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 

Garlic and God

Mid winter and the ground is cold and sodden. Even the weeds, well some of them anyway, grow slowly in the short days and winter shade. Our garden, on the south-west side of the house gets about 2 hours of direct sunlight a day, and that only occurs on the side furthermost from the house, AND if the sun is shining.

Yet the ground still yields for us winter greens (bok choi, mizuna, rocket, lettuce, endive, mustard, silverbeet), and the sunlight of last summer is still stored underground, in the knobbly and nutty tubers of Jerusalem artichoke and the oddly violet-tasting yacon. I know which I prefer - some vegetables deserve their obscurity through that taste hurdle one must overcome upon putting it in your mouth. Jerusalem artichoke has to be one of the easiest of vegetables, indeed I would say don't plant it unless you want it EVERY year - related to sunflowers it produces a large clump of stems to 2-3 m tall, topped with dozens of small sunflowers. Meanwhile, underground, the plant produces dozens of tubers, seemingly replacing all of the dirt under the plant with food. Leave just one by the end of winter, and the whole cycle starts again. Yacon on the other hand is like a dahlia on steroids - large fuzzy purplish leaves, with a good 5 kg or more of kumara-like roots produced underground. When you roast them (our most common usage) you have to get over the texture - unlike potatoes, pumpkin, and kumara they stay crunchy when roasted. And we have the remains of last years bean crop ready to eat, tightly packed in their jars with, in hindsight, more than a hint of chilli.

A little oddly, now is the time of year to plant a crop that we harvest in the heat of summer. Garlic, planted according to the old adage "plant on the shortest day, harvest on the longest" is best planted now, and its incredibly satisfying to get one bulb back for every clove committed to the ground. What's more, it's pretty foolproof to grow, takes up little space, isn't fussy with soils, and, if you buy NZ garlic anyway, saves buying garlic at $15-20 a kilo. We are about half way through the garlic we harvested last summer, and most of it is still in pretty good nick, so from a small patch of ground we will be nearly self sufficient in garlic year around.

How to grow garlic?
1. Find some garlic that is either New Zealand grown garlic, or garlic that you can see is starting to sprout (there will be a little green tip visible through the partly transparent garlic skins. You can also buy seed garlic from garden shops for a reasonble price.
2. Break the bulbs up until you have either the number of bulbs you think your household eats in a year, or the number to fill your garlic patch at 10-15 cm apart.
3. Prepare the garden bed so it is well-weeded and with a fine soil to at least 10 cm depth.
4. Plant 10-15 cm apart in rows wide enough to get a hoe between (about 20 cm apart). Place them pointy end up so you bury them a little shallower than the clove is long.
5. Top dress with some fertiliser (not essential) once they start to get going in the early Spring.
6.Keep the weeds down by hoeing.
7. When the plants start to yellow and die down in mid-summer, carefully dig them up and let them dry in the sun for a few days.
8. Store in a cool dry place (we hang ours above our front door on a nail as its shaded, dry, with a southerly aspect). We haven't seen any vampires in the house either since putting them there.

The garlic in my garden dont need lots of compost in the soil. A garden bed you prepared for greedier vegetables the season before is perfectly good.

So garlic and God? Little things like crops to plant in winter remind me that all seasons are needed and serve a purpose, which is quite something for a self-professed winter-phobe.  "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven" Ecclesiastes 3 v. 1.

That's kind of reassuring when you believe the world, and its seasons, was created by a benevolent being. Some crops also need these cold dreary days to begin growth, or to initiate the flowers that give summer fruit (like berry crops, which,  especially for my 2-year old daughter, are a highlight of our summer garden.

And sustainability is something for everyone to be concerned with, and I would argue, particularly if you believe in God. If the planet was made by God, and declared to be good, why would he want us to trash it? Of all the vegetables we can grow in our gardens, imported garlic is one of the most travelled - in the realm of 11,000 kilometres (Wellington to Beijing). NZ produces a lot of our own vegetables, but now imports around 2,400 tons of garlic annually, and exports about 500 tons. Production of NZ garlic has plummeted since the onset of garlic imports from China, and for each kilo imported from China there is an additional 5500 kj of energy from fossil fuels consumed, along with the emission of carbon dioxide (380 g) and nitrogen oxides (5.2 g).


Now I am not inherently opposed to food imports. In the fruit bowl in front of me as I write is a Phillipines papaya, and I am rather partial to eating grapes at any time of year. But garlic is different - we can grow it and grow it well, it stores well, and we could be self-sufficient in it. We import because in our minds the environmental cost doesnt outweigh how cheap it is to buy it imported. But NZ garlic comes at significantly more cost, so my challenge is - if you can't afford NZ garlic, and you have some growing space, why not plant some now?

Till next time

Tim

Season 1, Post 1: Sowing a seed.

Who am I, why should I blog, and will any one read it? 

My life is guided by three strands: my love for God, who made and loves me,  my love of people (my family, children, friends, and wider community) and my deep love and connection to Planet Earth, that sustains us and meets all of our physical needs. These strands are deeply and inextricably linked, and at times mysterious or difficult to trace, but also everyday or mundane  (like dirt under my fingernails).
I have a passion for growing (and catching) my own food, born out of a love of the natural world, the desire to eat and provide for others fresh, local food, and the philosophy of treading lightly on the Earth. Do I own a farm or a market garden, or own a fishing boat? No. The challenge to grow or find food is within the limits of 40m2 of suburban Auckland dirt, supplemented by neighbourhood foraging, and trips to the sea with a fishing rod. What is possible within these limits? What are the actual cost savings of growing your own, versus the cost of a trip to the supermarket? Are there other tangible, or perhaps mental or spiritual benefits, to eating stuff you have wrestled from the dirt with your own hands? Do food miles really matter? Why compost rather than use a waste-disposer? How do you grow bok choi? Can a 2-year old really help in the garden? These are all questions I will seek to answer and share, in the hope of inspiring others to do the same. This mindset can be born out of a sense of duty, but is far more sustaining, and sustainable, if born out of a renewed sense of connectedness with the Earth, who we are, our Creator, and the people we live with.

Tim