Saturday, September 11, 2010

Which vegetables take up the most time?

I expected the garden to take up time this summer, but some of the crops took up more of my time than others. I'd guess that I probably spent about 3-5 hours per week on average. Here is a list of crops I grew this year, ranked from least time consuming, to most time consuming.

1. Onions: Not much to it, plant them, do a little weeding, yank them out of the ground, dry them.
2. Potatoes: Plant....harvest. If they didn't have to be dug out of the ground at harvest, they would be #1.
3. Leafy Greens: Not much work here, either. Did have to do some thinning and hilling up dirt to keep them upright.
4. Peppers: Had to do a little bit of staking the plants and branches to keep them from falling/bending over under the weight of the peppers.
5. Broccoli/Kohlrabi: Had to check often for aphids and spray for them periodically.
6. Beans: Just a matter of picking them, which is not terrible, but takes 10 min every other day for a month or so during harvest time.
7. Zucchini: Occasional harvesting, occasional spraying for powdery mildew, occasional pruning.
8. Ground-planted tomatoes: Requires occasional harvesting, periodic staking up, and frequent pruning.
9. Spaghetti Squash: Frequent spraying for powdery mildew, occasional pruning and harvesting
10. Topsy-turvy tomatoes: Just a matter of (quick) daily watering and frequent fertilizing
11. Peas: Putting in supports, training them up supports, and time-consuming picking made peas the most time-consuming crop of the year. 20 minutes of searching through vines to find peas every other day during harvest season really gets annoying after the first couple weeks. That doesn't even include the time it takes to trim the stems off (they were snow peas, shelling peas would be even worse) before eating. Its a shame the peas grew so well and tasted so good, because I'm tempted to not grow them next year due to the time it took to pick them.

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