kris’ co-workers. This is a great deal for both parties. For accounting purposes, we’re ignoring this deal, however. After we harvest the berries and weigh them, it doesn’t matter what happens after that.<\/p>\n Here’s the complete tally for this month’s garden production.<\/p>\n For the purposes of this project, we’re using “best match” pricing. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re obtaining typical pricing from our local farmers market. In some cases, we use pricing from a local organic produce stand. In all cases, we’re trying to be fair, but this is more art than science.<\/p>\n Our total harvest in July yielded $123.68 in produce, including 31 pints of berries.<\/p>\n This month Kris spent about an hour each weekend fertilizing and keeping tabs on the garden. Together, we spent one hour this month tying up the tomatoes, spreading mulch, and other chores. But most of our time was spent picking berries. We combined for about six hours harvesting our produce. We spent eleven hours total working on our crops this month.<\/p>\n During July we spent $20.94 on the garden for three bags of soil to go around the roots of the blueberries. (The bases of the blueberries are mounded, and the soil tends to erode, exposing the roots.)<\/p>\n As July draws to a close, the tomato plants have reached the top of their cages and are loaded with green fruit. The Sungold cherry tomato will be first to ripen (we’ve nibbled a few already), followed by Stupice. The cucumber and zucchini are beginning to produce regularly and the corn is thriving. In the herb bed, the elderberries are growing dark and gleaming, and the nearby fruit trees each bear a load we’ll enjoy late in the summer.<\/p>\n Kris has put away snowpeas and grated zucchini in the freezer, along with several batches of freezer jam (my favorite). She’s also put up several varieties of cooked jams and jellies, canned cherries in light syrup, pickled green beans with dill, garlic and ginger, and has dried cherries, blueberries and currants for future use. (One of her co-workers came over on Wednesday to learn how to can pickled beans.) We’ll be glad to have this summer’s bounty during the long rainy winter.<\/p>\n The berry harvest continued this month at Rosings Park, our happy half acre south of Portland. Blackberry time is my favorite time of the year. And though August is often too hot for me, I’m willing to suffer the heat because I know it means the start of canning season. Sure enough, Kris has been putting up salsa and applesauce and all sorts of pickles and jams. Yum.<\/i><\/p>\n Also, much to Kris’ delight, we finally harvested tomatoes this week, an entire month behind schedule<\/i>.<\/p>\n Here’s one of the sad secrets of gardening: mid-summer can be frustrating. If you don’t stay on top of things, the garden can get away from you. Here’s an actual quote from Kris mid-month. We were on the couch watching Olympic diving when I transcribed the following lament:<\/p>\n I didn’t pick the blueberries. The beans need to be picked so they’ll keep producing. The cucumbers are coming on. I need to water things because it’s going to be hot this week. I need to get our extra zucchini over to the neighbors. I didn’t even pick Patrice’s apples. She offered me three times, but I’ve been too busy, and now they’re done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Remember: we have a modest garden. We grow food for fun. This project will determine whether there’s a cost benefit as well. But even a modest garden can produce a lot<\/i> of food. With my mother in the hospital and Kris’ parents in town, we didn’t have much gardening time during the first two weeks of August. For a while, there was a danger that we’d lose control, but we managed to persevere!<\/p>\n We spent nothing on the garden this month except our time. Between us, we spent about eight hours picking berries and veggies. (Kris also did a bit of fertilizing early in the month.)<\/p>\n We did, however, supplement our harvest in a number of ways:<\/p>\n We’ll continue to exchange produce with other people, giving away our surplus and enjoying the bounty of other gardens. In about a month, I’ll be able to harvest Concord grapes from the neighbor across the street. The juice from these is fantastic.<\/p>\n Here’s the complete tally for this month’s garden production.<\/p>\n Our total harvest in August yielded $123.94 in produce, mostly from berries and tomatoes. Note that for grins and giggles, we’re tracking the yield (in pounds) of each tomato plant. I’ve been dying to know how much a single tomato plant can produce in a year.<\/p>\n Note:<\/b><\/i> For the purposes of this project, we’re using “best match” pricing. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re obtaining typical pricing from our local farmers market. In some cases, we use pricing from a local organic produce stand. In all cases, we’re trying to be fair, but this is more art than science.<\/p>\n We spent no money on the garden this month! We’re now within $20 of our expenses for the year. By the middle of this week, we’ll be clearing “profit”. We’ll be able to begin computing how much our labor is valued at. (Though we do this because we love it, not just to save money.)<\/p>\n This month, we didn’t keep track of the apples and cherries and other produce we obtained through other methods than our own garden.<\/p>\n As the summer wends its course, food production will remain high, especially among tomatoes. We’ll also begin harvesting fruit before long: pears, plums, grapes, and apples. As usual, we won’t have copious amounts of any of these (except tomatoes), but just enough to relish the pleasures of gardening.<\/p>\n September generally brings the largest harvests for our garden. That was true again this year, but not by as much as we hoped. The bad weather at the beginning of the season means that things just aren’t ripe yet. Kris has been encouraging her tomatoes for weeks. I’m dying for the grapes to be ready. (They’re almost there!)<\/p>\n We did harvest a lot last month, the bulk of which was tomatoes and tree fruit. We had so many tomatoes, in fact, that Kris was able to enlist the help of five-year-olds Albert<\/a> and Annika to help harvest. They did an amazing job picking cherry tomatoes.<\/p>\n September’s nice because there’s almost no garden maintenance. All we have to do is stroll out to pick the food we want. During the middle of the month, Kris and I had a mild misunderstanding. I thought she told me to go pick all<\/i> of the apples from our trees, but she really told me to pick a few for some jam. I came back into the house with 19 pounds of apples, which was far more than she needed. We made a spontaneous batch of applesauce.<\/p>\n Actually, Kris did a lot of canning this month: marinara sauce, applesauce, salsa, pickled plums, and more. As usual, we supplemented our own harvest with free food from friends and neighbors (25 pound of pears here, 15 pounds of plums there), as well as things like onions and garlic from the produce stand.<\/p>\n Now, as the rains begin and the harvest draws to a close, our pantry and freezer are both packed full. When we make a blackberry cobbler in February, take pickled “dilly beans” to a potluck or pop open a jar of spicy salsa on a chilly afternoon, we’ll be extending the benefits of our garden year-round. Our home-canned goods will help defray food costs over the next eight months until we can expect another strawberry crop to kick off 2009’s garden bounty.<\/p>\n Our total harvest in September yielded $152.75 in produce, largely from tomatoes. Here’s the complete tally for this month’s garden production.<\/p>\n Note:<\/b><\/i> For the purposes of this project, we’re using “best match” pricing. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re obtaining typical pricing from our local farmers market. In some cases, we use pricing from a local organic produce stand. In all cases, we’re trying to be fair, but this is more art than science.<\/p>\n I’ll be honest. I’m a little disappointed. Once it became clear that this garden was going to “make money”, I wanted it to kick ass. It hasn’t done that. Don’t get me wrong \u2014 we love having fresh produce outside our front door, and we enjoy the work with the plants, but I was hoping for more.<\/p>\n I think there are a few ways we can improve.<\/p>\n This year, we initially made a large financial outlay for two types of organic pest traps for the apple trees. They proved successful; our apples were practically worm-free! As the two trees mature and bear larger crops, the number and value of the apples will increase as the cost of the traps will drop (because some parts are reusable from year-to-year).<\/p>\n I almost want to repeat this entire project next year to see if we can spend less and harvest more! (Maybe we’ll do it behind the scenes, providing totals at the end of the summer.)<\/p>\n We spent nothing on the garden this month, and very little time. It doesn’t take long to harvest 19 pounds of apples or five pounds of tomatoes. September is the closest our garden will ever come to “pure profit”.<\/p>\n There is still food left to harvest. Though the rains have set in, we may have more tomatoes. (There are plenty on the plants, but the cool weather is likely to prevent them from ripening.) There are potatoes left to dig, and the acorn squash is ready to pick and dry for winter storage (to be tallied in October).<\/p>\n Most importantly, we have grapes to pick. We only have 20 feet of young grape vines, so we won’t have many from our yard. But the neighbor has vast swaths of Concords growing wild. I wanted to pick them last weekend, but he insisted they were two weeks away. I plan to pick them next Saturday. I just hope these rains don’t ruin the flavor. (Will rain do that to grapes?) There are few things I love more than fresh Concord grapes. (Especially fresh free<\/i> Concord grapes.) They make amazing grape juice and Kris wants to put up some grape jelly.<\/p>\n Kris has made notes on her garden plan to help her organize her seed order for next year. Only a few short months until the seed catalogs arrive! And she has begun an experiment to grow a few herbs indoors this winter. Stay tuned on whether that is worthwhile.<\/p>\n October can be something of a relief for gardeners. The bulk of the harvest is finished, and all that remains is to pick the last straggling fruits and vegetables, and to begin cleaning up. While it’s sad that the harvest is winding to a close, it’s comforting to know there’ll be a respite from the work for several months. Plus it’s a chance to start dreaming about next year<\/em>, all of the changes and improvements to be made.<\/p>\n And, believe it or not, the success of next summer’s garden begins today.<\/p>\n Last weekend, Kris and I received an unexpected windfall of sorts. John, our neighbor across the street, hooked us up with some free shit: He brought us a trailer-load of horse manure.<\/p>\n We had been planning to use some sort of soil amendment in the garden next spring, but hadn’t yet worked out the cost or the kind. John knows somebody who boards horses, and when she sweeps their stalls, she’s left with piles of hay and sawdust \u2014 and horse manure. Apparently she has so much of this stuff that she’s just giving it away. (We offered to pay John for his trouble, but he refused. We’ll bake him some home-made bread instead.)<\/p>\n On Sunday morning, John wheeled in a trailer containing about three cubic yards of this stuff, so Kris and I spent an hour spreading it over the vegetable garden. We’re happy to have finished this task already, especially in such a frugal fashion.<\/p>\n “How big is your garden?” e-mailed one reader during the middle of the month.<\/p>\n “I don’t know,” I said. “But I can find out.” I went outside with a tape measure to discover:<\/p>\n Not counting the fruit trees, that’s a total of 878 square feet (81.61 sq. m.) devoted to gardening. Those of you in the country might think this garden is small; those on city lots (or in apartments) might think it’s huge. For us, it’s just right.<\/p>\n Our total harvest in October yielded $130.77 in produce, most of which was tomatoes and grapes. (Our grape vines are just beginning to mature. The yield from the plants should increase markedly in the future.) Here’s the complete tally for this month’s garden production:<\/p>\n Note that this does not<\/em> include the 40+ pounds of Concord grapes we picked from one neighbor, nor the 5+ pounds of high-bush cranberries we picked from another.<\/p>\n I should also mention that we had pretty much given up on the corn. The poor weather in the spring stunted its start, and then it was battered by a summer storm. Plus we didn’t plant a lot of it. Ultimately, however, we were able to harvest almost 20 ears total (between September and October), which isn’t a lot, but the stuff was good<\/em>. Instead of giving up, we think we might actually try to grow more of it next year.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> For the purposes of this project, we’re using “best match” pricing. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re obtaining typical pricing from our local farmers market. In some cases, we use pricing from a local organic produce stand. In all cases, we’re trying to be fair, but this is more art than science.<\/em><\/p>\n We spent a little more time in the garden this month, but again had no monetary expenses. The numbers for this month’s harvest also include $25 for the fresh herbs that we’ve harvested throughout the year<\/strong> (chives, basil, cilantro, sage, thyme, bay leaves, marjoram, oregano).<\/p>\n All that’s left now, really, is to perform garden clean-up. We’ll probably have several hours into the garden in November, but I doubt we’ll have much time in December at all. That’ll give me a chance to write a summary of the lessons we’ve learned, and to provide some tips for others who would like to try this!<\/p>\n Though we’ll spend more time<\/em> in the garden this year, we’re unlikely to spend more money, and we’re unlikely to harvest anything else. We’re fairly certain that the numbers above are close to the final numbers for the year. We’ve spent $318.43 on our food and harvested $606.97 worth of produce. Roughly, we doubled our financial investment in this project.<\/strong><\/p>\n Kris has already started one project for next year: She’s begun to grow herbs from seed<\/em> to have a winter indoor garden (with grow light). The basil, cilantro, dwarf dill, thyme and oregano are off to a good start. Herbs are some of the most cost-effective plants to grow in a home garden. Even if you have limited space, a window-box herb garden can be an easy and economical way to dabble in the hobby.<\/p>\n This month’s garden update is small. As winter approaches, there’s less for us to do, and all that we harvest are herbs (and those only occasionally). Our major garden task this month was raking leaves. For most people, this is simply yardwork, but for us it’s a chance to work on the vegetable garden.<\/p>\n Last year, we bought a used chipper-shredder. We use it to grind up the many twigs and branches that fall on our property, but in mid-November, we also use it to shred the fallen leaves. With just a few hours work, we were able to create a thick layer of mulch for the vegetable garden, which we placed atop the horse manure our neighbor gave us last month. In late April, I will till all of this stuff into the earth just before we plant.<\/p>\n Speaking of next year, Kris and I have decided that we will<\/em> do this project again in 2009<\/strong>, continuing to provide monthly updates. We enjoyed it more than we had expected, and believe a second year of data would be instructive.<\/p>\n But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, here are the final totals for our garden harvest this year.<\/p>\n Berries ($225.74)<\/em> Vegetables ($294.59)<\/em> Fruits ($66.63)<\/em> We also harvested at least $25 worth from our herb garden during the year.<\/p>\n And so we come to winter, that time of year when gardeners sit forlorn, gazing at the cold, frozen ground. Only the lingonberries remain to harvest. This year, Kris has started herbs from seed indoors, which gives her some sense of gardening. She’s talking about adding an Asian Pear tree to our small orchard. But mostly, now is a time to leaf through seed catalogs and think about the crops we’d like to grow next summer. Our dreams of August’s bounty pull us through the dark rainy days ahead.<\/p>\n 2008 garden summary:<\/p>\n
\nAn actual weekend harvest from August 2006.<\/i><\/div>\n\n
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<\/span>January 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
Pruning and Staking<\/h3>\n
The Seed Order<\/h3>\n
Year-to-Date Total<\/h3>\n
<\/span>February 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
The Yardwork Begins<\/h3>\n
Preparing for Spring<\/h3>\n
Year-to-Date Totals<\/h3>\n
<\/span>March 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
Planting Seeds<\/h3>\n
\nAfter the seedlings have made a good start, Kris hangs her grow lamp.<\/i><\/div>\n
\nCan you believe they’ve grown so much in just three weeks? Amazing!<\/i><\/div>\n
\nI’m a little worried about the spotty germination, but I’m sure we’ll have plenty.<\/i><\/div>\nConclusion<\/h3>\n
<\/span>April 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
The Hail You Say!<\/h3>\n
Other Chores<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
<\/span>May 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
Final Orders<\/h3>\n
Time in the Garden<\/h3>\n
Interlude<\/h3>\n
Garden Tour<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
<\/span>June 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
Time in the Garden<\/h3>\n
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First Harvest<\/h3>\n
\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
<\/span>July 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
Raspberry Disaster<\/h3>\n
Sharing Food<\/h3>\n
The Fruits of Our Labor<\/h3>\n
\n
Time in the Garden<\/h3>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n
<\/span>August 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
The Dark Side of Gardening<\/h3>\n
Supplementing Our Harvest<\/h3>\n
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The Fruits of Our Labor<\/h3>\n
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Summary<\/h3>\n
<\/span>September 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nKris gives orders to her garden elves. Photo by Lisa.<\/i><\/div>\nLike Investing in Fruit<\/h3>\n
The Fruits of Our Labor<\/h3>\n
\n
A Little Bit of Whining<\/h3>\n
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Summary<\/h3>\n
<\/span>October 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
A Pile of Crap<\/h3>\n
\nI shoveled while Kris wheeled and spread.<\/em><\/div>\nSizing Things Up<\/h3>\n
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Final Harvest<\/h3>\n
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Summary<\/h3>\n
<\/span>November 2008 Update<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nWe don’t have a lot of berry plants, but those that we do have are good producers. They’re low maintenance and provide a lot of fruit for the space they occupy. I’m actually tempted to remove the 25-year-old blueberries to replace them with younger plants of a different variety.<\/p>\n\n
\nOur vegetable crop was stunted this year by the lousy weather in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. We’re not the only ones who suffered. Nearly every gardener we know moaned about the poor yields, especially with tomatoes and peppers.<\/p>\n\n
\nOur fruit trees are young. We planted them four years ago, and they’re only just beginning to produce substantial crops. This was also the first year that the grapes produced a harvest. I’m tempted to pull out some of the grape vines to replace them with Concords, which I love. But as long as our neighbor across the street will let us pick his fruit, I don’t need to do this.<\/p>\n\n
Summary<\/h3>\n