$193 of produce in December!

A belated Happy New Year, and now that I can truly say it, welcome to summer!

After a rather odd December and early January (no thanks to the current La Nina), with frequent deluges, easterly winds, and short hot spells, summer seems to have returned to some form of normality.

Our tomatoes are ripening full throttle by now (I picked 1.5 kilos today, having been away for the long weekend) and its great to have so many varieties - green, red, yellow, a dark reddish black, red with yellow stripes, and yellow blushed with pink. We now have enough to eat them everyday, and put some aside in the freezer for winter.

Our courgettes, which normally begin to succumb to powdery mildew in late February-March (as a consequence of the humidity) were in their full 'silvery splendour' in mid January, nearly putting a halt to our courgette production. I rarely use sprays, but the prospect of losing out on 2-3 months of courgettes brought me to spray them with copper oxychloride, and this seems to have, at least temporarily, succeeded. We are enjoying 'Costata Romanesco', an Italian heirloom, but its yield can't compete with the commonly grown, plain green 'Black Jack'

http://harvesttotable.com/2008/09/costata_romanesca_squash/

 Our berry patch gave us an abundance of raspberries in December, averaging nearly 100 g per day (a standard chip is 120 g), there are cucumbers to be picked, the rhubarb is loving the warmth and rain, and our capsicums are looking promising for a good crop in a few weeks time. The garlic has yellowed, and needs to be harvested soon, and the first few parsnips have germinated. A good hit rate on the parsnips now will result in many mid-winter nights being graced with freshly dug, roasted parsnips - yes, I am preparing for winter already! But its not all going well - my Thai eggplants, having yielded three small fruit from six plants, have shriveled dead and dying leaves and I think this crop is a complete write off. Time to cut my losses, pull them up and plant something more productive.

And on that note, if anything is finishing in your garden now, get planting other winter crops that are best established now for harvesting from June to September. I think of it as a way of 'banking' summers productivity for a rainy day. Aside from parsnips, leeks need to be planted now as they take about six months to grow, and February-March is a good time to establish brocolli, kale, and cabbages for harvest in late autumn and winter. I havent grown kale before but will use Kings Kale Mesclun Mix to trial several varieties (at the cost of one packet of seed) to see how well it grows, and how edible it actually turns out to be!

December's production was off the charts, with the abundance of berries that are astronomically expensive at the supermarket. This highlights that the 'benefit' is not what we save for not buying it (as we would never buy 30 chips of raspberries in a month) but the hypothetical cost if we were to buy what we grew. I guess we eat a lot more fruit and vegetables than we would if the supermarket was our only source, and that has to be good for our family's health.

December 2011

produce	weight kg/# packs	retail	value
alfalfa	3	2.15	6.45
beans	1.51	12.99	19.63
beetroot	0.36	4.98	1.79
raspberries/boysenberries	2.88	41.50	119.64
courgette	1.57	4.99	7.85
lemon	0.34	3.98	1.36
mesclun	3	3.50	10.50
oregano	1	2.99	2.99
thyme	1	2.99	2.99
rhubarb	1.10	5.98	6.58
rosemary	1	2.99	2.99
silverbeet	2	2.79	5.58
strawberries	0.10	11.00	1.10
kaffir lime	1	2.99	2.99
cucumber	1	1.29	1.29
			193.73
water ($1.30/1000L)			1.95
seedlings broccoli			1.29
copper oxychloride			12.00
			15.24
benefit minus costs			178.49

January 2012

produce	weight kg/# packs	retail	value
alfalfa	3	2.15	6.45
beans	2.60	12.99	33.77
beetroot	0.13	4.98	0.64
raspberries/boysenberries	0.74	41.50	30.71
courgette	2.82	4.99	14.07
lemon	0.19	3.98	0.74
mesclun	3	3.50	10.50
oregano	1	2.99	2.99
rosemary	3.00	2.99	8.97
silverbeet	2	2.79	5.58
strawberries	0.06	11.00	0.66
basil	4	2.99	11.96
cucumber	10	1.29	12.90
tomatoes	6.99	2.98	20.83
garlic	0.06	22.98	1.31
			162.09
water ($1.30/1000L)			1.95
seedlings lettuce			1.29
seeds (kale, radish, hyssop)			9.25
			12.49
benefit minus costs			149.60

Keep the watering up, and may the harvest continue!

Backyard vegetable gardens: worth the effort? Financially viable? Lets put it to the test!

When perusing the vegetable seedlings at places like Palmers or Kings Plant Barn, I am often amused and a little perplexed, at how easy it is to “grow” your own - if you have the money. You can now buy instant  tomato plants, capsicums, or even lettuces  that are “ready to pick” if you are happy to pay  $10-15 a plant. I suppose the idea is that one day you can decide to have a vegetable garden, and the next day be picking the fruit of your ‘labours’.   Is gardening still gardening when it reduced to a financial transaction and the digging of a hole to plant it in?

 I also see instant vegetable gardening as economically nonsensical. I don’t think buying mature plants as a good use of resources when in the height of summer, tomatoes reach lows of $1 a kilo at the local Chinese green grocers. To me, a $10 plant needs to produce 20 kilos of fruit to make it worth the expenditure and effort, and most of my tomatoes probably only yield 5-10 kilos each in a season.  Or why pay $2.99 for a punnet of six carrot seedlings – carrots never reach even close to $0.50 in the shops!

Growing my own food is part of my way of life, but for me it also has to be financially viable. Space is at a premium, even with a 40m2 plot that is oversized by most Auckland vege plot standards. So what I grow is driven by return for effort (yield at an equivalent cost at the supermarket),  convenience (some vegetables are cheap but have such a short shelf life, that its more convenient to have them on hand when needed), and variety (who wants to eat only courgettes from December to May?)

For me, our vegetable garden must to reap a  ‘profit’ after all expenses are taken into account.  I will account for my time for the year, but I consider gardening as physical activity and people don’t normally expect to get paid to exercise – so my time won’t be part of the financial accounting. I would also find this an interesting exercise – I have no idea who time consuming this plot of dirt is. 

Rule 1. Costs  will be tallied monthly, beginning in August.  Costs will include fertiliser, seeds, plants, and any other requirements.

Rule 2. Costs are accounted for at the time they are incurred. So for example if I buy a bag of fertiliser that I use over a year, its cost is added to the month of purchase.

Rule 2. Benefits will be tallied by the value of the produce at the current seasonal price (at Countdown retail rates because I can look it up online).

Rule 3. Cumulative costs and benefits  will be kept as a running total for the year. Costs are forecast to be  initially higher than benefits , with a swing towards benefits  by early Summer.

Rule 4. Land costs and rates are ignored. If it wasn’t garden it would be lawn, which requires input (petrol and mowing time) with no return, so I think this is justified.

Rule 5. Surplus produce can be bartered for other food stuffs to supplement the variety of what we can grow. This may also allow us to swap for eggs, honey, etc.

Rule 6. Fruit and herbs produced on the property will also be included in the monthly accounting. Most of these are produced within the confines of the garden on the surrounding fences. 

 I suspect new rules may be needed as we go along, and your thoughts on these are also welcome. It would be great if the outcome shows how an Auckland vegetable garden can be a productive and economically justifiable lifestyle choice in 2011. Only time will tell.

Tim