Other People’s Plots
Category: General
Fall Planting
Yesterday, I spent some time in the garden taking out the spent cucumber plants and the Red Russian Kale, which has a pest problem. I also transplanted my three pole beans (ha!) to make space for fall planting. I don’t have any hope for those. I sowed radishes, fall greens and arugula. I do not have too much hope because of the resident rabbit, but I plan to add row covers to perhaps helps some of these plants survive. It has been a strange year in the garden.
I also harvested some tomatoes and a monster zucchini (I had not been to the garden in three days).
4th of July
Spent some time in the garden this beautiful Saturday morning harvesting almost all of the remaining lettuce and planting pole beans, more rainbow carrots (some I sowed earlier have actually come up, yay!) and three more tomato plants (Paul Robson, Jaune Flamme and Black Krim). The garden plot is getting there, but most plants are still small because I did not really plant anything until we had water about a month ago.
Left side: dahlias, rhubarb, cucumbers, nasturtium, lettuce, pole beans, butternut squash, zucchini, onions, Swiss chard, kale, eggplant, carrots, borage, leeks
Right side: cosmos, dahlias, asparagus, tomatoes, marigolds, nasturtium, basil, parsley, kale, hot pepper, delicata squash, garlic, leeks, beets
Winterizing
Yesterday, I dug up the two dahlias. I had planted four originally, but two of them never grew despite the tubers have nice eyes. We had one hard frost a couple of days ago, so I hope they will be alright. I will store them in semi-moist peat moss in the basement.
The plot is ready for winter. Only the Swiss chard is still growing (much of it surprisingly undamaged by the frost), as are leeks, onions and winter greens. I will overwinter the onions and some of the leeks. The garlic is covered with a nice big layer of field hay and should be good until spring.
End of the Season
I spent three hours in the community garden today harvesting the last five squash (a total of 12 lbs. 2 oz., bringing the squash total to 34 lbs. 1 oz.!!!), (green) tomatoes, peppers and cucumber (!), and weeding, pulling lemon balm and mint, and spreading hay. I also planted a few tulips and more garlic. I think this might be the earliest I have ever gotten my plot ready for winter. The only thing still growing is Swiss chard, leeks and onions (I will likely overwinter both of those), and some fall greens.
I also cleaned our back porch and harvested the last jalapenos.
Hay
I went to Agricultural Hall yesterday afternoon and had a nice little chat with Bill about garlic, bees and apple cider. I got half a bale of field hay to spread on my garlic. It has been very rainy in the past few days and it is supposed to be a wet week. I hope the garlic I planted three days ago will be okay with all the water.
I still have quite a few things going on in my plot: squash, chard, leeks, onions, fall greens (mostly arugula and mustard greens), some last tomatoes, herbs and still some dahlias.
Garden Work Day
We had our fall work day in the community garden this past Saturday. We mostly weeded, cleaned and got the garden ready for winter. There was a big patch of Jerusalem artichokes in the flower bed we adopted and we needed to take them out. Some of them came home with me and made it into this small bouquet.
When to Harvest Butternut Squash
Gardening by Numbers
Growing your own vegetables provides you with healthy, fresh produce. Not to mention the joy it brings to get your hands dirty, smell the freshly turned soil and to see your plants grow and bear fruit. But does growing your own vegetables also make economic sense? After all, you do have expenses as you need to buy seeds and/or seedlings, compost, mulch, tools etc. And then there is the manual labor, even if for most gardeners it is a “labor of love”. Every year, I have the best intention to try to answer this question but every year I fail to record the weight and amount of produce harvested in order to assess the monetary value of my garden. This past season was no different.
I do have numbers for the input though. In 2018, I spent a total of $ 114.07 on seeds, seedlings, seed garlic, seed potatoes and supplies. In detail, I spent the following:
- Sand Hill Preservation Center (seeds) 18.00
- Fedco (seed potatoes) 18.00
- Johnny’s (seeds) 9.45
- Home Depot (manure etc., herb seedlings) 29.83
- Agricultural Hall Jamaica Plain (2 x hay) 26.00
- Burpee (seed garlic) 12.79
I believe I definitely got my money’s worth growing my own vegetables even though I can’t say precisely how much money I saved. In 2018, I bought only one single head of garlic in between the last harvested head of 2017 and the first cured head of 2018 (and we use a lot of garlic, sometimes 6 to 8 cloves in one dish). I did not buy any chard, green beans or cucumbers (or many other vegetables) all through the summer. I make a home-cooked dinner for my family of four almost every night, we rarely eat out (maybe once a month) and order take-out maybe once or twice a year, so there is a lot of cooking in my kitchen. I grew almost all the herbs I used all summer and fall — even though the sage and flat parsley in my plot mysteriously died over the summer (I had potted parsley and sage on the back porch).
I have a few “hard” numbers from my harvests though: I harvested a total of about 25 pounds of cucumbers (from a set of 3-4 plants), a disappointing amount of only about 4 lbs. of fingerling potatoes, about 20 lbs. of tomatoes. My garlic harvest was much smaller this season (about 25 heads) and as of right now (mid-January), I have only 3 full heads left. I harvested about 2 dozen leeks. I have no numbers for the beans (but there sure was a ton of them), beets, salad greens, squash, eggplant, carrots, radishes, asparagus, rhubarb, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale or hot peppers.
I produced about $60 worth of tomatoes alone (again from three plants) , assuming a price of $3 per pound. So, even with a small plot like mine you can grow the variety and the amount of organic, super-tasty vegetables needed to truly supplement your family’s diet over the summer and fall, saving you money.