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.

First harvest
We harvested our first spinach and leafy greens in May.  So far I’ve harvested

• 1.02 pounds (.46 kg) spinach
• 1.19 pounds (.54 kg) lettuce
• 3 bunches arugula, I forgot to measure this so I’m guesstimating it was around 4 oz
• .77 oz (.0218kg) basil
• 2 leeks
• .4 oz beet greens
• 1 small turnip, which went straight from the ground to the mouth

The season is still getting started and I was a little late on planting.  I could have harvested much more arugula, leeks and onions, but didn’t have the need.

The spinach we would buy is $3.98 for 24 ounces (1-1/2 lbs) so our small harvest was worth $2.71.  Lettuce was $1.98 for 21 ounces, so our harvest was worth $1.80.  The arugula is hard to price, because no stores we shop at had it for sale.  And in fact I can’t find a price for it anyway.  The closet thing I’ve found is in California the is an 11 oz container for $0.99 which would make me profit around $0.36.  My suspicion is that it would be much higher in cost around here.  Basil is a money maker.  If I were to buy it at the store it costs a whopping $1.98 for .75 oz, meaning this month (and in the continuing months it will only increase) we made $2.03.  The leeks (and I kid you not, we have a never ending supply of them) are also not sold at WinCo (our typical grocery store).  At Fred Meyer they were selling at $3 per lb.  The two leeks I used weighed (guesstimation again) around a half pound, meaning we profited around $1.50.  The beet greens and turnips are not going to be counted for two reasons, 1) I didn’t check for prices at all and don’t want to, AND 2) they were gobbled straight up and were really just the “testers”.  I took all my cost based on what we would buy if we didn’t have the garden.  My garden is organic, because I’m lazy and I don’t mind if the bugs and slugs share.  I don’t look at the store organic price because we wouldn’t buy that.  (I welcome advice and debate over this methodology, by the way — I don’t actually know the best way to compare prices.)

In total, we harvested $8.40 of food from our garden this month.  If you subtract the leeks, because they weren’t a cost we incurred this year, we profited $6.90.

We have spent (these are rounded off at dollars):

$0 this month

TOTAL SPENT $0 (Woo!)

Time spent: 4 hours (very much an estimate)

We have made:

TOTAL THIS MONTH: $8.40

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 worth of seeds.

First harvest
We harvested our first spinach and leafy greens.  So far I’ve harvested

• 1/2 head of miscellaneous lettuce and spinach

We have had tiny one person side salad with the baby greens.  The romaine we typically buy at the local grocery store is usually $1.98 per bag, which contains 3 “hearts” of romaine.  So our harvest was worth about $.50.

Time spent: 7 hours (includes the trellis building time)

TOTAL THIS MONTH

So far its all spending.  And I’m not recording the time spent very well, it is a very ROUGH estimate.

Since the beginning of the year we have spent (these are rounded off at dollars):

Seeds and plants $68

Compost $13

Trellis materials $37

Seed trays $5

Sluggo $20

TOTAL $143

Time spent: 5 hours

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 do so separately.  I will also do some seed swapping and this should be the last year of buying trellising, (hopefully) compost, and more than ten dollars worth of seeds.