In the spring I'll spread the contents of the compost pile and the compost barrel over the garden and mix it in with the dirt as a fertilizer. Between the stuff I emptied out of the barrel, the leaves, and the new stuff in the barrel, there is probably about 65-75lbs of fertilizer for next year, plus any additional stuff that we add over the winter. That seems like a lot for such a small garden, but considering the amount of vegetables that we harvested this year, that is probably necessary. How much did we harvest, you ask? Well, here is a link to the harvest summary spreadsheet. 143 lbs seems like a pretty good harvest from an area that is probably only about around 250 square feet of usable area. The prices in the spreadsheet come from Wegmans' website. I used prices for organic produce when I could find it (everything from the garden is effectively organic), and when I couldn't find it, I multiplied the price of non-organic produce by 150%. Between the CSA that we joined and the garden, Jaime and I were not really able to keep up with the amount of produce that we had. We've made the decision that next year we won't do the CSA. Instead, we will rely on the garden for most of our produce and supplement it with stuff from our neighborhood farmer's market.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The 2010 Harvest
With the forecast nightly lows starting to dip below 32 degrees, I figured it was time to harvest what I could from the garden. I picked the last of the peppers and tomatoes (green). I also harvested a couple heads of broccoli. The only things I have left in the garden are the brussels sprouts (likely not going to produce anything this year, but I figured I'd leave them in just in case), one broccoli plant that is growing a head, a couple pak choi and lettuce plants, and a bunch of green onions. I then hacked up the plants that are done for the year and was going to put them in my compost pile, but I realized that the compost barrel was getting too full to really be able to mix up. The stuff in the barrel was mostly composted, so I dumped it out in a pile of leaves that I had put in the garden after I raked the front yard last weekend. The newly chopped up plants went into the barrel. So I now have a compost pile to go along with the compost barrel. You can see part of the leaf pile behind the hot tub on the right side of the picture below. You can also see the oats coming up in the areas of the garden that I planted them.In the spring I'll spread the contents of the compost pile and the compost barrel over the garden and mix it in with the dirt as a fertilizer. Between the stuff I emptied out of the barrel, the leaves, and the new stuff in the barrel, there is probably about 65-75lbs of fertilizer for next year, plus any additional stuff that we add over the winter. That seems like a lot for such a small garden, but considering the amount of vegetables that we harvested this year, that is probably necessary. How much did we harvest, you ask? Well, here is a link to the harvest summary spreadsheet. 143 lbs seems like a pretty good harvest from an area that is probably only about around 250 square feet of usable area. The prices in the spreadsheet come from Wegmans' website. I used prices for organic produce when I could find it (everything from the garden is effectively organic), and when I couldn't find it, I multiplied the price of non-organic produce by 150%. Between the CSA that we joined and the garden, Jaime and I were not really able to keep up with the amount of produce that we had. We've made the decision that next year we won't do the CSA. Instead, we will rely on the garden for most of our produce and supplement it with stuff from our neighborhood farmer's market.
In the spring I'll spread the contents of the compost pile and the compost barrel over the garden and mix it in with the dirt as a fertilizer. Between the stuff I emptied out of the barrel, the leaves, and the new stuff in the barrel, there is probably about 65-75lbs of fertilizer for next year, plus any additional stuff that we add over the winter. That seems like a lot for such a small garden, but considering the amount of vegetables that we harvested this year, that is probably necessary. How much did we harvest, you ask? Well, here is a link to the harvest summary spreadsheet. 143 lbs seems like a pretty good harvest from an area that is probably only about around 250 square feet of usable area. The prices in the spreadsheet come from Wegmans' website. I used prices for organic produce when I could find it (everything from the garden is effectively organic), and when I couldn't find it, I multiplied the price of non-organic produce by 150%. Between the CSA that we joined and the garden, Jaime and I were not really able to keep up with the amount of produce that we had. We've made the decision that next year we won't do the CSA. Instead, we will rely on the garden for most of our produce and supplement it with stuff from our neighborhood farmer's market.
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