What a superb year for the garden!
We’ve gotten just enough rain right when we’ve needed it (I have only had to lug the hose into the veggie garden once this season!); my harvests have been exceptional; no diseases have struck; no insect plagues (so far anyway); and, best of all, no deer, no groundhogs and no rabbits. Something must be up with my karma.
Whatever the reason, I’m not going to argue. I was discussing my good gardening fortune with a friend. While early blight has struck her tomatoes, she agreed with me that this has been the best year for onions we’ve ever had.
The cabbage heads are nearly 18 inches across (!) and even my kid likes the carrots this year – they’re super sweet.
It’s a good thing that such excellent fortune has struck this season. I read an article this spring quoting research from The Burpee Seed Company that said if you invest $50.00 worth of seeds and transplants into the garden, you can get up to $1,250.00 worth of produce as a result.
I’ve never kept track of what my garden produced and naturally I wondered how close my own garden would get to those research numbers. So, I’m keeping track to find out.
I’ve added up my veggie gardening expenses (seeds, plants, soil amendments, etc) and now I’ve got a paper tacked to the fridge listing all my harvests by weight or volume depending on what’s picked.
When the garden is put to bed this fall, I’m tallying up the value of the produce I harvested using supermarket prices as a base. I’ll post my results in the autumn. So far I’m on the right track.
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