garden@home

This began because Husband sent me the Get Rich Slowly website for a cost analysis on home gardening.  It encouraged me to see how much we save (or lose) in a year in our edible garden.  I am going to try and post monthly with the cost and benefit.  This will in no way be exact or comprehensive, rather a rough estimate (mostly for my own records).

Buying

This month I “had” to pick up a few basil plants, which cost me $5.98.  OK, I could have passed them up but my plants were still small and I wanted to make pesto right away.  I should know better, now about 3 weeks later, my basil planted from seed is thriving and the store bought basil is just starting to grow.  O well, I don’t think you can have too much basil.

I also needed some cilantro since my seeds didn’t sprout at all.  In my world, no cilantro is like no garden at all.  So I willingly gave $2.50 for two plants.  Luckily, the community garden I’m a part of is growing cilantro, so 2 plants should be enough for the here and there pickings I’ll need and I can harvest out of the community garden when I need bunches.

I also bought 3 blueberry plants for $23.97.  This year I expect very little harvest (if any) but hope to see it pay off in the coming years.

I also had to buy pumpkins ($1.50) and watermelon ($1.99).  Ours were inadvertently trampled.

Finally, because I dared to look at the edibles at the store, I caved in a bought yet another pepper (an Ancho) for $1.50 because I heard they grow well here.

This puts the total spent this month at $37.44.  Of that, $35.00 was a Mother’s day gift from my parents, so the cost to me is $2.44.

Harvest

It’s the beginning of summer, and that means the garden is really taking off.  I probably spent four hours working on the food garden, almost all of which were harvest-related (if you can consider standing there eating peas for a half hour “work”).  I’ve done virtually no weeding.  My good husband spent probably an hour total on picking cherries.

As our harvests begin, I just want to reiterate that I compare cost to what I would buy if I wasn’t growing it myself.  I would almost never buy organic (if you want to know why, see this), even though our home grown is mostly organic.  Occasionally I will compare to u-pick prices at local farms but only if I would use that method.

Those ground rules established, here’s our harvest for the month of June:

• 3.87 pounds (1.76 kg) strawberries @ $1.50 per pound = $5.81
• 2? pounds (.91 kg) snow and sugar snap peas @ $0.60/pound (frozen from Costco)= $1.20
• 11.79 pounds (5.35 kg) cherries @ $1.34/lb (for sweet cherries, I can’t find a place to buy sour cherries) = $15.72
• .63 pounds onions @ $0.68 = $0.43
• 2.66 pounds endive @ $2.50 (couldn’t find in the stores around here so looked online for a average price) = $6.65
• 1.54 pounds spinach @ $3.98 for 24 ounces (1-1/2 lbs) = $6.13
• .1 pound (1.6 oz) basil @ $1.98 for .75 oz = $4.00
• 1.15 pounds lettuce @ $1.98 for 21 ounces = $1.73
• 1.89 pounds swiss chard @ $1.78 = $3.36
• .73 pounds beets @ $1.98 = $1.45

Summary

Time spent: 5 hours (as always, an estimate)

We have spent:  $2.44 this month

TOTAL SPENT $145.44

Harvest of: $46.48.  Again if we subtract what was not purchased this year (strawberries – $5.81, cherries – $15.72, onions $0.43) that leaves us with $24.52.

TOTAL HARVEST $55.38

If you substitute the cost of fresh berries into pie filling and jam then the earnings go up substantially.  Next year I hope to do a cost analysis of the canning I do at home.  I don’t have a pressure cooker so I freeze quite a bit.

Note: We have an established plum tree, 2 cherry trees, 2 apple trees, a strawberry bed, a bunch of walking onions, a TON of leeks, and a whole lotta seeds already.  I will include the “profit” from these, but I will try to note this.  I will also do some seed swapping and this should be the last year of buying trellising, (hopefully) compost, and more than ten dollars (I think I need to take that back) worth of seeds.