크리스와 저는 정원 가꾸기의 열렬한 팬입니다. 우리는 꽃, 허브, 과일, 베리, 야채를 직접 재배합니다. 모두 공급할 수는 없습니다. 하지만 우리는 할 수 있는 일을 합니다. 지난 2년 동안 저는 이것이 만약 돈을 절약할 수 있는 훌륭한 방법이라고 주장해 왔습니다. 당신에게는 시간과 공간이 있습니다. 그런데 정말 그럴까요?
2006년 8월의 실제 주말 수확.
내년에 Kris와 나는 마당에서 하는 모든 일과 비용을 추적할 계획입니다. 월계수나 회양목을 다듬는 데 걸리는 시간을 표로 계산하지는 않지만 다음을 추적하겠습니다.
예를 들어, Kris가 다음 주나 2주 안에 씨앗을 주문할 때 나는 그녀가 토마토 씨앗 한 봉지에 얼마를 지출하는지 기록할 것입니다. 나는 그녀가 재배 조명을 얼마나 사용하는지(편리한 Kill-a-Watt 전기 사용량 모니터를 사용하여), 우리가 소비하는 물과 비료의 양, 수확하는 토마토의 양, 매장에서 비용이 얼마나 드는지 추적할 것입니다.
엄청난 양의 데이터를 수집할 예정입니다.
매달 마지막 토요일에는 진행 상황에 대한 최신 소식을 전해드리고자 합니다. 연말에 우리는 저축한 금액과 이를 저축하는 데 드는 비용을 확인할 수 있습니다. 이것은 정확한 실험이 아닐 것입니다. 관련된 변수가 너무 많습니다. 하지만 우리의 결과는 우리의 정원 가꾸기 취미가 얼마나 가치 있는지 알려줄 수 있을 것입니다.
정원 가꾸기에 대한 과거 항목은 다음과 같습니다:
우리의 첫 번째 단계는요? 올해 재배할 작물을 결정하기 위해 종자 카탈로그를 살펴보세요!
1월은 항상 여유로운 달이지만 약속이 가득한 달이기도 합니다. 올해의 첫 번째 집안일을 할 시간입니다!
1월 초, 크리스와 저는 마당에서 과일 나무를 다시 꽂는 데 함께 15분을 보냈습니다. 사과 두 개, 배 한 개, 자두 한 개가 있어요. 그것들은 약간 비뚤어지게 자라는 경향이 있기 때문에 매년 봄마다 우리는 그것들이 말뚝에 단단히 고정되어 있는지 확인합니다. 우리도 매년 가을마다 이 일을 해야 할 것 같습니다. 비용:$0. 시간:0.5 근무 시간.
지난 주말에 저는 포도와 케인베리의 가지치기를 했습니다. 이것은 항상 조금 무섭습니다. 제가 무엇을 하고 있는지 정확히 모르겠습니다. 하지만 일단 시작하면 속일 수 있습니다. 블랙베리와 라즈베리를 보면 작년의 지팡이가 죽은 것이 분명합니다. 포도의 경우, 나는 덩굴을 철사로 다시 잘라내어 각 박차에 몇 개의 새싹을 남기면서 그것을 구성합니다. 이것은 나에게 재미있는 일이다. 나는 가지치기를 좋아한다. 비용:$0. 시간:0.75 근무 시간.
그 달 중순에 Kris는 씨앗을 주문했습니다. 평소와 마찬가지로 그녀는 동료 정원사 몇 명과 아이디어를 교환했고 그들은 자원을 모았습니다. 씨앗 한 봉지에는 우리가 필요로 하는 것보다 더 많은 양이 들어 있으므로 친구들과 그 비용을 공유할 수 있다는 것은 좋은 일입니다. Kris는 3월까지는 아무 것도 심지 않을 것이라고 말하지만, 맑은 날이나 이틀이 지나면 그녀는 출근하고 싶어 몸이 근질거릴 것입니다. 다음은 그녀의 스프레드시트를 살짝 보여줍니다:
“씨앗을 주문하는 데 얼마나 걸렸나요?” 이 글을 쓰기 시작하면서 크리스에게 물었습니다.
“모르겠어요.” 그녀가 말했다. “아마도 3시간 정도.”
“3 시간 ?!?!?!” 나는 깜짝 놀랐다.
“그것은 힘든 일이 아닌 것 같아요.” 그녀가 말했습니다. "저는 카탈로그를 들고 거기 앉아서 꿈을 꾸고 있어요." 내 아내는 씨앗에 대한 꿈을 꾸고 있습니다. 우리의 목적을 위해 – 그리고 마지막에 좋은 라운드 숫자를 얻기 위해 – 우리는 그녀가 씨앗을 선택하고 주문하는 데 2.75시간을 소비했다고 말할 것입니다. 비용은 27.30달러였습니다.
(업데이트: 해당 과일에는 Totally Tomatoes를 사용하고 그 외 대부분의 경우에는 Territorial Seed를 사용합니다.)
1월은 조용했다. 우리는 과일과 채소밭에서 일하는 데 4시간 30분을 소비했고 총 27.30달러를 썼습니다. 2월에는 더 많은 활동이 이루어질 것입니다. 우리는 특정한 식물에 비료를 주고, 실내에 심을 재료를 준비하고, 과일나무를 가지치기해야 합니다. 무엇보다도 우리는 완두콩을 심을 것입니다. 하지만 3월까지는 시간이 많이 걸리지 않을 것입니다. (글쎄, 다른 정원 일도 많이 있을 것입니다. 단지 음식과 관련된 일은 아닐 것입니다.)
지난 달과 마찬가지로 2월에도 할 일이 거의 없습니다. 월 초에는 여전히 꽤 추웠지만, 발렌타인 데이가 되자 오레곤의 황량한 겨울이 누그러졌습니다. 우리는 최고 기온이 15c(59f)에 가까운 멋진 화창한 날을 보냈습니다. 이는 우리의 첫 번째 진지한 작업을 시작하는 신호였습니다.
우리는 2월에 마당에서 약 15시간을 보냈는데, 주로 60개 이상의 장미 덤불을 자르고, 회양목을 가지치기하고, 겨울 잔해를 줍는 일이었습니다. 하지만 우리는 식량 생산 공장에서도 일할 시간을 찾았습니다.
먼저, 우리는 딸기 식물을 묻어두었던 참나무 잎을 집어 들었습니다. 딸기는 장미 정원에서 야생으로 뛰놀도록 허용되어 주자들을 이리저리 보냅니다. 2004년에 우리가 이 집으로 이사했을 때 친구가 식물 50그루를 무료로 주었는데, 지금은 셀 수 없을 정도로 너무 많습니다. 우리는 지난 가을에 열매에 비료를 주었습니다.
우리는 과일나무(자두, 배, 사과)도 가지치기했습니다. 그 후에 우리는 감자 밭의 잡초를 제거하고 블루베리 주변에서 담쟁이덩굴을 뽑았습니다. 주말을 마무리하기 위해 우리는 완두콩 격자를 세우고 Oregon Sugar Pod II의 씨앗 72개를 심었습니다. 6월이 오면 아주 저렴한 가격으로 맛있는 간식을 만들 수 있습니다.
지난 주에 우리는 블루베리 식물 주변 토양의 pH를 테스트하는 시간을 가졌습니다. 블루베리는 산성 토양을 좋아하므로 다음 주 정도에 특별한 비료를 주어야 합니다.
마당에서 많은 시간을 보냈음에도 불구하고 식량 생산 식물에 바친 시간은 2.5시간에 불과했습니다. 우리는 2월에 이 프로젝트에 돈을 쓰지 않았습니다.
2008년 현재까지 우리는 과일과 채소밭을 가꾸는 데 27.30달러와 6.5시간을 소비했습니다. 3월에는 더 많은 활동이 이루어질 것입니다. 우리는 특정한 식물에 비료를 주고, 실내에 심을 재료를 준비하고, 채소밭을 계획해야 합니다. 그리고 이제 어느 날 우리는 첫 번째 완두콩이 땅을 뚫고 나오는 것을 보게 될 것입니다:
내 생각에 3월은 정원 가꾸기 활동으로 가득 차 있다. 밝혀진 바와 같이 그렇게 많지는 않습니다. 4월도 가벼울 것 같아요.
그렇지는 않았지만 3월에 많은 것을 드디어 볼 수 있게 되었습니다. 식물의 어떤 행동. 3월 1일에 크리스는 토마토와 고추(그리고 꽃 몇 개)를 심었습니다. 그녀는 특별한 바이오 돔에 씨앗을 뿌리는 데 90분을 보냈습니다. (“저는 일반적으로 특정 제품을 다른 제품보다 선호하지 않습니다. 하지만 정말 이렇게요.”)
묘목이 잘 자라난 후 Kris는 성장 램프를 걸어 놓습니다.
우리는 남쪽을 향한 퇴창에 두 개의 씨앗 트레이를 놓았습니다. 새싹이 돋은 후 Kris는 묘목에 더 많은 에너지를 주기 위해 성장등을 설치했습니다. (오레곤의 3월은 정확히 맑지 않습니다.) 3월 24일, 그녀는 각 품종 중 가장 강한 묘목을 4인치 화분에 이식했습니다.
단 3주 만에 이토록 많이 성장했다는 게 믿어지시나요? 놀랍습니다!
3월 15일에 Strawberries Alive로 딸기에 비료를 주었습니다. 다음 주말에 Kris는 채소밭의 나뭇잎을 긁어 모아(겨울에는 덮개로 사용함) 한 부분을 삽질했습니다. 몇 주 후에 윤경 경운기를 사용하여 땅을 경작할 예정입니다.
이 모든 과정을 통해 내 완두콩은 천천히 자라났습니다. (너무 귀여워요!)
발아가 얼룩덜룩해서 조금 걱정되지만, 많이 나올 거라고 확신합니다.
또한 이번 달에는 모든 기능을 갖춘 직립형 냉동고(냉장고와 동일한 폼 팩터)를 무료로 구입했습니다. Kris의 동료 중 한 명으로부터. 이것은 대박입니다. 음식을 보관할 수 있는 공간이 훨씬 더 많아졌습니다.
3월 동안 우리는 과일과 채소 작물을 위한 유기농 해충 방제와 비료에 113달러를 지출했습니다. 우리는 또한 화분용 흙과 담그는 호스를 구입하는 데 16달러를 썼습니다. Kill-a-Watt를 사용하여 성장 램프의 전력 소비를 측정했지만 하루에 몇 페니의 전기만 사용합니다. 한 달 전체를 1달러로 계산해 3월 지출을 130달러로 늘리겠습니다.
“최고의 시절이자 최악의 시절이었습니다…” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
에이프릴은 마침내 마당에서 어떤 활동을 보았지만 우리가 바라던 것과는 달랐습니다.
그 달의 대부분은 조용했습니다. 우리 야채는 성장등 아래에서 계속 번성했습니다. 그 달 말에 토마토는 갤런 크기의 화분에 옮겨졌고 키는 2피트가 넘었습니다! 크리스는 그들을 땅에 떨어뜨리고 싶어 안달이 나고 있었습니다.
평균 마지막 서리는 4월 15일경이지만, 올해는 특히 눈이 내리는 등 이상했습니다. 4월 중순 포틀랜드 지역. Kris는 야간 최저 기온에 대한 일기 예보를 확인하고 위험을 감수할 가치가 있다고 결정했습니다. 식물을 더 이상 실내에 두는 것도 위험했습니다. 안에 놔두면 실제 빛을 받기 위해 늘어나면서 가늘게 자랄 것입니다.
Kris는 지난 월요일에 쉬었고 날씨는 화창하고 따뜻했습니다. 그녀는 저항할 수 없었다. 그녀는 채소밭에 토마토를 심는 데 두 시간을 보냈습니다. 그녀는 각각에 깊은 구멍을 파고 약간의 비료를 섞은 다음 식물을 가볍게 두드리고 그 주위에 토마토 케이지를 두었습니다.
화요일에는 상황이 더욱 악화되었습니다. 내가 Western Oregon University에서 발표를 하러 차를 몰고 떠날 때, 비가 오기 시작했습니다. 우박은 크지 않았지만 10~15분 정도 세게 내렸습니다. 매서운 찬 바람이 정원을 강타했습니다. “그래” 나는 생각했다. “크리스의 토마토가 문제에 빠졌어요.” 설상가상으로 Kris는 화요일과 수요일 하루 종일 침대에 누워 있을 지독한 머리 감기에 걸려 집에 돌아왔습니다. 그녀의 무방비 식물은 자연에 방치되었습니다.
물론, 식물은 파쇄되었습니다. 대부분의 가지가 부러져 땅에 처져 있습니다. 자신의 약점을 알아차린 민달팽이들은 일을 끝내기 위해 움직였습니다. Kris는 여전히 며칠 동안의 햇빛(우리가 받을 예정)이 식물이 자라는 데 도움이 될 것이라는 희망을 갖고 있지만, 사실은 새로운 시작을 구입하려면 현금을 지불해야 할 수도 있다는 것입니다. 그리고 만약 그렇게 한다면, 그들은 그녀가 묘목에서 키운 가보 품종이 아닐 것입니다. (Kris의 메모: 나는 무엇을 해야할지 결정하기 전에 한두 주 동안 간호사 역할을 하고 있습니다. 오늘 나는 병든 토마토에 잎 비료를 뿌려서 그것이 토마토를 되살리는 데 도움이 되는지 알아보았습니다. 10그루 중 9그루는 아직 생육 끝 부분이 상당히 좋은 상태지만, 곁가지가 모두 아쉽다. 나야말로 화난다! )
그 사이에 민달팽이들은 그녀의 오이 모종도 먹어치웠습니다. 크리스는 행복하지 않습니다. (사실 '심란하다'가 더 나은 표현일지도 모르겠습니다.) 고추와 도토리호박도 괜찮아 보이고, 비트도 싹이 잘 트고 있어요. 작년 수확 말부터 시작한 감자가 잘 자라고 있어요. 아이러니하게도 대부분의 이식 꽃은 우박과 바람을 잘 이겨낸 것처럼 보입니다. 하지만 토마토는 어느 정도 강하기 때문에 결국에는 성공할 수도 있습니다.
천천히 부자 되기 프로젝트의 훌륭한 한 달로 시작된 것은 상대적인 재앙으로 끝났습니다. 하지만 나중에 생산적인 수확을 거두기 위해 필요한 경우 묘목 토마토 식물에 투자하기에는 아직 이르습니다.
텃밭에 대한 차질을 제외하고, 우리는 4월 동안 마당에서 더 많은 시간을 보내며 여름을 대비하여 식량 생산 식물을 준비했습니다. 나는 30분 동안 과일 나무에 해충 덫을 걸어 놓았고, Kris와 나는 함께 한 시간 동안 베리 줄기를 묶는 일을 했습니다. (그건 그렇고, 라즈베리와 블랙베리가 광포해졌습니다. 그들은 좋아합니다 적당히 따뜻하고 매우 우리가 겪고 있는 습한 날씨. 와.)
우리는 한 달 동안 몇 가지 작은 물건을 구매했습니다. 우리는 새 호스 구입에 25.98달러를 썼고, 허브 씨앗 봉지 몇 개 구입에 2.53달러를 썼습니다. (어제 연례 식물 전시회에서 21.50달러를 지출했지만 이는 5월 비용입니다. 올해 정원을 가꾸고 싶다면 지금이 해당 지역의 식물 판매를 확인해야 할 때입니다. 고품질의 야채 원료와 전문가의 조언을 찾을 수 있는 훌륭한 방법입니다.)
또한, 우리 딸기나무에도 꽃이 피기 시작했습니다. 그들 중 일부는 엄청납니다. 단 한 달만 지나면 첫 농산물을 수확하게 됩니다!
4월 동안 우리는 정원 관련 비용으로 28.51달러를 지출했습니다. 우리는 농작물 작업에 5~1/2시간을 소비했습니다.
앞으로 몇 주 동안 우리는 음식과 관련된 많은 일을 포함하여 많은 일을 해야 합니다. 포도 가지치기를 제대로 하지 않았다는 사실을 알게 되었기 때문에 해당 작업을 반복해야 합니다. 나는 옥수수를 심어야 합니다(아마도 오늘 오후). 토마토를 교체해야 할 수도 있습니다. 운이 좋으면 5월 말 이전에 첫 딸기를 수확하게 될 것입니다!
오늘 나는 우리 정원에서 처음 두 개의 딸기를 골랐습니다. 특별히 맛있는 딸기는 아니었지만 – 최근 오레곤에 비가 많이 왔고, 맛도 별로 없었지만 – 여름의 전조인 딸기였습니다. 이는 우리 마당에서 5개월간 식량 수확이 시작됨을 의미합니다.
지난 달 업데이트에서 기억하시겠지만 4월은 펑펑 울었습니다. 늦은 계절의 우박으로 인해 크리스의 토마토가 손상되었습니다. 다 망가지진 않을까 걱정했는데 결국 2개만 교체하면 됐어요.
5월 첫째주 주말에 우리는 Oregon Master Gardeners의 식물 판매 행사를 방문했습니다. Kris는 대부분의 야채를 씨앗에서 시작하지만 다른 옵션을 찾아 가판대를 돌아다닐 기회를 거부할 수 없습니다. 올해 그녀는 할라피뇨, 애호박, 바질, 오레가노, 백리향에 21.50달러를 썼습니다.
우리는 또한 이번 달에 온라인으로 정원 관련 주문 2건을 접수했습니다. 우리는 내년에 필요한 물품을 구입하기 위해 Park Seed에서 23.59달러를 썼습니다. (2007년에 구입했지만 올해 사용한 자재를 보전하기 위해 이를 2008년 비용으로 계산하고 있습니다.)
또한 다양한 비료와 Sluggo라는 제품을 구매하기 위해 스프레이 앤 그로우(Spray-N-Grow)에 65.80달러를 주문했습니다. 불행하게도 Sluggo는 현재까지 잘 작동하지 않습니다.
오레곤에서는 민달팽이가 성가신 존재입니다. (그들은 우리의 비공식 국가 동물입니다!) 항상 인기 있는 맥주 트랩은 비로 인해 효과가 없기 때문에 사용할 수 없습니다. 우리 정원은 너무 커서 구리 테이프를 사용할 수 없습니다. 별 효과가 없는 것 같습니다. 매일 비가 오면 유기농도 효과가 없는 것 같습니다. 민달팽이들은 크리스가 심는 속도만큼 빨리 오이를 씹어먹고 있습니다. 내 옥수수가 싹트기 시작했는데, 끈적끈적한 짐승들이 그 옥수수도 핥고 있어요. (그리고 그러면 옥수수는 블루제이를 통과해야 합니다.)
크리스와 저는 이번 달에 채소밭에서 시간을 보냈지만 기대했던 것만큼 많지는 않았습니다. 그녀는 식물을 심고 잎에 비료를 주는 데 약 4시간을 보냈습니다. 나는 옥수수를 심을 준비를 위해 한 시간 동안 흙을 깔고(올해는 회전경운기 없음) 씨앗을 직접 심었습니다. 나는 또한 포도 잡초를 제거하는 데 30분을 보냈습니다. 합쳐서 우리는 5월에 과일과 채소를 다루는 데 5~1/2시간만 투자했습니다. (크리스는 비가 많이 오지 않았다면 더 많은 시간을 보냈을 것이라고 말했습니다!)
나는 이 프로젝트에 소비한 시간이 폭발적으로 늘어날 것이라고 계속 기대하고 있지만 지금까지는 그렇지 않았습니다. 하지만 블루베리 시즌이 올 때까지 기다리세요. 그런 것들을 고르는 데 시간이 오래 걸립니다...
MSN Money의 Sally Herigstad는 최근 기사에서 재배하는 것이 더 저렴한 다섯 가지 식품을 나열한 정원 프로젝트를 강조했습니다. 음식? 과일나무, 양상추, 허브, 덩굴채소, 피망. 그녀는 또한 전문가에게 맡길 5가지 품목(감자, 당근, 셀러리, 아스파라거스, 밀)도 나열했습니다. 우리 프로젝트를 알려주셔서 감사합니다, Sally!
Kris와 나는 아직 정원에 많은 노력을 기울이고 있지 않지만 식물은 그들의 노력을 과도하게 추진했습니다. 그들은 따뜻하고 습한 오레곤의 5월을 좋아했습니다. 열매가 맺히고, 과일 나무가 열매를 맺고, 야채가 깡패처럼 자라고 있습니다.
지난주 Kris는 자신이 가장 좋아하는 식물의 사진을 찍기 위해 카메라를 밖으로 가져갔습니다. 첫 번째는 토마토 중 하나입니다:
Kris는 "이 사진은 슬프다"고 말했습니다. “식물의 아래쪽 잎이 아직도 대부분 빠져 있는 모습을 보세요!” 저는 토마토 관련 도구를 지적하고 싶습니다. 튼튼한 토마토 케이지와 그 옆에 꽂혀 있는 2리터짜리 병(여름 동안 물주기용)입니다. 배경에는 플라스틱 덮개 아래에 도토리 스쿼시가 보입니다.
두 번째 사진은 제가 사랑하는 케인베리인 블랙베리, 라즈베리, 매리언베리를 보여줍니다. 이것은 아마도 당신에게 녹색 벽처럼 보일 것입니다. 직접 보면 그렇습니다.
저 녹색 벽을 통해 볼 수 있다면 20피트 길이의 포도밭을 볼 수 있을 것입니다. 모퉁이를 돌면 사과 두 그루, 배 한 그루, 자두 한 그루 등 네 그루의 과일나무가 있습니다. 올해는 상당한 규모의 과일 작물을 수확할 수 있는 첫해인 것 같습니다.
마지막으로 Kris의 자부심과 기쁨을 담은 레드 커런트 덤불 사진이 있습니다. 물론 지금은 열매가 녹색입니다. 괜찮습니다. 기다리면 됩니다.
허브, 감자, 완두콩 등 우리가 보여드릴 수 있는 다른 식물도 많이 있습니다. 아 그렇군요 — 아마 다음 달쯤이 될 것 같습니다.
5월 동안 우리는 정원 관련 비용으로 $110.89를 지출했습니다. 우리는 농작물 작업에 5~1/2시간을 소비했습니다.
“모르겠어요.” 나는 오늘 밤 숫자를 도표화한 후 말했다. "우리는 이미 정원에 300달러를 썼습니다. 갚을 방법이 없습니다."
“하지만 이제 대부분의 금전적 비용은 완료되었습니다.”라고 Kris는 말했습니다. "남은 것은 식물을 가꾸는 일뿐이다. 이제부터는 수확만 남았다. 놀라실 것 같다."
그러기를 바랍니다. 지금까지 우리는 정원에서 21시간과 296.70달러를 소비했으며, 우리가 보여줘야 할 것은 수분이 많은 딸기 두 개뿐입니다!
오레곤 북서부의 정원사들에게는 비참한 6월이었습니다. 처음 2주는 습하기만 한 것이 아니라 익숙합니다. 추웠죠. 현지 언론은 이 달을 '6월'이라고 불렀다. 주민들은 이 용어를 빠르게 받아들였습니다. 시원한 날씨로 인해 많은 농작물이 뒤로 밀렸습니다. 딸기 농부들은 불평했다. 블루베리와 라즈베리는 3주 늦었습니다.
그런데 이제 해가 떴습니다. 우리는 한 달 내내 딸기와 완두콩을 수확했는데, 오늘 아침에 첫 번째 블루베리를 따냈습니다. (아주 좋지는 않습니다. 아직 익지 않았습니다.) 라즈베리는 일주일 정도 지나면 수확할 것 같고, 꽃이 많이 핀 것으로 판단하면 풍성한 수확을 거둘 것 같습니다. 그동안 배, 자두, 사과나무에는 열매가 많이 맺혔습니다. 7월 말에는 야채를 먹을 수도 있습니다.
간단히 말해서, 이번 달은 느리게 시작되었지만 머지않아 농산물을 생산할 수 있게 될 것입니다.
우리의 정원 가꾸기 집안일이 더욱 일상화되었습니다. 이제 모든 작물을 심었으므로 우리가 할 일은:
Kris와 저는 이번 달에 이러한 작업을 수행하는 데 약 7시간을 보냈습니다. 크리스가 잡초이자 비료라는 사실을 인정하겠습니다. 우리 둘 다 수확하는 일이 제가 즐기는 일이에요. 딸기 사이를 이동하는 데에는 선과 같은 것이 있습니다. (그리고 블루베리를 따기 전까지 기다리세요. 명상적인 느낌이 많이 듭니다.)
우리는 5월 31일에 첫 번째 딸기를 수확했지만 6월의 총 수확량에 포함됩니다. (마찬가지로 우리는 오늘 첫 번째 건포도를 수확했지만 7월에 수확량을 계산할 것입니다.) 지난 몇 주 동안 우리의 수확량은 다음과 같습니다.
이것은 여러분 중 일부에게는 현상금처럼 보일 것이고 다른 사람들에게는 약간의 양처럼 보일 것입니다. 그러나 이것이 우리 정원이 생산하는 것입니다. 그것이 우리가 할 수 있는 공간입니다. 사실 올해는 날씨 때문에 두 작물 모두 크게 줄어든 것 같아요. 완두콩조차도 어려움을 겪었습니다. (포틀랜드에서는 완두콩이 보통 어려움을 겪지 않습니다.)
지역 식료품점의 눈콩은 이번 달 내내 파운드당 5.99달러였으므로 우리 수확량은 14.08달러의 가치가 있었습니다. 딸기는 가격이 더 어렵습니다. Safeway에서 2파운드 또는 4파운드 용기에 담아 구입하면 파운드당 2.50달러에 구입할 수 있습니다. Kris는 지역 농장에서 파운드당 85센트에 12파운드를 골랐습니다. 하지만 우리의 수확량은 대략 1파운드 단위로 이루어졌기 때문에 식료품점의 1파운드 가격(3.99달러)을 사용하겠습니다. 그것은 또 다른 46.84달러 상당의 음식입니다. (그런데 저는 이 방법론에 대한 조언과 토론을 환영합니다. 실제로 가격을 비교하는 가장 좋은 방법은 모르겠습니다.)
이번 달 우리 정원에서 총 60.92달러의 식량을 수확했습니다.
6월 동안 우리는 정원에 79센트를 썼습니다(Winco에서 상추 씨앗 한 봉지를 구입하는 데). 우리는 농작물 작업에 7시간을 보냈습니다.
지난 달에 나는 정원에 드는 비용을 회수할 수 있을지 의심스럽다고 썼습니다. 이번 달에는 완두콩과 딸기를 조금만 수확한 후에 정원이 우리에게 돈을 절약해 줄 것이라는 데는 의심의 여지가 없는 것 같습니다. 토마토만으로 300달러를 수확할 수 있을 것 같아요!
6개월이 지나면 이 프로젝트에서 236.57달러의 손실이 발생합니다.
앞서 나는 Kris가 지역 농장에서 12파운드의 딸기를 수확했다고 언급했습니다. 자신만의 정원이 없다면 U-Pick 농산물은 훌륭한 거래입니다. 베리를 따기 위한 가족 여행은 아이들에게 훌륭한 나들이가 될 수 있으며, 맛있는 잼과 시럽을 얻을 수도 있습니다.
Rosings Park(우리는 행복한 반에이커라고 부름)에서 베리, 베리 좋은 달이었습니다. 우울했던 6월은 기억 속으로 사라지고, 해가 떠오르고, 열매가 익었습니다. 지금은 정원에서 할 일이 거의 없고 식물에 물을 주고 농산물을 수확하는 시기입니다. 보존해야 할 일이 많습니다 그러나 식품은 통조림, 냉동 및 건조 과정을 거쳐야 합니다.
7월 초에 우리는 라즈베리가 없다는 것을 발견했습니다. 우리는 보통 지나치게 열성적인 지팡이에서 몇 파운드를 얻지만 올해는 겨우 몇 입만 얻었을 뿐이고 무게를 잴 가치도 없었습니다.
무엇이 잘못되었는지는 아직 확실하지 않지만, 라즈베리 재앙의 가장 큰 원인은 제가 제대로 가지치기를 하지 않았기 때문일 것입니다. 우리의 추측은 내가 지팡이를 너무 세게 잘라냈거나, 아마도 너무 늦게 잘라냈을 가능성이 높다는 것입니다. 우리는 가을 작물을 볼 것으로 예상하지만(그리고 아마 좋은 것일 수도 있음), 여름 산딸기 작물은 결코 실현되지 않았습니다.
이 프로젝트는 특정 비용과 "이익"을 분류하는 방법을 결정해야 한다는 점에서 흥미롭습니다. 예를 들어, 우리는 실제로 우리 소유지에서 체리를 재배하지 않지만 이웃들이 12.5파운드(5.649kg)의 과일을 수확하도록 허락했습니다. 그걸 총계에 포함해야 할까요? 파운드당 약 $2.99로 체리 $37.38입니다!
대신에 우리는 다른 방법을 통해 받은 농산물에 대해 별도의 집계를 유지하기로 결정했습니다. 확실히 비용 절감 효과가 있지만 실제로 우리가 직접 성장시킨 것은 아닙니다.
그 사이에 우리는 과잉 베리를 처리하는 동시에 당근과 상추를 재배할 수 없는 것을 보상하는 방법을 찾았습니다. 우리는 크리스의 동료 중 한 명이 재배한 채소와 베리를 교환하고 있습니다. 이는 양측 모두에게 큰 일입니다. 그러나 회계상의 목적으로 우리는 이 거래를 무시합니다. 베리를 수확하고 무게를 잰 후에는 그 이후에 무슨 일이 일어나든 상관없습니다.
이번 달 정원 생산에 대한 전체 집계는 다음과 같습니다.
이 프로젝트의 목적을 위해 우리는 "최적 일치" 가격을 사용하고 있습니다. GRS 독자의 제안을 바탕으로 우리는 지역 농민 시장에서 일반적인 가격을 얻고 있습니다. 어떤 경우에는 현지 유기농 농산물 판매점의 가격을 사용합니다. 모든 경우에 우리는 공정하려고 노력하고 있지만 이는 과학이라기보다는 예술에 가깝습니다.
7월의 총 수확량은 31파인트의 베리를 포함하여 123.68달러의 농산물을 생산했습니다.
이번 달 Kris는 주말마다 약 한 시간 동안 비료를 주고 정원을 감시했습니다. 우리는 이번 달에 토마토 묶기, 뿌리 덮개 뿌리기, 기타 집안일을 함께 한 시간 동안 보냈습니다. 하지만 우리 시간의 대부분은 열매를 따는 데 소비되었습니다. 우리는 약 6시간 동안 함께 모여 농산물을 수확했습니다. 이번 달 우리는 농작물 작업에 총 11시간을 소비했습니다.
7월 동안 우리는 블루베리 뿌리 주위에 흙 3봉지를 마련하기 위해 정원에 20.94달러를 썼습니다. (블루베리의 밑부분이 뭉쳐져 있고 흙이 침식되어 뿌리가 드러나는 경향이 있습니다.)
7월이 끝나갈 무렵, 토마토 식물은 우리 꼭대기에 도달했고 녹색 열매를 맺었습니다. 선골드 방울토마토가 가장 먼저 익고(이미 몇 개는 먹었습니다) 스투피스(Stupice)가 그 뒤를 따릅니다. 오이와 호박이 정기적으로 생산되기 시작하고 옥수수가 번성하고 있습니다. 허브 밭에는 엘더베리가 어둡게 빛나고 있고, 근처의 과일 나무들은 늦은 여름에 우리가 즐길 수 있는 짐을 하나씩 담고 있습니다.
Kris는 스노우콩과 갈은 애호박을 여러 묶음의 냉동고 잼(제가 가장 좋아하는 것)과 함께 냉동실에 보관했습니다. 그녀는 또한 여러 종류의 요리된 잼과 젤리, 가벼운 시럽에 담긴 체리 통조림, 딜, 마늘, 생강을 곁들인 절인 녹두, 나중에 사용할 수 있도록 말린 체리, 블루베리 및 건포도를 준비했습니다. (그녀의 동료 중 한 명이 콩절임 방법을 배우기 위해 수요일에 왔습니다.) 긴 비오는 겨울 동안 이번 여름의 풍요로움을 누릴 수 있어서 기쁠 것입니다.
이번 달에도 포틀랜드 남쪽의 행복한 0.5에이커 규모의 Rosings Park에서 베리 수확이 계속되었습니다. 블랙베리 시간은 제가 일년 중 가장 좋아하는 시간입니다. 그리고 8월은 나에게 너무 더운 경우가 많지만, 그것이 통조림 시즌의 시작을 의미한다는 것을 알기 때문에 기꺼이 더위를 견딜 수 있습니다. 아니나 다를까, Kris는 살사와 사과소스, 그리고 온갖 종류의 피클과 잼을 내놓았습니다. 냠냠
또한 Kris가 기쁘게도 예정보다 한 달이나 늦어진 이번 주에 마침내 토마토를 수확했습니다. .
정원 가꾸기의 슬픈 비밀 중 하나는 다음과 같습니다. 한여름에는 좌절감을 느낄 수 있습니다. 당신이 사물을 완벽하게 파악하지 않으면 정원이 당신에게서 멀어질 수 있습니다. 다음은 이달 중순 Kris의 실제 인용문입니다. 우리는 소파에 앉아 올림픽 다이빙을 관람하고 있을 때 다음과 같은 애도를 기록했습니다:
제가 블루베리를 안 골랐거든요. 콩을 골라야 계속 생산할 수 있습니다. 오이가 올라오고 있어요. 이번 주에는 날씨가 더울 것이기 때문에 물을 좀 줘야 해요. 남은 호박을 이웃들에게 전달해야 해요. 나는 파트리스의 사과도 따지 않았어요. 그녀는 나에게 세 번이나 제안했지만 너무 바빠서 이제 끝났습니다.
기억하세요:우리 집에는 소박한 정원이 있습니다. 우리는 재미를 위해 음식을 재배합니다. 이 프로젝트는 비용상의 이점도 있는지 여부를 결정합니다. 하지만 소박한 정원이라도 많은 열매를 맺을 수 있습니다. 음식. 어머니는 병원에 계시고 크리스의 부모님은 시내에 계시기 때문에 8월 첫 2주 동안은 정원 가꾸는 시간이 많지 않았습니다. 한동안 자제력을 잃을 위험도 있었지만, 버텨냈습니다!
우리는 이번 달에 시간 외에는 정원에서 아무것도 쓰지 않았습니다. 우리는 베리와 채소를 따는 데 약 8시간을 보냈습니다. (크리스도 이달 초에 약간의 시비를 했습니다.)
하지만 우리는 다양한 방법으로 수확량을 보충했습니다:
우리는 계속해서 다른 사람들과 농산물을 교환하면서 우리의 잉여분을 나눠주고 다른 정원의 풍요로움을 누릴 것입니다. 한 달쯤 지나면 건너편 이웃에게서 콩코드 포도를 수확할 수 있을 것 같아요. 이 주스의 맛은 환상적입니다.
이번 달 정원 생산에 대한 전체 집계는 다음과 같습니다.
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.
참고: 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.
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.)
This month, we didn’t keep track of the apples and cherries and other produce we obtained through other methods than our own garden.
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.
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!)
Kris gives orders to her garden elves. Photo by Lisa.
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 and Annika to help harvest. They did an amazing job picking cherry tomatoes.
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 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.
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.
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.
Our total harvest in September yielded $152.75 in produce, largely from tomatoes. Here’s the complete tally for this month’s garden production.
참고: 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.
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 — we love having fresh produce outside our front door, and we enjoy the work with the plants, but I was hoping for more.
I think there are a few ways we can improve.
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).
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.)
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”.
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).
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 Concord grapes.) They make amazing grape juice and Kris wants to put up some grape jelly.
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.
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 , all of the changes and improvements to be made.
And, believe it or not, the success of next summer’s garden begins today.
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.
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 — 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.)
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.
I shoveled while Kris wheeled and spread.
“How big is your garden?” e-mailed one reader during the middle of the month.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can find out.” I went outside with a tape measure to discover:
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.
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:
Note that this does not include the 40+ pounds of Concord grapes we picked from one neighbor, nor the 5+ pounds of high-bush cranberries we picked from another.
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 . Instead of giving up, we think we might actually try to grow more of it next year.
참고: 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.
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 (chives, basil, cilantro, sage, thyme, bay leaves, marjoram, oregano).
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!
Though we’ll spend more time 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.
Kris has already started one project for next year:She’s begun to grow herbs from seed 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.
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.
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.
Speaking of next year, Kris and I have decided that we will do this project again in 2009 , continuing to provide monthly updates. We enjoyed it more than we had expected, and believe a second year of data would be instructive.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, here are the final totals for our garden harvest this year.
Berries ($225.74)
We 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.
Vegetables ($294.59)
Our 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.
Fruits ($66.63)
Our 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.
We also harvested at least $25 worth from our herb garden during the year.
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.
2008 garden summary:
Month Time Cost Harvest January4.0 hours$27.30—February2.5 hours——March3.5 hours$130.00—April5.5 hours$28.51—May5.5 hours$110.89—June7.0 hours$0.79$50.83July11.0 hours$20.94$123.68August8.0 hours—$123.94September2.0 hours—$152.75October5.0 hours—$155.77November6.0 hours——December———Totals 60.0 hours $318.43 $606.97Next year our costs will be lower, as one type of pest-trap for the apple trees can be reused.
Even with the other stuff going on in our lives, Kris and I found time to begin planning our summer garden this month. Soon the winter days will warm, teasing us with thoughts of working in the yard. But true gardening weather won’t arrive for about three months.
There may not be much gardening to do during the winter, but we still eat plenty of food we’ve grown ourselves. Last week, Kris made several fruit smoothies and a fantastic berry cobbler from blackberries she froze in August. (Just thinking about this cobbler again makes me drool!) We’ve also been consuming canned pasta sauce and salsa, cream of tomato soup, pickles and applesauce.
Meanwhile, we’ve also made use of the herb garden we’re growing indoors this winter. We have a container filled with basil, cilantro, dill, and oregano. This is an easy (and cheap!) way to add a touch of freshness to our cooking.
The real highlight of the month, of course, is placing the orders for seeds and supplies. Based on GRS reader suggestions, we’re trying Seed Savers Exchange for the first time this year, along with our other normal sources.
As in 2008, Kris created a spreadsheet to track her purchases (and the seeds she saved from last year). Our seeds have arrived, and now must wait patiently for the beginning of March. That’s when many of them will be started under our grow-lights.
January was an expensive month for our garden. We spent $25.75 on vegetable seeds (and 25 strawberry starts). Kris spent $42 on flower seeds (which we do not track for this project). And, finally, we spent $105.40 for fruit trees and supplies (such as lures for pests).
After some debate, Kris and I have decided to add three more fruit trees to our yard. Our happy half acre already contains two apples, a pear, and a plum. Next week, we’ll drive out to One Green World (a fantastic source for fruit trees — they ship everywhere) to pick up two different varieties of Asian pear and a self-fertile semi-dwarf sweet cherry (as opposed to a pie cherry).
To us, cherry trees are problematic. We love the fruit, but the trees are a hassle for a couple of reasons:
Kris and I have also discussed expanding our vegetable garden by tearing out more of the lawn. I don’t think we’ll do that this year, but it’s an option for the future. Our unusual extended snowstorm may have done damage to our crops, so we’ll keep a close eye on how the berry bushes, asparagus, and perennial herbs emerge this Spring.
One of our goals for 2009 was to try to reduce costs, but it’s possible we’ll end up spending more than in 2008. Already, we’ve spent nearly half what we spent last year. We’re okay with that. Our $66 expenditure on three fruit trees is a one-time thing. Once these trees are established, they’ll cost almost nothing to maintain, and they’ll produce fruit for decades.
We spent a lot of time in our garden this month, which was unusual considering that it’s February. In fact, the twelve hours we spent working on our food crops was the most we’ve worked in a month since I began tracking the numbers in January of 2008. We don’t mind. A little effort now will pay off big in the months and years ahead.
Much of our time was spent prepping for and planting three new trees. A small fruit tree can be an excellent addition to the suburban yard. A mature fruit tree is an attractive piece of landscaping that can offer a summertime bounty with minimal effort. (The downside is that they can be messy.)
The cost of a fruit tree is mostly up front. A sapling generally runs about $20 and takes a little work to plant. Young trees produce no fruit for the first few years, but eventually patience and effort are rewarded. Our existing fruit trees — two apples, a pear, and a plum — are entering their fifth year, and will yield fine crops this summer.
On Valentine’s weekend, we planted three new trees. We added two Asian pears (chojuro and ya li ) in the “orchard” area of our property, which was originally a filbert orchard, became an expanse of grass, and now has six fruit trees. We planted a cherry (lapins ) near the road. (Cherries can be invasive; we reasoned that by putting the tree near the street, it would be less of a hassle.)
After planting the young fruit trees, we took time to prune their mature siblings, and to prune the berry vines and the grapes. Pruning the berries is labor-intensive. For one thing, they’re thorny. For another, they’re a twisted mess. Kris’ sister helped us untangle the brambles, cut out the old wood, and tie the good branches to our berry trellis.
We also began our vegetable garden this month. Two weekends ago, I double-dug (double-digged?) a bed for the sweet peas. (When you double-dig, you’re essentially loosening two layers of soil, which helps the plants to grow.) We installed three pea trellises, and we’ve been planting one batch of peas each weekend. I’ll put in the last batch tomorrow. I may have to re-plant some of the earlier peas, though, because the blue jays have discovered they make a tasty snack.
You may recall that Kris is unhappy with the current performance of our four-year-old asparagus plants. Last weekend I double-dug a second area of the vegetable patch to act as a new asparagus bed. This spot should have better drainage. Here we planted 15 crowns of asparagus (Jersey knight and Mary Washington jumbo ) and several dozen red onion sets. We won’t be able to harvest the asparagus for a couple of years (the plants need time to develop), but we’ll use the onions in salsa this summer.
In the herb garden, Kris pruned the rosemary and the lavender. She’s quite pleased because her chives are peeking up. Very soon now, she will begin her vegetable seeds indoors. Many people have requested that Kris document the process, so I think we plan to have a mid-month update on how to start plants from seed. 계속 지켜봐 주시기 바랍니다!
“Our expenditures in time and money are way up this year,” I told Kris after I finished compiling this month’s numbers. I was Very Concerned. But all Kris said was, “Yay!”
To her, more time and money spent on the garden now means bigger harvests in the future. I’m not convinced. Still, Kris assures me that we won’t have many other garden expenditures until May. (Which would bring our costs back in line with last year’s pace.)
Note that this month we harvested and used some of the herbs that Kris has been growing indoors all winter. In fact, we just had a mess of basil in our baked ziti last night!
In Oregon, the month of March is unpredictable. Every gardener is itching to get outside, but it’s wet and cold with a few precious — and fleeting — moments of sunshine. In those sunny moments, you can bet you’ll hear a lawnmower going!
I’ve spent a lot of semi-productive time in the flower beds this month, checking on the progress of my perennial flowers, most of which seem to have come through our extremely cold December just fine. While they’re just peeking up from winter, it’s a good time for me to assess which plants are getting invasive and where the bare patches are that will be filled by the plants I have started from seed indoors.
On March 1st, I started seeds for basil and eight types of flowers. Four weeks later, some of them are ready to be moved into 4″ pots. I also started some mesclun salad mix in our indoor herb container, and harvested the end of the winter’s basil and dill (leaving the oregano, which looks great).
On March 15th, the day arrived that I look forward to all winter:tomato planting day! I plan to have twelve tomato plants this year (nine varieties in all). By the last day in March, each seedling was happily growing under fluorescent lights in the windowsill. Just a few days ago, I began seeds for two types of squash and some cosmos flowers.
The peas and onions we planted in February have sprouted. Mid-month, into the vegetable patch went seeds for three kinds of beets and more salad greens, and among the roses I planted an additional 25 strawberry plants. Neither the beets or the lettuce have sprouted (it’s been cold!) but I am confident that they’re on their way.
When J.D. writes about our gardening endeavors, he typically concentrates on the herbs, fruits, and vegetables. He loves to eat! But much of my time is devoted to the flower garden. The expansive flowerbeds on our property were filled with 125 rose bushes when we arrived. After giving many away, relocating others and accidentally killing a few, we’re down to about 60. In their place, I have gradually added perennials, bulbs and self-sowing annuals.
Now that many of these established plants have been growing for several years, they are ready for clump division or have provided volunteer offspring that can be moved elsewhere.
In April, my friend Rhonda is hosting a plant swap. Each participant will bring plants dug from her own garden, and take home others. A few guests are coming empty-handed because they are in new homes without gardens, but I am sure there will be plenty to share.
This month, I spent a couple of hours digging and dividing, and now have about 30 pots to swap. This is a fun way to frugally multiply your landscaping! Since most of the plants that people bring to swap are “vigorous growers”, you can bet that it will only be a few years before they’re ready to be swapped again with someone new.
The edibles garden took little time this month — about 4 hours — especially if you don’t count the many trips I took outside just to squat and peer at the soil where I had planted seeds.
Based on last year’s tests, we estimate that we spent just $1 in March to run two fluorescent shop lights. We anticipate an inexpensive April as well. J.D. had a minor freak-out when he saw our February expenditures, but looking back at last year’s totals, by now we’ve only spent $10 more, gotten $15-worth of herbs from the winter window box and planted three new fruit trees. That’s a bargain!
April was a slow month for our garden. We didn’t do much. Part of this is because we’ve become more efficient. But another part is because we did some of our chores earlier this year.
Kris has been antsy to get plants in the ground. I always tell her that May 1st is our target date, but she’d plant out on the first of April if she could. Last year she put her tomato starts out a few days early, and that was a mistake. They were pummeled by a freak hailstorm and never did produce much. This year, she decided to wait.
She did, however, do a little bit of work. She planted beets, radishes, and lettuce. She transplanted her tomatoes into bigger pots. And she produced a garden map that outlines where she intends to plant things.
Kris has mapped out where she’ll plant tomatoes and chili peppers
My only garden work was a frustrating hour spent rototilling the compost and leaves and horse manure into the soil. It was frustrating because we have a large, willful rototiller that seems to have a mind of its own. Our actual garden isn’t very large, and we currently have created a sort of maze around the asparagus and onions. That makes it difficult to maneuver. I did manage to get the ground worked up, but it didn’t happen without cursing!
Speaking of cursing:Last year, our gooseberries were mauled by a sawfly infestation. This year, the sawfly larvae are back, and they’re not only devouring the gooseberries, but the currants as well. The gooseberries we can live without, but not the currants. Kris is researching organic pest controls.
We may not have much to share about our garden this month, but we do have some photos. The last few days have been sunny, so we’ve had a chance to photograph our garden in its early stages. Here, for example, is the (mostly) blank canvas:
As a reminder, the area of our vegetable garden space is roughly 15 ft by 34 ft (4.57 m x 10.37 m), or 510 square feet (47.4 sq. m.). This actually isn’t very big, and we’ve considered enlarging it. As I mentioned before, Kris planted out her tomatoes yesterday, so this space is no longer empty. Before she planted them, however, Kris set her tomatoes outside to “harden off”. I know this photo doesn’t really show it, but these things are enormous after only six weeks of growth:
Meanwhile, we do have some crops up. We’ve recruited help to maintain them. Meatball has been tasked with patrolling the beets, radishes, and peas, and Simon has been given charge of the onions:
The peas and onions aren’t the only things growing. This is the time of year that berries begin to go berserk. They’re not producing fruit, of course, but they’re beginning to show promise. The blueberries are laden with blossoms (especially the Toro, which are our favorite). So too are the strawberries:
Our caneberries have begun their vigorous growth. No blossoms yet, but lots of new shoots:
Though I don’t have photos, our fruit trees have also begun to bloom. We have two apples, three plums, a cherry, and a pear. We’ve set out pest control in a few of these, and that’s all we’ll really have to do until harvest.
Finally, here’s a salad that we made from herbs and lettuce greens that Kris grew indoors. This is a perfect example of how you can harvest home-grown food in a small amount of space. (You can’t harvest a lot of it, but you an harvest some.)
The edibles garden took little time this month — just 3 hours. We didn’t spend a dime. We harvested a single asparagus spear (which Kris consumed raw), but we won’t count that in our totals.
What a difference a year makes! Our fruits, berries, and vegetables had a slow start last year (and then were further slowed by a cold, cold June). This May was warm — very warm. Our food crops loved the weather, and they’ve shown explosive growth.
The sunny weather produced lots of growth. The peas and raspberries and blueberries and fruit trees all look amazing. We’re going to have huge crops. We have a couple of small snow peas on the vine, and the tomatoes are blossoming. But only three crops have yielded fruit through the end of May:
That puts our May harvest at $5.97, which isn’t much, but it is still $5.97 more than we harvested in May last year.
Though our garden is going well this year, we’ve experienced some minor annoyances:
These aren’t major problems, obviously — they’re just minor annoyances. We try to take care of our equipment, but there are a few failures every year. Partly because of this, May was an expensive month. (It was also expensive in 2008.) We spent $98.55 on garden supplies, including herbs and vegetable starts.
I spent zero hours in the garden this month. I did a few quick tasks, but no major work. Kris made up for that. She tells me she spent 15 hours on food-producing activities last month. I’m skeptical. That’s 40% more than our busiest month in 2008 (July). On the other hand, she did do a lot of work out there. (She tells me that just as some GRS readers warned, the horse manure we spread last fall has produced a fine carpet of weeds, which she hoes daily.)
It’s the beginning of summer, and that means our garden is lush and green and growing. It also means there’s nothing exciting to write about. We’ve begun to harvest a couple of things, but mostly our chores have become routine. We weed and fertilize while we wait for the crops to ripen.
One problem we’ve encountered this year is weeds. There are always some weeds to be pulled, but as many GRS readers warned, spreading horse manure on our vegetable garden caused more weeds to sprout . Kris is the weed-puller (and plant-fertilizer), so she puts the most hours into the garden. She spent four hours working on food crops this month, while I spent three, all of which were harvest-related.
As our harvests begin, I want to remind you of our methodology. 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.
Also, last year we established through repeated measurements that a pint of berries weighs roughly 300 grams. I’ll use this approximation frequently throughout the summer.
Those ground rules established, here’s our harvest for the month of June:
Our harvest this month was worth a total of $78.37. In June 2008, we harvested $50.83 worth of food. That’s a 54% increase in the value of our crops!
Despite the correct pruning we gave them this year, our raspberry harvest looks as though it’s going to be pitiful. The culprit? They’re overcome by the monstrous marionberry vine that has taken over the entire trellis. We may relocate the raspberry canes, so will evaluate the yard for a suitable spot and decide later this summer. However, there is a silver lining; we love marionberries (a type of blackberry-boysenberry cross).
And so the profit portion of our project has begun! July, August, September, and October will be even more productive as we begin to pick our caneberries, our tree fruit, and, especially, our tomatoes.
As always, we’ve been supplementing our own produce with food picked elsewhere. Last weekend, our friend Jolie joined us for a trip to the strawberry patch. Kris and I picked 24 pounds of berries (about two flats), for which we paid just over $20.
On Friday, our neighbor came over to let us know that her cherries were ready to harvest. We’ve decided not to preserve any cherries this year, but we picked about 10 pounds just for snacking.
Welcome to Oregon, where for the past week it’s been hot . How hot? Here’s the temperature graph from the National Weather Service for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday:
The heat hasn’t prevented us from working in the garden. We’ve been watering the thirsty plants, and we’ve begun harvesting their fruit. It’s hard to believe that just three months ago, this was a bare patch of earth. Now it’s grown so lush that it’s difficult to photograph:
But how have our harvests been? Let’s find out.
Remember how last year Kris and I couldn’t find a price for our currants or gooseberries? They’re just not available here in Oregon, so we used the same figures for them as we did for our other berries. But earlier this month we stopped at an Asian supermarket, and they had both gooseberries ($2.99 for 6oz.) and red currants ($3.49 for 6oz.).
So what?
Well, in July we harvested 8.362kg of red currants from our two bushes, which is 18.42 pounds. That’s a lot of currants. Look again at that price in the last paragraph. $3.49 for 6oz. translates to about $9.30 per pound. In other words, we harvested $171.43 worth of red currants this year .
Holy cats!
I have new advice for how to make a garden profitable:Plant red currants — and lots of them!
But what can you do with eighteen pounds of red currants? Kris made two batches of red currant jelly with the most beautiful ruby red color you’ve ever seen. She’s going to enter some in the county fair in mid-August. We also had two friends come glean the extras. Plus there were currants left over to freeze!
While the currants gave us a bumper crop, other plants were less productive. The gooseberries didn’t produce much. And for the second year, they fell victim to the gooseberry sawfly. Kris and I agree:Those things are out of here! I’m going to dig them up and we’ll replace them with more blueberries.
Speaking of blueberries, they weren’t very productive this year either. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, but we’ve harvested less than half the blueberries we did last year. Our raspberries were pathetic for the second year running; they just can’t compete with the vigorous marionberry canes.
Still, harvest season is in full swing. Here’s the complete tally from our garden in July:
Our harvest totaled $243.10, but most of that was from the red currants. Without those to salvage our stats, we would have finished behind last July. That’s okay, though. The tomatoes are just about to come on, and we’re going to have a lot more of them than we did last year. The fruit trees will also give us bigger crops than last year since they’re a year more mature.
As we often do, we also picked fruit from friends this month. We picked cherries from the neighbor across the street, and on July 3rd we drove out to raid the cherries belonging to our friends Ron and Kara, coming home with thirty pounds of mixed Queen Annes, Bings and sour pie cherries. 냠! We also made use of some early apples for a juicing experiment. This “free” produce isn’t included in the numbers below.
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:
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.
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.
After a long productive summer, our September in the garden was kind of anticlimactic. Sure, we continued to harvest our home-grown food, but neither of us was particularly “in” to the garden this month. It was a chore instead of an obsession. September can be that way sometimes.
Still, there’s always something happening with our home food production. This month:
Now we’re just waiting for the grapes to ripen (soon, very soon) and the harvest season is done. Kris and I are both disappointed that, for us, this has been the Summer of No Corn. We didn’t grow any ourselves, and we didn’t have another convenient source. When people did give us corn, it was terrible. Ah well — there’s always next year.
But what you really want to know is how much we “earned” from our garden in September, right? Here’s this month’s tally:
As always, we also enjoyed some of the harvest from our friends and neighbors. We obtained 28 pounds of plums from other folks, a bunch of onions from my cousin, and about 30 pounds of fresh-caught salmon and halibut from the millionaire next door when he returned from Alaska. (And Tina offered us as much corn as we wanted, but we weren’t able to pick it.)
I’m a little worried about October. Last year, we harvested over $150 in produce because the tomato season lingered. This year, though, tomatoes are essentially over. Kris and I don’t expect to harvest much more than we already have. Who knows, though…maybe we’ll be surprised. Still, our harvest total for the year is already greater than our total for all of 2008, so we’ve made improvements!
As those of you who follow me on Twitter already know, it’s been a l-o-n-g Saturday filled with all sorts of misadventures. Murphy’s Law has been in full effect this Halloween. I’d meant to post this month-end garden summary around noon, but now will have to do. In fact, there wouldn’t be a summary at all except that my wife sat down and wrote it for me . Here’s what Kris has to say about the month of October…
October arrived with the typical cold and damp, bringing Portland’s garden season to a close. During the fall and winter we’ll enjoy the hearty foods we’ve packed away from this year’s crops, until by early spring we’re ready to begin anew.We’ve been eating fresh fruit and vegetables from our garden patches since May’s first strawberries. Not bad!
We harvested the last of the garden produce this month.Rain and wind don’t mix well with ripening tomatoes, so I picked 15 pounds of semi-ripened tomatoes to take inside. Stored in a cool place between layers of newspaper, some of these will turn out to be fairly delicious.The rest will rot.
The cucumber plants coughed up enough for another month’s worth of salads, and the beets were ready for roasting. (In fact, I’m roasting some in the oven even as I write this.) In addition, I tore out the jalapeno plants and dried the peppers in slices in the dehydrator.Some went to our neighbor who loves spicy foods; the rest will go into winter cornbread and soups.
Usually I collect the fallen English walnuts in our front yard, but the squirrels have been especially voracious this year!And my volunteer vine turned out to be a birdhouse gourd that gave me two mature gourds for fall decorating.
I spent time in the mud ripping out cucumber and squash vines, then the beans and tomato plants, and tidying up the apple trees. We also dug out the beleaguered gooseberry plants and three poorly-producing 25-year-old blueberries.We invested $84 in five new blueberry bushes of various types and sizes.(We’re trying to stagger the berry harvest so it lasts as long as possible.)As we rake leaves in our yard, we’ll spread them onto the garden bed to mulch the asparagus and keep down the weeds over the winter.
In the waning hours of sunshine, early October in our neighborhood smells of Concord grapes.We wait until the scent tells us they’re ready, then head over to the generous neighbor’s yard to pick all we can use. Our own young vines produced a good crop as well. This year, J.D. gathered about 30 gallons of mixed purple and green Concords.I made juice (22 quarts) and grape jelly.It’s a long day but so worth it every time we open a jar.We also made another batch of applesauce from twenty pounds of fruit brought back from an orchard by a friend and fellow canner.
This summer’s total for canned food:140 quarts of assorted pickles, apple/pear sauce, juices, jams &jellies, salsa and fruit.My pantry is full to bursting!I love being able to eat this local bounty during our winter, rather than buying produce that’s been shipped from far away.
In addition to the canned food, the freezer is stacked with berries and assorted sauces, and dried fruits and herbs are stored in a dark and dry place. All this “free food” keeps my grocery spending in check even when we’re not eating directly from the garden.
The fall is when I tally the herbs for the year.Our herb garden provides me with sprigs and snips all year.The annual herbs are finished (basil, stevia, cilantro) and others die back until spring (lemon balm, oregano, mint, lavender) but the perennials will keep going for our winter kitchen use (rosemary, chives, bay leaf, sage &thyme).Throughout the summer, I’ve dried lavender flowers, mint and lemon balm, stevia and raspberry leaves for making tea infusions. Altogether, I estimate that the herb garden has produced at least $50 of harvest.
Here’s the tally for October’s harvest:
Spring is around the corner. 제 생각에는. After spending three weeks basking in sunny skies and temperatures of 20-30 degrees (yes, I’ve taught myself to think in centigrade!), it’s something of a shock to return to Oregon’s five degrees and rain. Still, I know warmer weather is just around the corner — and that means it’s time to garden.
Kris has already started to think of the garden, of course. Her mind makes the leap just after Christmas, when the first of the seed catalogs starts to arrive.
In January, she went through her seed supply — her leftover seeds and seeds saved from last year’s crops — to determine what she needed to order. In the end, she chose:
She spent a total of $24.15 on seeds, ordering mostly from Territorial Seed Company, which sells seeds specifically targeted at “the maritime Pacific Northwest”. (If you can buy your seeds from a regional company, do so. You’ll get plants better suited for your growing conditions.)
Kris has a system for buying seeds. If it’s a new variety she’s trying, she buys the smallest package possible. If it’s a kind she knows she likes, she buys enough to plant for the next two to four years. She saves the extra seeds in the fridge (in an air-tight container).
We’ll plant more in the garden, of course. As usual, we’ll pick up tomatoes, basil, and peppers at the Master Gardener sale at the end of April. These plants will have a good head start, and will let us try a few new varieties.
Kris estimates the seed-buying process took about two hours.
While Kris was buying seeds, I spent some time getting the garden ready. With the help of the boy we hired for a weekend, I tore out some of the old plants, weeded some patches, and — gasp! — cut our blackberry canes to the ground. (This won’t kill them. It’s like pressing the reset switch. They were out of control, and this will give us a chance to guide their growth. But it does mean we won’t get many berries this year.) We spent maybe two hours total doing this. (Meaning, I spent two hours on this, and I paid Ian $20 to help.)
This weekend, Kris intends to plant the peas — if the weather cooperates. The ground is very wet, and there seems to be more rain on the way. (What is this? Oregon?). She’ll also start seeds indoors for her flower garden (nicotiana, zinnia, cosmos, marigolds, and so on). The flowers are mostly from seeds saved in previous years, though the flower-garden costs aren’t included in this project. (Flower gardening is one of Kris’ favorite hobbies.)
Next month, Kris will start seeds indoors for food crops:cucumbers, pumpkin, and zucchini. She times when she plants the seeds based on when she intends to plant them outside (which is May 1st), and counting backwards to get the weeks needed according to the seed-packet instructions.
At the end of April, we’ll attend a “garden exchange”. This is the third year our friend Rhonda has organized a plant swap. Everyone brings their extra plants and seeds, sets them out for others to see, and then takes home what they want or need. In anticipation of this event, Kris will plant extra flowers and vegetables for trading. (She’ll also dig out some perennials to share.)
A garden exchange is a fantastic, frugal way to share plants, but now is the time to organize this if you live in a cool climate. Don’t wait until the last minute.
It’ll be a while before we have fresh berries, but we’re still able to enjoy the fruits of last year’s harvest. In fact, Kris has been using our supply of berries in yogurt smoothies. Here’s her recipe:
We don’t grow the bananas or oranges, of course, and we don’t harvest the honey. But we grow the berries, make the jelly, and, thanks to Jolie Guillebeau, we make our own yogurt. And in just a few months, we’ll have fresh berries to use in the smoothies.
With the cold weather and our trip to Africa, the 2011 garden project is off to a slow start. (It’ll pick up over the next few weeks, though.) We’ve spent a total of 4.0 hours and $44.15 on this year’s food-producing garden ($24.15 for seeds and $20 for hired labor).
It’s interesting to note that there’s really no “typical” year so far.
If you had ask me to guess before I started this project, I would have thought that each year would be much like the year before. Apparently, that’s not the case. I’m eager to see how this year’s costs and harvest unfold…
March is usually a time for Kris and me to get back to work in the garden. The weather warms, and we get to watch as our first sprouts poke through the soil. 올해? Not so much. It was a cool, wet month.
The average temperature in March was about 46 degrees Fahrenheit — which is below normal for this time of year. In fact, Portland just had a record stretch between 60-degree days. The last such day came in early December. We usually get a couple of 60-degree days in February, but if the clouds hadn’t parted on the afternoon of March 31st, this year we wouldn’t have had a warm day until April .
Meanwhile, rainfall was nearly 75% above normal for the month. If that rain had all been concentrated over a few days, we might have done some work in the garden. But it wasn’t. It rained 28 days in March. Twenty of those days saw 1/10th of an inch of rain or more. It was so wet last month that the peas we planted after returning from Africa simply rotted in the ground. And now it’s too late to plant replacements. So, we probably won’t have peas this year. (Which is sad, because I love peas!)
As you’ve probably deduced, between the cool weather and the heavy rainfall, Kris and I did nothing on our garden in March. In fact, we did nothing in the yard. The lawn did get mowed — but not by us. It’s been far too wet for my mower. But we were making dinner last Monday night, when Kris asked, “Is somebody mowing the yard?”
Sure enough. There was the Real Millionaire Next Door on his riding lawnmower. I went outside to chat with him. He just got back from his winter in New Zealand (where it was summer, of course), and he’ll be here a month before heading north to Alaska. He’s like a migrating goose. But he’s a goose who mows our lawn and brings us salmon, so it’s always good to see him.
This garden update is pretty lame, I know. Trust me:There’ll be more to report for April. And May’s installment will be packed!
How’s the weather where you are? How does your garden grow?
After a long vacation in February and a wet, dreary March, Kris and I finally were able to do a little work on our vegetable garden in April. Sort of. The weather remained chilly and damp throughout the month, so we didn’t get as much yardwork done as we’d like. (The average high temperature for April 2011 was 4.5 degrees below normal. The average low was 2.1 degrees below normal. Rainfall was 5.04 inches, almost twice the average for the month.)
Though we couldn’t really plant anything until the last day of the month, Kris has been itching to get in the garden, so she’s been doing a lot of maintenance and clean-up. She and I put a total of twelve hours into our food-producing gardens in April (though eleven of those hours were hers). Most of these hours were spent pulling weeds, digging out old overgrown herbs, and getting the gardens ready for planting. (We opted against using the rototiller this year, so it took longer to prepare the plots.)
A big, furry weed in the middle of the chives.
In mid-April, we attended the neighborhood plant swap, where we were able to pass along plants we no longer need (or want) while picking up others that might be more useful. Kris brought home parsley, tomatoes, and lovage (a celery-tasting herb). She also scored lots of perennial flowers. (But we don’t track flowers in our garden project, thank goodness. That’s purely for fun.)
At the plant swap, Mike and J.D. enjoy some fleeting moments of sunshine.
At the plant swap, our friend Craig gave us three kinds of lettuce seeds and some plant-marker stakes made out of old mini blinds. (What an awesome idea!) Though we never have success with lettuce, Kris planted some indoors, and we’re giving it a go. She also has some basil started in a window box.
Meanwhile, most of our fruits and berries have begun to blossom, and our early crops are finally starting to show some life. The apple trees, for instance, are in full bloom, as my allergies can attest:
In January, we cut back our blackberries and raspberries hard . (“You’re not going to get any fruit on those this year, you know,” my real millionaire next door told me. “I know,” I told him. “It’s a price I’m willing to pay.”) Now, though, the caneberries are sending up lots of new growth.
The grapes and blueberries currants are blooming, too. The peas are up, though they’re behind, and we’ve harvested a few spears of asparagus.
The peppers are in a container this year so that they can have warmer soil than the rest of the garden will get. We’re hoping this will make them more productive.
Kris’ frugal greenhouse:A garbage bag over the pepper pot
The tomatoes are currently in Kris’ mini greenhouse. They’ll stay there until the garden soil warms — our night-time temperatures are still in the low forties, about five degrees below normal — or until they get too big, whichever comes first.
In short, we’re being patient. When the weather turns warm, we’ll be ready to plant things out. If we’re lucky, by the end of June, we’ll be writing about sunny days and sweet, delicious berries.
At the Oregon Master Gardeners plant sale, Kris spent $28.25 on plants for the vegetable garden. She bought:
Kris also bought some herbs. “But they’re decorative herbs,” she tells me. “They’re for the flower garden, not for the herb bed.”
I also spent $15.98 on a bag each of potting soil and compost, bringing our total expenses to $43.23.
All we harvested in April was about 263 grams of asparagus. Asparagus goes for $2.99 a pound at the local natural-food store, which means we’ve reaped about $1.73 in “revenue” from our garden so far this year. We won’t really start getting our money’s worth until June, when the strawberries begin to ripen. (I can hardly wait!)
In my mind, Oregon has mild springs:plenty of rain, sure, but also lots of sunshine and hints of the summer to come. Since we started the garden project, though, that just hasn’t been the case. Our springs have mostly been cool and moist — just like our winters.
May was again — surprise! — cool and moist. There were some sunny days, and our rainfall was around average, but the temperature was much cooler than normal. (Well, long-term normal, not recent normal.) Still, our garden isn’t as stunted as it has been in years past.
Despite the weather, our garden is thriving. As you’ll recall, Kris bought lots of “starts” at the garden show on the last day of April. She set out the tomatoes to harden off (allowing them to become acclimated to the great outdoors), and eventually moved them to the garden. From seed, she planted green beans, cilantro, cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkins. She also planted nasturtiums — edible flowers — from seed. And sunflowers (though we don’t plan to eat those!)
Indoors, we’ve been growing lettuce, which is rare for us. We’ve tried lettuce (and carrots) before, but for some reason, we never have success. But our friend Craig, who is a fantastic gardener, gave us some lettuce seeds saved from last year’s crop. We planted them indoors and now have quite a crop.
For the first time, we’ve grown lettuce that actually tastes okay. It’s not great, but at least it’s not bitter. Meanwhile, some of the cucumbers are still under cloches (made from two-liter soda bottles) because it’s been too cold.
Kris has been hoeing her garden and performing routine maintenance. I haven’t had time to tend to my berries (the blueberries are overrun with weeds!), though I did find time to trim the tall grass in the caneberries and grapes. And last weekend, Kris and I spent half an hour working together to tie up the blackberry canes.
While working on the berry canes last week, we disturbed a nest of baby spiders. “Holy cats!” 나는 말했다. “Look at those guys. There must be a hundred of baby spiders.”
“They’re not really babies,” Kris said. “They’re more like teenagers.”
“I wonder what they eat,” I said. And then I had a thought. I ran inside to grab my camera so that I could shoot the following short video.
I went outside this morning to look at the spiders again, but they were gone — every single one of them. I don’t know enough about spider life to know if they were eaten, washed away by rain, or simply grew up and moved off of their mother’s fencepost.
Our costs in May were relatively low when compared to past years. Kris spent about six hours working on the food crops this month. “I’d love to spend more ,” she tells me, “if the weather would cooperate.” It looks like she’ll get her wish. The forecast for this weekend is sun, sun, sun — and the long-range forecast looks promising, too. I spent about an hour in the garden, giving us a total of seven hours worked this month.
Our only monetary cost was $10 that Kris spent on a large rhubarb plant, which she’s installed in a corner of the garden. (I’ll never know why, though!)
During the month of May, we harvested three things:
June’s harvest will be our first of any size for the year, as we begin to pick the ripening berries. And, of course, July and August will bring us a bounty of fruits, vegetables, berries and herbs!
We’ve spent a lot less on the garden this year than in past years. That’s because we haven’t spent anything on infrastructure. In 2008 and 2009, we had some major expenses for hoses and tomato cages and so on. We’ve had none of those costs this year. In theory, our infrastructure costs should be minimal now that we own most of the things we need to grow our garden.
Summer is finally here in our corner of the Pacific Northwest:The birds are chirping, the insects are humming and the garden is producing.
June started cold and wet but has gradually warmed enough to make Kris think this year’s garden is going to be successful. And she needs a successful summer after two straight years of poor tomato harvests — our pantry needs restocking! But those tomato crops are a long way off. At the moment, we’re enjoying our strawberries, peas (both snow and snap), and the lettuce from the window box we keep inside under a fluorescent shop light.
The tomatoes have burst into blossom, promising heavy harvests in late summer
The strawberries have been a morning staple this month (mixed into yogurt with homemade granola), and the peas are delicious straight from the vines or cut for a crispy addition to our salads. But as much as we like these early crops, the best is yet to come. The zucchini are almost big enough to harvest — maybe this weekend — and the currants are ripening to a gorgeous ruby red. The promises inherent in blossoming crops are making our mouths water:cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, blackberries, raspberries and elderberries, as well as peppers and pumpkins are all blooming like mad. (Do your job, bumble bees!)
Simon stands guard by the pumpkin plant
From the herb garden, we’re harvesting basil and oregano. The oregano gets dried in the sun, and the basil is added fresh to pasta and pizza. Meanwhile, the apple, pear, and plum trees show potential for sizable crops — if the weather cooperates.
Drying oregano in the sun (between two window screens)
You may remember that we cut the berry canes back hard this year. Well, you’d never know it to look at them! They’re out of control! We’re expecting a small berry crop this year, but I need to get out there and tie up the canes before they take over the neighborhood. And we spent some time this month weeding our patch of young blueberry bushes and adding bark mulch. The mulch was our only garden-related expense for June ($36), but I think we’ll need to actually add another layer in July.
Despite being cut back hard, the blackberries are eager to produce.
Based in part on GRS reader feedback, we’re looking for some help with the yard and shrub maintenance since I’ll be traveling more. That will leave Kris able to focus her energies on the food and flowers as the summer continues. Altogether, she estimates we had about eight hours of garden-related labor this month.
Our potato patch is enthusiastic this year
Our harvest for June included:
That’s a total of $16.06 worth of food harvested from our garden in June, but it’s barely getting started. The next few months should see a bounty of tasty, low-cost food. Yum!
Simon patrols the herb garden to keep it free of squirrels
We had a strange July in our garden. First, the cool weather lingered longer than it ought to have. It wasn’t cold and wet, but the days were cool. Then we were gone for much of the month:Alberta, Colorado, Washington. Finally, our harvest was much smaller than in previous summers.
Part of this was because gave most of our currants to a friend, and our new blueberry plants (we replaced the old ones last year) produced fruit, but it went unharvested. (Translation:I wasn’t around/didn’t remember to pick the fruit, so we got none. This is a dumb way to garden.)
The low production, the donated fruit, and the wasted berries meant our numbers for the month were pretty pitiful. Our harvest for July included:
That’s a total “profit” of just $49.90, which is way behind the previous two years we’ve tracked the numbers. (This total doesn’t include the cherries we picked from neighbors and friends. That 13 pounds of fruit was worth roughly $32.)
We also had some minor expenses in July:
좋은 소식이요? August has been awesome so far. We’ve harvested a lot of beans, peas, cucumbers, and more. If the sun continues to shine, we’ll have a great tomato harvest. And the fruit treas are loaded! In three weeks, we hope to be sharing some big numbers with you.
This section was written completely by Kris.
I don’t know about your garden, but mine produces way more zucchini than I can ever eat. And although my basil is thriving, it’s put to shame by the zucchini. How happy was I to find a frugal pesto recipe in our local paper that uses plentiful zucchini as an extender in a Zucchini-Basil Pesto? It replaces expensive pine nuts with more affordable almonds, but don’t skimp on a good quality cheese—it really kicks up the flavor of this mild summer pesto.
Zucchini-Basil Pesto
(makes two cups)
To make the pesto:Melt butter in a medium sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add the almonds and shallot and cook until the shallot is softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, 45 seconds. Transfer the almonds, shallots and garlic to a blender and add the zucchini, basil, lemon juice, and cheese. Pulse until finely chopped. With the blender running, slowly add the 1/4 cup olive oil, stopping to stir the ingredients occasionally. Blend until smooth and season with salt and pepper.
I’ve adapted the recipe slightly to my taste and I use the lesser amount of garlic because I can find it overpowering. Feel free to make changes of your own and play around with it! This pesto would be good with pasta, grilled chicken, or as a dip or sandwich spread. This recipe makes about two cups — a pesto recipe using only basil would need about four cups of basil leaves instead of the one cup required here — and freezes well in small portions.
August finally felt like summer here in Portland. The entire month was sunny and warm, and there was very little rain. The garden rewarded us with productivity. Our harvest in August wasn’t huge, but we expect to pick a lot of fruits and vegetables in September.
A harvest of beans
Still, we did begin to harvest many favorites, including nearly four kilograms (or nine pounds) of green beans! Our harvest for August included:
That’s a total of $89.45 worth of food harvested from our yard, and that doesn’t include the stuff we gave to others or that we harvested from elsewhere.
For instance, Kris and her friends picked apples at the house next door. We ended up with about 50 pounds of fruit, enough to can three gallons of juice and four pints of apple butter. Plus, Kris picked enough roadside blackberries to make two batches of jam. Yum!
Speaking of canning, Kris has been hard at work storing up the food from our yard (and from the local produce stand). She’s canned zucchini bread-and-butter pickles, dill pickles, ginger pickled beans, and a variety of jams. She entered some of last year’s goods in the county fair, and came away with prizes for her plum jam, bread-and-butter pickles, and pickled carrots. Plus, her sour cherry jam won a special award. (It’s just that good!)
The products of a single canning session
We’re looking forward to a big harvest in September. The forecast is for hot, clear days, which should keep our garden producing. Our fruit trees are laden with apples, plums, and pears, and there are still blackberries to be picked. Plus, by the end of the month (or perhaps early in October), we’ll start to harvest grapes.
It’s a wonderful time of year to be a gardener.
This month, the cats weeds got out of control. As you’ll recall, we used to have four cats weeds but one died last February. We were doing fine with three, but when my mother had to move out of her home, we adopted her two cats weeds, giving us five. That’s a lot of weeds.
To make things more interesting, if you follow my personal blog, you know that we’re dealing with a new weed over the past ten days. A rabbit appeared in our yard one morning and adopted us (and our cats) as his own.
Two new weeds in our garden:Silver and Blackberry
Nobody in the neighborhood claims this rabbit weed, nor have our attempts to find his owners on-line come to fruition, so Blackberry (as we call him) is living on our property for now. He’s a cute little sucker, as this video demonstrates:
That’s enough weeds for now, though. We don’t have room for any others!
We had no expenses during August, and we worked very little in the garden. Our only time was spent harvesting.
Our late summer this year meant that our crops were delayed, but when the sunshine came, it came on strong! I was very busy in the kitchen in September, but not so busy in the garden itself.
An almond-pear tart
My records show that since the beginning of the month, I’ve preserved 126 pints of food for pantry and freezer, bringing my year-to-date total to over 263 pints (131 quarts). Not included in those numbers are the dried pears and plums I’ve been able to make from this year’s bumper plum crop from our tree and some of the 50 pounds of Bartletts shared by our neighbor, Roberta. And the fresh fruits and vegetables have meant I’ve purchased only lemons, limes, and onions at the store over the last month; of course, we all know J.D. has purchased pineapple, blueberries, and watermelon!
My pantry is now stocked with jars of applesauce, spiced pear sauce, and apple juice, apple butter, pear butter, pear-vanilla preserves, and plum-anise jam. The freezer has nine quarts of herbed tomato and onion pasta sauce and four pints of oven-roasted tomatoes with olive oil and sea salt. Added to the many pickled items and jams from earlier in the summer, we’re in good shape for the cold and gloomy Oregon winter months ahead! I’ve also made a good number of jams to give to friends for this year’s holiday gifts.
Italian prune plums from our tree
On one of our last sunny September days, I tore out the bean bushes and cucumber vines. They probably would have produced a bit more (the beans were still flowering), but I was in a mood to clean. Out came the smaller of the two zucchini plants, the dried pea vines, and the gourd vine once I had harvested this year’s gourd crop. Other than that work, the only labor for the month was the time spent harvesting — about 5 hours total.
Potatoes from our garden
I’ve only collected about half the potatoes and will dig the rest in October. There are still tomatoes on the vines, but our recent rains may make them split and rot before they ripen. And time will tell about the Concord grape crop as well. I’d love to make some Concord grape juice and jelly — we’re out of both — but without J.D.’s help to harvest it, it will be quite a project. And there are still a number of jalapenos and habaneros turning bright colors on my plants—waiting to be picked and turned in to something much too spicy for me to eat myself!
Tomato sauce, step one
After spending so many hours over a hot canning pot in September, I’m ready for the gardening season to end and the enjoying season to begin. Here’s our total harvest for the month:
That’s a grand total of $332.68 worth of produce in September! That’s a record harvest for any single month, and doesn’t include the 20 pounds of apples and 50 pounds of pears we picked up from friends. Maybe that’ll help make up for the slow year we’ve had so far. Let’s look at the annual totals.
Lunch – a bacon-tomato salad
Our gardening season is complete for 2011. After an initial burst of cold and rain, our October weather was surprisingly pleasant. The garden plot has been cleared and is ready for us to rake leaves over it for the winter. The birds are enjoying the dried sunflower heads, and I’m waiting for a hard frost to cut back the asparagus ferns.
Habaneros and jalapenos—made a garlic chili relish for the people who like things HOT!
October means grapes around here, as well as the end of the apples and tomatoes. I made final harvests of our chili peppers and potatoes, and I’ve been carefully meting out my precious remaining plums and last batch of fresh salsa from the fridge. It will be many long months before we have any fresh produce from our own yard.
Final tally for food put-up to date:333.5 pints! That’s a lot of jars, and the pantry under the stairs is stacked high — more boxes are stored in the basement. That also includes the preserves that will be part of this year’s holiday gifts to our friends — we love our tradition of exchanging homemade treasures. I look forward each year to planning what I will make to share. As my friends are increasingly good at humoring me by returning my jars, and the fruits/vegetables are generally free, the cost of these gifts “boil down” to sugar and pectin! (Ha — that’s a canning pun!)
The pantry under the stairs
Oregon’s many wineries are worried about a poor harvest this year, but our grapes had their best year ever. In addition to harvesting from our own vines, I was able to pick about 30 pounds of Concord grapes from our neighbor (the millionaire next door) and made J.D.’s favorite juice and jelly to welcome him home.
One part of the grape harvest—that’s about 10 pounds
Garden clean-up and harvesting totaled about six hours of labor for the month. Here are the numbers:
That’s a total harvest worth $161.66 in October with no out-of-pocket expenses.
Some of our crops this year were small (currants, blackberries), bringing our annual harvest value down. But despite that, this year’s overall profit is higher than for the other years we’ve tracked our progress. 왜? First of all, our costs were very low this year — we’ve got the main garden infrastructure established and didn’t need to purchase many items. In addition, I was very selective in my choice of seeds and plant starts this spring. And perhaps even more importantly, our maturing plants are producing substantial crops of asparagus, apples, plums, and grapes.
I look forward to next year’s crops from these perennial plants, as J.D. and I have been discussing taking a year off from the vegetable garden of annuals in 2012. I’ll turn my attention to the somewhat neglected flower beds instead and we’ll enjoy eating the pantry down. I think I may have enough jam to last us until 2018!
Here are this year’s totals through the end of October.
Share your progress! I’d love to hear about other people’s gardens. Especially if this is your first time growing your own food, please chime in with what you’re doing and what you’re learning.
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 more than 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.