Harvest Note

Our garden is just getting started with production. We've lost a few tomatoes to worms, and had a few things not come up. There are still bare spots in there. I didn't pay for all of the seeds and seedlings, but we have put $100 or so into the garden for trellising, mulch, and the like.

Today, I decided to weigh our current harvest - what we haven't eaten yet, and harvested this week. I'm also listing what these items cost locally. Our food is organic; prices listed are commercially grown and then Organic.

• 2 heads Cabbage (3lbs):
• $.69/lb = $2.07
• Organic:$1.69/lb = $5.07

• 14 oz Turnip Greens:
  
• $.99/lb = $0.86
• Organic not available

• 7lb 14oz Yellow Squash:
  
• $1.99/lb = $15.67
  
• Organic: $2.99/lb= $23.55

• 3lb Zucchini:
  
• $1.99/lb = $5.97
  
• Organic:$3.50/lb = $10.50

• 9 Cucumbers (5 3/4lb):
  
• $.79 each = $7.11
  
• Organic: $1.69 each = $15.21

• 12 oz Tomatoes:
  
• $2.99/lb = $2.25.
  
• Organic: $4.99/lb = $3.75

• 11oz SunGold cherry tomatoes:
  
• $.30/oz = $3.30
• Organic not available

Total Commercial Value= $37.23

Total Organic Value = $58.08, not including cherry tomatoes and turnip greens.

Looking at the price ratios (commercial vs. organic), it looks like Organic cherry tomatoes would be $.49/oz, so $4.90 for our harvest. Turnip greens tend to run half the price of collard greens, which they do offer organic, so half that price would be $1.25/lb = $1.09, bringing the total for Organics to $64.07.

$64 in food, plus what we've already eaten. And we're just getting started. Nice!

Prices for this post came from the online section of Harris Teeter stores in Virginia.

Balcony Gardening

I've cleaned the garden, mulched, and re-arranged. I do need to go back out and pull up the collards and cabbage - I lost them to cutworms. I hadn't taken any precautions, now I know better! And they ate them up in less than a week. Next time - toilet paper tubes around stalks, and cornmeal on the soil. Also more crushed eggshell might be a nice deterrent.

The picture shows the lettuce (since bolted) and a new parsley plant from the nursery. The wood in the front just looks nice and is essentially garden sculpture. Both of the garden stands you see were discards from others.

So, this summer I got a few salads worth of greens and a bit of chives. The fall planting will be when the heat breaks in September. I hope.


Related Links:
Self-Sufficiency Garden: Talks about gardening, including fruit trees, in small spaces like balconies and condo 'yards.' Includes specific varieties to try, and sources for them.
Journey to Forever: Very useful site. This page has links to more information and books about kitchen gardening in containers, without necessarily costing a great deal.
What to Plant Now: at Mother Earth News. Shows 8 US regions, and each region has suggestions for sowing (indoors or out) or transplanting, for March to September.
How Much Veg to Plant: at Grow Organic Food. Summarizes how much to grow to feed a family of two adults and three children, in regular garden rows, with suggestions for how much to harvest for each meal. The information can easily be used for most situations, I would think.

Tomato Comparison

Just for fun, since I was only able to do this with two varieties. I wanted more, but they're out of season till fall (at least, at the farm I'm buying these from). The original idea was to try the old and heirloom varieties and compare them, and see which ones I might like to grow. Someday, when I have enough sun :)

Click on the pictures to see them larger.

Omar Tomato

Old family heirloom from Lebanon. This photo ( and the other one) was taken after about a week on my counter, and it's sliced in half to show the structure inside.

Plenty of flesh inside, nice flavor, great general purpose tomato. I did have to toss 2 of them due to rot while I had them. Of course, had I used the fridge, I wouldn't have had so much problem with that. Nice, but I'm not overly impressed.

Old Brooks Tomato

Old variety, not quite heirloom. Good for canning per the descriptions. I used it for a slicing tomato on my sandwiches. Excellent. A sprinkle of basil, and it was so good. No problems with keeping them on the counter for a week, either.

This one I'll look for, when we have the sun....

Market Basket & More

Omar Heirloom Tomatoes, Squash, Green Tomatoes, a dozen cucumbers and nearly as many green peppers (most peppers aren't in the picture).

And in the mail:
The seeds I ordered from Sustainable Seed Co. Quick service, and I like that they encourage you to save seeds. Farmer John includes descriptions from old catalogs on his seeds; really neat!
The baskets they are one are the ones I picked up over the weekend - the railing planters. They'll get planted in these later in the year.

Window-box Gardens

I found this article about window-box gardens. It mentions (among other things) that some of the easiest vegetables to grow are lettuce, radishes, beetroot, rainbow chard and rosemary. At our last apartment, I grew basil on the back porch - one pot provided me with a winter's supply. And I use basil a lot; it's one I put in nearly everything.

On the balcony - the lettuce & collards are still happy, and the cabbage is just starting to form heads. I haven't pulled the beets yet but I've given up on them - still just a leaf or two, and 3" tall. I don't think they like southern summers :) I have one happy branch of mint. I really need to re-pot it, and give it some fresh dirt. Hopefully that will perk it back up.

I've also got to go wandering through seed catalogs, and see what I can find that I can grow for winter. Swiss chard, radishes, turnips, perhaps another round of cabbage or greens, definitely lettuce. Remember, when planting a balcony garden. one can always buy sampler packets of seed. I did this when I could, and will get a few plantings from each packet.

Balcony Garden

As I said, our balcony is covered - it gets full shade after the morning. After researching, I found out that my best chances for food success were leaf & root crops. Personal preference led me to heritage and organic varieties, so I planted an organic 'pot lettuce' mix, 'Grand Champion' Collards, 'Early Wonder Tall Top' beets, and 'Derby Day' cabbage. The experimental volunteer is the organic garlic I bought for cooking, until it sprouted - so it's in the dirt, and we'll see how it goes. The existing plants are chocolate mint, prostrate rosemary (it smells wonderful!) and chives.

So far, the herbs are happy, the lettuce is a happy tangled mess, and the collards & cabbage are doing well. The garlic is just peeking it's tips above the soil. The beets would have been much happier, I think, if I had read the directions right and planted them 8 weeks earlier than I did - for some reason I missed the 'plant 6 weeks before last frost' on the package, and planted them after that. Ah well.