That's why they're called strawberries!

I don't know why I haven't made any blog posts this year until now. I suppose I've been busy with wedding planning... but the garden does grow on! I do have some things to brag about, such as lots of strawberries and snap peas - much more than last year already and they're still producing.

A lot of the strawberries are getting bug eaten, however, which is so disappointing after giving them lots of care and even mulching them, which I didn't do last year. Turns out that while in theory mulching = good, it is not as simple as I thought. Mulching with composting leaves from the fall may introduce bugs, which is fine for many plants and good for the soil, but not ideal for the ground-dwelling strawberries. STRAW-berries. Mulch with straw, that has no bugs. Brilliant! I'll have to try that next year.

So to get up to speed on the garden, we have a new, sunnier, 4x16 raised bed that is full of the sun-loving plants that we had in pots last year, and more. Six varieties of heritage tomatoes, pole beans, parsley, basil, cucumber, hot peppers, bush beans, cabbage, watermelon (a just-another-weed-patch experiment), and butternut squash. Oh, and sunflowers and marigolds.

I am particularly excited about the cabbage, which is looking like a cabbage patch kid may crawl out of at any time.
What are you growing? Any luck with straw under the strawberries? Or other tips to keep the bugs away?

The Winter Garden

Bulbs coming up already

Broccoli and brussel sprouts

Garlic

Carrots

Beets

2010 Round Up

My goal for this first year of vegetable gardening was to grow $200 worth of food, which was the approximate setup cost including grow lights, seed trays, seeds, compost, etc. Now that we're nearing the end of 2010, the numbers are in and well, it didn't exactly work out that way. The grand total is... drum roll please... $98.66.

I aimed high and learned a lot. I'm a bit surprised there wasn't more value in the vegetables, but then again there were a few duds, like the spinach and cabbage. There were also some real low producers like potatoes, radishes and cucumbers.

The leader in value is the lettuce, which I estimate a $26 value over the season. It's hard to weigh lettuce, so I just said $0.50 per serving, and estimated a serving size. We harvested 52 servings over the seasons and had some delicious salads. I think lettuce is also one of the most practical things to grow. Who hasn't bought a huge head of lettuce and had half go bad in the fridge? It's just great to be able to walk out back and pick the lettuce as you're making the salad, and pick just he right amount.

Tomatoes are next up, at $21. Then carrots, then zucchini, potatoes, snap peas and broccoli.

And I can't ignore the tree fruits and nuts which we can't take much credit for as they were already mature when we moved in. We have, however, spent several days pruning and training them as they've been neglected for years. If the trees are allowed to subsidize the vegetables, then I did come out on top, but I guess that's not really fair. Here are the trees we have and their harvests for an estimated total of $163.92

Transparent apples 22 lb

Cherries few

Pears 2.5 lb

Prune plums 6.8 lb

Yellow plums 17.0 lb

Walnuts 6.2 lb

If you add it all together, we harvested $262.92 worth of food from our city lot, with a small veggie garden, and in the first year. That's sounds okay. Right? Sure. Anyway, it's a good benchmark. I'm going to try for $150 in value from the vegetables next year, and try really hard to keep costs in seeds and other things down. I have a lot of seeds left from this year that I can use again, and will hopefully make some trades with others.

I did buy some cedar landscape ties to make a bed in the front where it is sunnier for the tomatoes, basil, cucumber, and raspberries and a few other things, so that's already a $40 cost. It's hard to keep the costs down, but I really do like to know the truth. I can't say that we're saving money by growing our own food. Instead, it's a hobby that costs money but pays back a little, and is good for our health. I hope one day to make it an actual money saver.

Harvest Monday

The garden is quiet, but I've kept some beets and carrots in for the winter. These carrots were planted on June 14, took over a month to germinate, and they still haven't grown very big as you can see. I thought I'd pull some up today to check on progress.

I'm going to post a tally for 2010 as a separate blog entry now...

Lasagna Gardening

Not much is happening in the garden these days. I inspect the fall brassicas almost daily and squish off little green caterpillar-like-bugs and army green coloured egg masses. They can't be good. I'm pretty sure I planted the brussel sprouts, broccoli and cabbage too late in the season and they won't actually produce, but I'm refusing to give up yet.

Last weekend I worked around these brassicas to lasagna garden the rest of the patch. My first try at this low-labour, organic and failsafe way to fertilize the garden over the winter, and keep weeds down at the same time. The part that isn't easy is getting enough stuff for the layers. The idea is that you layer browns (newpaper, leaves, etc) with greens (unfinished compost, grass clippings) to make a 2-foot high lasagne of good stuff to compost. Over the winter the stuff will "cook" and sink down, much like your backyard compost bin does. You can plant directly into it in the spring and don't need to dig or turn the soil first.

I've been saving leaves, newspaper, and bought a bale of hay for the undertaking. Still I was hard pressed to get four layers at 6 inches to a foot thick. Here are the different stages, working around those brassicas I'm not giving up on, and a few beets and carrots still in the ground.

Garden bed ready with old plants pulled out and set aside to be thrown back on in layer 2

Newspaper down for layer 1 in three-sheet thickness

Layer 2: unfinished compost, old veggie plants, grass clippings (I had to go and mow the lawn), leaves, and even a few weeds from the weed pile (I was desperate!)

Then another layer of newspaper (forgot to take pictures)

And finally, layer 4 of hay, which I've discovered I'm allergic to. Achoo!

Harvesting the root vegetables

Things are really changing in the vegetable patch these days. The broccoli is all done, and I pulled up the one plant I let go to seed and am hanging it upside down right now to dry the seed pods. I pulled out the rest and put them in the compost.

I harvested some of the beets too. I don't really know when they need to come out, but the greens have been turning brown in patches, and I love eating them so thought I should pull some out while they're still good. I don't have anything to do with the rest of the beets yet, so thought I might as well leave them in for now? Do I need to pull them out before it frosts?



I've been gradually pulling up carrots here and there, and thought I'd pull a few more earlier this week. Eek! I pulled up a few that look like this, and figured I should get them all out of the ground asap. (Why do they split like this?)

Three pounds in total, and there were only three in the whole lot that actually are actually nicely formed carrots (note I carefully positioned the best one of the top of this pile.

And today I planted garlic! Can't wait to see how it turns out, but I do have to wait a long time. That will be a fun surprise in the spring when it starts to poke up out of the ground.

Lots of Green Tomatoes

The cool, rainy weather continues here and I noticed today that one of the tomatoes was rotting on the vine. So I packed it in, and harvested them all. Five pounds of mostly green tomatoes. I think a few of them will ripen off the vine but most of them won't. Any ideas for green tomato recipes?


The fall garden still has some good stuff going on. Lettuce is still coming, and carrots and beets are still putting in some time in the dirt. I planted these bush beans in mid-August, just for the heck of it but not really knowing if the'd have enough time to produce before it got cold. They seem to be coming along alright, and little teeny beans are growing a bit every day.

September has been cool and rainy and we have these mushrooms growing all around and in the vegetable garden. Nevertheless I planted fall veggies and we'll see what happens. Cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower. I have a feeling I planted them too late and without a nice hot September to give them a kick start, they may not mature. Who knows, but it's all part of the experiment.

A girl after my own heart

I came across this article about a cost-benefit analysis of urban agriculture in Tokyo. This academic study is much like my backyard hobbyist study (really I've had enough of academia for a while, but I can't completely shake it), where the costs of the garden and value of the harvest are measured. As in my "study", it was a money losing endeavour. However, the author is much more eloquent in describing why it is that despite this, people still love to garden in the city.