Economics of home gardening

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Permalink Reply by Penelope on March 2, 2009 at 12:18pm

I just bought lettuce, tomato and a cucumber to make a salad and it tasted awful, tasted like an advanced stage of decomposition, and the tomato was hard and tasteless. I guess I'll have to wait for my garden to produce before I eat a salad again. I'm spoiled.

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Permalink Reply by Darien Payne on March 2, 2009 at 11:28am

It would be interesting to also see how much square footage was devoted to each of your crops. See the GrowBiointensive website for very precise calculations on the potential for many crops.

I haven't calculated the value of my garden so precisely yet. But I did do a rough calculation this year of our fruit production. We have about 18 semi-dwarf fruit trees (well, one is a standard pear tree) on our .2 acre lot. They are mostly mature trees now. For the last two years we easily produced all the fruit we could eat, for most of the year. That is four to six pieces or servings of fruit a day. At the organic fruit price of about $3. a pound, and a consumption of 1.5-2 lbs per day, that is at least $1500. a year for the last two years. And we give away a lot of the harvest as well. Our costs at this point are minimal, as we grow or can scavenge most of our own compost. We did buy about $100. worth of honey to add to the canned fruit (mostly pears and plums). We have purchased the canning jars over many years, and discovered that we can buy them used from one local thrift store for $.25 each.

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Permalink Reply by Maya on March 2, 2009 at 12:54pm

Sounds like you need a couple of hives! Can you post recipes for how you can pears with honey?
Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Darien Payne on May 4, 2009 at 2:19pm

Sorry for such a belated reply—I haven't checked back in a while.
Honey spiced pears:
we use our Duchess d'Angouleme pears, large and firm, but most European pears would do, if they are at the ripe but still very firm stage. We cut them in largish chunks (maybe 8–12 pieces per pear) and fill our large pot (10 or 12 quarts?) all the way to the top (it shrinks down as they cook). Then add a quart of honey, bring to a boil, and add some spices, to taste: cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. I like to add a big chunk of grated fresh ginger. My husband usually adds more cloves. I also add lemon juice, and lemon zest, just to make sure it is acidic enough for canning. I try to add two tablespoons of lemon juice per quart, that is about the juice from 4 lemons. This makes a batch that is 7–8 quarts, just enough for the canning pot and a little left over. We process the quarts in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. If the pears are firm when you start they don't get too mushy, and the honey adds plenty of sweetness but they aren't too sweet. These pears are very popular with our friends and family. We have them all winter with our yogurt for breakfast, they are good with ice cream, and some friends made a few quarts into a chutney.
A quart of honey is pretty expensive, about $12 here the last two seasons, but we get 7–8 quarts of canned fruit from it, so it is a cost of less than $2 a quart, which is about 8 servings of fruit.
We do need a couple of hives! That is in the long term plan.

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Permalink Reply by John Walker on March 2, 2009 at 11:33am

Dear Roger,
Great harvest. Did I ever tell you about my $64 tomato.........

I am intrigued to know how much of each harvest represented your yearly intake. I realise that much of this is preference. I noted that you grew 3lbs of Cauliflower and 9lbs of Broccoli. How many plants did that represent and was it both spring and fall plantings?

One of the brain exercises that is difficult for me in the spring is how much of each veggie to grow.
BTW great article in commondreams.
pax
John

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Wright on March 7, 2009 at 6:02pm

I hope you're done those exercises by the time tilling season comes round! :c) That's one of the satisfying things for me about catalogue season: variety selection, size of packet, company they're coming from... don't short change yourself on packet size if it's a type of vege that has a long period (3+ years) of seed viability. It'll bug your for some time. Unless that 2-15 dollars is critical. ... you can tell now that i'm a geek, i guess! lol :c) I mean, all those varieties of lettuces and chicories!! haha! thankfully they're both genera that have long shelf lives, so I can pick up a couple new ones every year, and still have bits of this and that to enjoy for a few years! I love endives and escaroles for their viability. (digression: we had two opened packets of ruffec and pancalieri types that slid behind the shelf in the seed locker - they were no-word-of-a-lie 12 and 10 years old: I sowed them 2 years ago, in late August, and they came up at about 75% as well as the 2 new packets i did, sidexside. As a big fan of endives and escaroles, and now chicories in general, here was just a bit more proof!)

And the 64$ tom!!! please spill!

And, really, the how-much-of-something decisions can be changed at thinning time, anyway - you can always transplant a few of those thinnings out to somewhere else if you feel you short-changed yourself in your row length - that was totally the case for me and my kohlrabi last year, as well as chard and Chioggia beets; all of which transplant swimmingly, luckily. :c)

anyway, happy gardening!
Jeff

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Permalink Reply by Kara on March 2, 2009 at 12:28pm

How many hours per week do you work in your garden?

And how do you deal with garden and human pests? Mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, sand flies all plague us. It's hard sometimes being out more than a few minutes at a time before all the biting flies swarm in and attempt a human feast. (It doesn't help that a salt water marsh/insect breeding ground is just across the road from our house.) It almost feels like we are walking red and white circle targets, or have some sort of invisible bug bright neon sign to say the diner is open. We don't believe in spraying harmful chemicals on us or the plants. The most protection we can hope for is long sleeves and pants, beneficial insects that eat the bad guys, and the neighborhood friendly bats (some of them take up residence in our roof). But seriously it's really hard to work when all those bugs are flying in your face and it seems like we can hardly get anything done because we are quick to run back inside to escape the bugs. Then we look out, disappointed that we couldn't get more work done.

Good work on the cost lineup. That info really gives us hope.

Also when do you start vegetable seeds indoors? Now, or a couple of weeks from now?

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Permalink Reply by Shawna on March 4, 2009 at 7:13pm

Last year I planted several citronella plants in with my vegies in pots...it's not really citronella but a geranium. It seemed to keep the pesky ne-see-ums, and mosquitos away. Wheneever we walked outside we would just brush that plant with our hands and rub it on our arms, clothes etc.I also planted tons of marigolds

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Permalink Reply by Wild Flora on March 2, 2009 at 12:49pm

This is great information but I'm with Kara in being curious about how much time it takes to grow all this great food. I completely agree with those who point out that there are many non-financial benefits to growing your own food but as long as we're trying to get an accurate picture of the economics of home food growing, it would be useful to know how much time it takes.

Of course, we could also talk about other ways in which growing our own food saves us money. I get much of my exercise from gardening, for instance, thus being able to skip gym membership fees. Fewer trips to the supermarket for groceries = less money spent on travel. And then there are the health savings ... to say nothing of the savings on mental health care. I wonder how many of us use gardening therapy instead of going to a mental health counselor?

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Permalink Reply by Kara on March 2, 2009 at 1:46pm

There was a full length film made in the UK back in 2007 called "Grow Your Own." It's a story of a common garden allotment community and how people were given spaces there to help them get over depression instead of prescription pills. One character in the film really made headway in his mental recovery after losing his wife, and another character really learned what it means to be in a close community with friends. It's a great fictional film that gives lots of laughs and tears. I highly recommend it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqPLDXmBmjg

I'm not from the UK but I get to see a few of their programs streaming free online. And one of their gardeners, Monty Don, in a show there called "Gardeners World" said once, if you have a gym membership, cancel it and get a compost heap instead. haha

He says that in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcJoXcK3zg0

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Permalink Reply by Wild Flora on March 2, 2009 at 3:48pm

What great videos. Now I want to see "Grow Your Own". Monty Don's enthusiasm for composting is infectious and good for a laugh, too.

FYI, if you enjoy British comedies about gardening, check out "Greenfingers" with Clive Owen and Helen Mirren: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203540/

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Permalink Reply by Warren on March 2, 2009 at 12:54pm

Great Job!

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