Break even point

I think we've hit the break-even point for the financial costs and rewards of the garden.

We've spent a total of $85, and I expect to spend another $15 this fall for manure before I plant the garlic. So, let's say $100 in cash expenses.

Harvest to date (with extremely conservative FMV prices):

Summer squash (sells for $1.99 on sale): 17 pounds = $34

Garlic (3 heads for a dollar for main crop only) = $20

Onions (guesstimating at $1 a pound) = $10

Cucumbers (6 at $1 each) = $6

Banana peppers (32, probably 5 pounds, $1/lb) = $5

Ace peppers (40, but small, so let's say 4 for a buck) = $10

That's $95. Throw in the handfuls of cherry tomatoes I've eaten without counting, and the three Jetstar tomatoes, a few leaves of swiss chard, assorted lettuces and tatsoi, and the various herbs (chives, dill and catnip in particular), and factoring in the EXTREMELY conservative price estimates, I'd say we're at right around a hundred bucks in produce harvested. I'm not counting either the expenses (vinegar, pickling salt, spices) or the added value for the pickling I've done (pickled banana peppers, bread & butter pickles made out of zucchini, and pickled garlic to extend its storage life).

We've got (almost) all of August and September still to go, which will bring us the bulk of the peppers and tomatoes and swiss chard and a fall crop of tatsoi, and all of the winter squash, plus more summer squash. Except for the onions and garlic, which have all been harvested, and the cukes, which have developed the usual mid-summer wilt, the harvest so far is likely to be duplicated (and exceeded) in the remainder of the season. The winter squash will more than take the place of the onions and garlic (in terms of value of the harvest), so I'd expect to end up with well over $100 of produce in excess of what the out-of-pocket expenses were. Maybe more like $200, if the state of the plants right now is any indicator.

April 2011 status check

Last year, we spent $125, and the year before that about $170. We still have some seeds and supplies left over from prior years, reducing the current year's expenses.

So far, we've spent about $66 on:

200 red onions
50 yellow onions
20 (?) sweet potato plants
basil seeds

We're likely to spend another $30 to $50 on plants and fencing (to go around the sugar snap peas, which I should have planted a week ago, but will do soon).

There are about 50 German Hardy garlic plants sprouted from good-sized cloves, another 20 or so from smaller bulbs, plus about 20 of the early garlic variety from good-sized clives and a few smaller plants. Plus at least three patches of small, one-two-clove garlic plants growing from the bulblets tossed into the garden in prior years.

We missed a few onions during last year's harvest, so we've been eating the second-year sprouts as scallions.

The rhubarb, puny as the stalks are, is looking a little fuller than in prior years.

Last week, we noticed that the lettuce on my neighbor's deck had self-seeded and sprouted. We transplanted some of them to give them some breathing room, and also tossed some tatsoi seeds into her other planters and a planter on my deck. My tatsoi has sprouted, so I'm assuming hers has too.

I'm planning to fill an old metal firepit with soil and then lettuce seeds for my deck this year. Might get the soil today, as a celebration of the end of tax-preparing season.

This morning, I planted some basil seeds (indoors, of course), along with a few wild-cherry tomatoes and a few hot pepper seeds. The plan is to have just one or two of the wild-cherry tomatoes (because they can take over the whole garden otherwise) and just one or two hot pepper plants, because only one of us even likes hot peppers, and they go to waste otherwise.