"Mastergardener: I'd be happy with 500."

Wish I could even hope to get that much : )

"And the corn can be canned or frozen while the lettuce can't be. "

Good point Dave. I have been really into food preservation as much as gardening.

thisisme,

I just read back to your response and I thank you for that info very much.

I know from experience peas are a horrible use of spqce but my 3 yr old loves them so they are getting about 15 ft this spring, then beans will takeover the spot for summer and then peas again in the fall. Cabbages are getting planted at the base of the peas too. Lettuce is a higher dollar value crop though by weight! And we eat a lot of it, probably 2 heads a day when we have it. But a lot of.the spring veggies will get chopped and frozen for soups and stir fries. I'm also pruning all my toms to a single stem and spacing them at 1 foot. Can't wait to start seeds next month!

I agree with Dave. Test all but keep few. And those few will produce abundantly under your conditions. If there are two different types of veggies in the garden in the offseason, and three in the growing season, I am happy. Even happier if I can put away 5lbs of celery, 50 chilies, 20 lbs of shelling beans and 100 lbs of San Marzano in the freezer. Plus roots, squash, cardoon, cabbage.

That top 15 list contains broccoli! I think it is a very low yield vegetable. Replace with cabbage, which should be the #1 in terms of nutrition per square foot.

I find it intersting that peas are considered a poor value vegetable because I've always valued them for not just their edible pods and seeds but also for their nitrogen-fixing roots and nitrogen-rich vines and foliage. Tomatoes are full of water, which requires cooking to drive off for preserving and they don't leave the soil better than before they were planted. How to figure value...

I wish I could help the OP but I don't know how many lbs of produce I can produce in a year yet. :)

The best value for space used should consider nutrition required. For example, 1/4 of a healthy diet would be from legumes for the protein. This would give a much higher value to peas since they are a high protein crop. Cowpeas are even more productive and thrive in mid-summer heat. I would follow spring peas with cowpeas since that is the most efficient use of space and resources. Both will produce abundant organic matter to put back into your soil.

As for total production, you are looking at 128 square feet in raised beds and 160 square feet for the melons. You will find that the melons are a difficult proposition to keep under control. I have successfully grown pole beans on the north side of a row of melons so that might be a good option.

My best guess at your production would be something north of 800 pounds of produce with a final value in the range of $1200. Wish you luck.

DarJones

I grow for the love of growing and the the semi sustainable sense i gain from providing for myself. Not because it is an economically viable alternative to purchasing. But, in saying that....i grow copious amounts of tomato. Pasta sauces, salads, currys, breakfasts, .....they make sense. If you do the staples, you will win. Do the expensive/high harvest stuff like snow peas, cherry tomato, spinach, cilantro, basil, other herbs, etc. Don't waist your time with thing that take 6 months to grow like cabbage, and toss the melon idea. They will take up too much real estate.

It is hard to put a price on that first stalk of asparagus that you break-off and eat right there, or grabbing a handful of the first fresh Sugar Snap peas of the season. If I were going to weigh my garden produce, the scales would need to be in the garden because a lot of it doesn't make it into the kitchen.

My husband says that half of the vegetables he eats during the gardening season are eaten standing in the garden. LOL

If I could only grow three crops it would be Sugar Snap peas, peppers, and tomatoes. Wow, that was hard to narrow it down to three.

@soonergrandmom I planted my first batch of peas in late March last year, but didn't get my first pea until late June or July or something because of how cold it was. Haha, but it was fun eating them!

My goal is to try and get 200-300 lbs. That would be awesome for me! I should be able to get 1000 lbs easily with all the space I have to work with.

Since peas can be grown when tomatoes can't, I don't see that as a poor use of space. Peas and lettuce are cool season, tomatoes warm season. My peas are pooping out right about the time my tomatoes are going into the garden.
Plus, I've never seen a decent English pea in the grocery store. They are awful. Not even the same vegetable. Same for the snow peas.
Now, I can see not making space for melons. We get great melons at our local market for not too much market. Zuchinni and summer squash are a better use of that space, since they tend to be expensive and not fresh.

Update: indoor seedlings started; kohlrabi, green goliath broccoli, broccoli raab, cilantro, lavender, parsley, leeks, onions, scallions, celery, two lettuce types, male and cabbages...I think that's it so far. Wintersown: carrots, shallots, and radishes. I also transplanted 4 broccoli plants that are still alive from fall to a covered bed and covered the.bed that still has lettuce, arugula, and chats and some possibly dead kohlrabi in it. Still amazed that all survived getting snowed on! Waiting on my latest order from johnnys.and will be finishing some indoor starts for spring this week hopefully.

In support of peas... Tall Telephone / Alderman peas grow very tall, around 5-6' in my garden and don't take up much space. If you have boxed in raised beds, you can have them grow on some cattle panel along the end of the bed, leaving nearly the entire bed for something else, potatoes in my case.

This is an interesting thread. I pretty did what you are describing last year. The only exception I didn't assign a monetary value. I did weigh everything I harvested and kept really good records. I have 3 4x8 and 3 4x4 beds that are SFG's. I also had a 4x25 strip in another area of my yard that I planted corn and peas in.

For 2011, I ended up with 325.51 pounds out of 244 sq. feet of gardening space. Like others have said there are so many factors to determine your total pounds. Specifically for me I grow a lot of corn, which weighs a good bit. If you are growing a ton of melons, tomatoes, and things that are heavier than obviously yours numbers will be higher than if you just grow greens.

I have included a link to my 2011 numbers broken down by vegetable. Good luck to you, but one thing I would say is don't expect to "make" money off your garden. When you factor in the cost of everything, fertilizer, water, etc. I think it is hard to make money off a garden. Maybe if you have a large area you can, but then there is the whole "what is my time worth" factor too.

For instance in that 4x25 plot, I harvested 80 ears of corn out of it. That sounds pretty good, but I can go to the grocery store and buy 6 ears for $1.49. So out of my plot I grew about 20 dollars worth of corn that I could buy in the store. Whether or not I grew it for less than 20 dollars who knows because I don't get that in to the costs.

I don't grow my veggies to save money, I grow them mainly because they taste so much better. I do like they way you are going through things in detail though, that reminds me of myself.

Here is a link that might be useful: 2011 Harvest Totals

Everything is germinating well except no celery sprouts yet. I think the radish I winter sowed is already terminating out in one of the raised bed!

Oh and the sage plants still in the raised bed with the broccoli are putting on new growth!

Figuring out the cost benefit sounds like a lot of fun, but it would be impossible for the stuff we like best--stuff that's not available in our grocery stores.

By our measure, our Charentais melons and heirloom lima beans are priceless. (And the melons don't take up space for long because the darned stem borers get them, arghhh!)

vtguitargirl - "In support of peas... Tall Telephone / Alderman peas grow very tall, around 5-6' in my garden and don't take up much space."

Agreed. Good stuff indeed.

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Mmmmmm peas. Drooling. I wintersowed some salsify, spinach and those little round French carrots. Chard and broccoli are perking up since being covered!

Cozy, those peas look scrumptious! Yum yum!

Mindyw3, Someday I hope to incorporate Elliot Coleman's recommendations into my own garden. But without season extenders, here a few harvest highlights.

*Onions: 130 transplants in a 4x8 bed yielded 48 lbs
(varieties included *Candy, Copra, Walla Walla, *Red, Cippolini)

*Potatoes: 27 seed pieces in a 4x12 bed yielded about 40 lbs
(varieties included *Kennebec, Green Mt, Cobbler)

*Other productive crops this year included: *San Marzano Tomatoes, asparagus, chard, carrots, beets, dry beans until wet weather spoiled them at the end

*Not so productive in 2011: peas, winter squash

*=especially productive varieties in 2011

I try and get the most productivity out of my garden by starting seed inside and transplanting out when they're ready. That gives me a functional increase of garden space of maybe 33%. If I start a broccoli seed outside here I may be harvesting in 90 days. If I transplant a start I may be harvesting in 60 days. That means that spot has anothr 30 days available for growing. Tom

vtguitargirl -- you grew 40 lbs of potatoes in 4x12 feet? What is your secret??? I have had to start using a piece of land on my neighbor's property to try to get enough potatoes for the year, and I grow stuff for him (cantaloupe, watermelons and pumpkins last year) as "payment" for the land. I did 3 rows (Kennebec, yukon gold, and red pontiac) each about 40 - 50 feet long, and only got about 100 lbs. That was a lot of work for 100 lbs of potatoes! In 2013 I should be able to put potatoes back in my garden (it needed a rest from that veggie group) and I'd love to be able to produce more in less space. The year I grew 195 lbs that was enough for the year, so I'd like to get back to that much.

And Mindy -- did you say yet what zone you're in? It's fun to hear about your winter sowing, and you mentioned snow, and it would be great to know what climate you're in (to know if I can try the same sowing you're doing.)

Thanks!
Elisa

Vtguitargirl: I'm also growing red marble cippolini and san marzano this coming season. First time for both and first attempt at dry beans(kenearly yellow). I'm really liking the double.covers, so tempting to keep looking in there though and I'm sure ill be cleaning them off in the middle of q snow storm a few times yet. Excited to see how much extra harvest.the low tunnels provide!

Skagit: I'm making an effort to start as much in flats as long as I time it all correctly.
Eliza: I'm in zone 5! East central Nebraska. I never had luck with potatoes so I stopped growing them. And they are supposed.to do really well in raised beds.

Elisa: I'm a very lazy gardner! I planted 12 Kennebecs & 6 Green Mt potatoes in a 4x8 raised bed, 9 Cobblers in a 4x4 bed. The soil had a lot of dry, composted cow manure (a by product of "Moo-power" electricity produced at a large dairy farm here) mixed with other good topsoil. In the 4x8 I made 2 trenches, "pushed" the potato pieces in a bit, and let the rain wash the soil down & cover the potatoes further. Then I hilled them with soil a couple of times over the ensuing weeks. When the plants got big & bushy, I hilled further with straw. I basically did the same with the 4x4 bed only I dug 9 holes & plopped in the cobblers. Must be the soil & weather were just right this year, because they were the best yielding & tasting potatoes ever, and I really didn't do much.

Mindy: Last year was my 3rd year with San Marzanos and each time they've been super productive & fabulous in sauces. I love the big heirloom beefsteaks, but the SM is great for food storage. I'm going to try more dry beans this year. Yes, I know you can buy them cheaply at the store, but they're so good for the soil & its nice knowing what's going into your body too. Good luck & stay in touch. I'd like to hear about your season extenders.

Thanks, vtguitar girl. sounds like you had what I had the year I had good yields -- Manure!! I didn't put any on my nieghbor's land, so that's probably what was missing. Will add it this year for sure!

Mindy -- a fellow zone 5 er. Wishing you best of luck with all your endeavors! thoughts from another thread-- I had read and heard, also, that curcurbits should have a max of 4 weeks of growing indoors before setting out. Maybe that makes them stronger somehow? The last person I heard it from was a NJ zucchini farmer :)

Just spent yesterday afternoon on the outside deck in the cold sunshine shelling dry beans with an 8 year old neighbor boy. Fun and satisfying, and I learned a lot about iPod touch, but I kept wondering how beans can be so cheap when they are so labor intensive! (I've tried the stepping on them in a bag trick, and all it does is make me have to sort them out from all the broken shells. better to shell individually, imo.)

Well worst that can happen with the cucurbs is that I end up direct seeding, but none of the transplants I had last year had any problems from being transplanted. Cucumber beetles on the other hand....
I got the rest of my lettuces in trays todays along with chard, artichokes, broccoli Di cicco, cauliflower,and collards. Only probably one more tray of cool season stuff and then those are all sown except for a few more carrots and radishes in the garden. Looks.like all the alliums will be ready to transplant out in about a month. I'll start adding pics soon. Supposed to get veerryyy cold the next few days so we will see what survives from last fall.

Had a minor set back today.... I killed a whole flat of seedlings. Not a huge loss except for the lavender that had very poor germinayion but the few seedlings I had were doing very wellmaybe one of them looks ok and the chives look ok. Oopsie.

Mindyw3, I feel you are not asking the right questions -- so you are not getting the right answers. Gardening isn't the same as a weekend fishing trip to Cabo to see how much you can stuff into a freezer. It's not about how much total vegetable matter you can bag compared to some hypothetical number. Many farmers follow that path today, but not gardeners.

Gardening is about growing what you really like, and numbers be damned. Farming is about growing a commodity and all else be damned. What good does it do me to grow 3,000 lbs of celery if nobody in my family eats celery?

Grow what you like. Grow the best of stuff that you like and the total numbers will come. Anything you grow that saves a trip to the market is money in the bank. They say don't grow watermelons because you can buy them cheap and they take up too much space. I have limited space and I grow watermelons every year because they flat out rock! There are no better melons than I can grow. I like greens, tomatoes, and fruit. I grow a lot of greens, tomatoes and fruit. That's about as simple as I can make it. Oh, and fresh shelling peas from the garden - an excel spreadsheet can't even quantify the joy on my face when I crack open the pods. :)

Just sayin', good gardening transcends numbers and calculations. If you like it, try to grow it, and if you can can grow it well - keep growing it.

Mrclint - I don't plan on changing what I plan to grow bqsed on its retail value. Rather I just want to see what I'm growing would be worth if I purchased it at a store, but.of course I hope to at least break even as far as what I invested in the garden.

Update: the radishes are still the only things that have germinated outside so far. So I'm still waiting on carrots, salsify and.spinach...oh and scallions to sprout. If the scallions.don't sprout.by mid Feb I should probably start some.indoors. everything started indoors is doing ok (except for the tray I accidentally froze.the other day). I have some seriously leggy cabbages and male.but I'm sure they will be fine. The only things that haven't terminated yet are some peppers and cauliflower. 3 of the 4 broccoli plants outside are still alive! Charred, arugula, a handful of lettuces, some mache and a couple kohlrabi are alps doing pretty well outside. Can't wait for the first harvest. Still hoping for April!

Scallions equals shallots and male equals kale. Lol

Update: currently in the garden there are still 2 broccolis, a cauliflower, some arugula and chard and romaine that survived the whole winter! In the last week spinach, radishes and mustard have sprouted in the low tunnels along with a handful of winter sown flowers. I also have a lot of mesclun i seeded last year popping up around the radishes. I seeded about 200 pea plants and beets today. I plan on seeding the rest of the peas in a few weeks. All the cool weather crops are hardening off for another week and then theyll go out in the covered beds. I got horrible germination on the celery but they look very healthy. Wintersown shallots, carrots and salsify have also not germinated yet. Not sure the shallots will pop fast enough to be any good, but i dont feel like starting more inside...also started a big pot of garden cress inside. Thatll probably be my first harvest although we are having a hard time not eating the larger lettuce seedlings!

Update: only harvest so far has been about 2 medium sized salads of mache woth a little leaf lettuce and arugula, BUT we appear to be right on track for most planned harvest times to get the warm season veggies in early. The overwintered broccoli is starting to head and mesclun and lettuces are growing nicely. My cabbages and peas are prvoing a bit difficult though and may end up not producing before hot whether. Unfortunately they tske a decent amount of space from my small garden. Its been an unusually hot spring though so i guess some failures are to be expected. Overwintered chard and arugula look awesome also. Bok choi and kohlrabi are moving a little slower. I planted 4 of the 7 artichoke seedlings this week after vernalizing them as much as possible earlier this spring. I have to dig the new melon bed and rows for dry bush beand this week. Im anxious though for the pest attacks to start and still a little pessimistic about a repeat of last years pest damage. Oh well. What can ya do? Ill add pictures soon!

Diversity will always help. Having a warm spring may set back your peas but be great for the tomatoes. We have to take what we get in terms of weather, but having lots of different crops and several planting dates increases the odds that something will be better than expected.

I'm really glad I found this post i especially liked thisisme's post with the list this spring I'm attempting to eat mostly from my gardens and the local farmers markets and hoping that eating local raw vegan will help me lose the extra weight from the past 30years of my standard American diet and since atm I'm only getting a couple days a week at my job spending time gardening seems like a good idea

Heres pics from today which was in the 80s! Here is one of our mache salads: {{gwi:135162}}
Raspberries leafing out. Still need to devise anothee container for my tiny blackberry plant. {{gwi:135164}}
Junebearers and alpines: {{gwi:135166}}
The very slow moving peas. I have a couple hundred more presproutung inside: {{gwi:135168}}
This bed has bok choi kohlrabi spinach celery lettuce parsley cilantro broccoli raab and those tiny round carrots as well as green onions spaced throughout. I have 5 cabbage spaces saved here too but havent transplanted yet... {{gwi:135170}} {{gwi:135171}} the first insect damage! {{gwi:135174}} this bed has various lwttuces chard onions shallots carrots and salsify. The arugula and chard are ones that survived winter. There is chard in the bed before this also. {{gwi:135176}} h {{gwi:135178}} this bed has a lot of volunteers mesclun radishes that had poor germination cauliflower and broccoli and two broccolis and a cabbage that survived winter: {{gwi:135181}} b. Other than the onipns i just seeded this bed woth more carrots spinach radiahes and scallions. {{gwi:135183}} more lettuce kohlrabi and bok choi. Cilantro beets and cauliflower. {{gwi:135184}} b {{gwi:135185}} and whats left of the mache some arugula seedlings and 8 leeks. The bare area was just seeded with more mesclun. {{gwi:135186}} thanks for looking if you made it through that post. Lol

Oh gosh and i totally forgot there are about 25 more onions, 8 ever bearing strawberries, a 2x2 container of mint that is finally showing life and of course the 4 artichokes i planted that. There is pot of cress. That my 3 yr old already killed once...

Oh gosh and i totally forgot there are about 25 more onions, 8 ever bearing strawberries, a 2x2 container of mint that is finally showing life and of course the 4 artichokes i planted that. There is pot of cress. That my 3 yr old already killed once...oh and the rosemary bush im not sure is alive! Lol

And i saw my first white moth in the garden today. Joy.

So we are at a whopping $39! :/ ill post new pics soon as the spring crops will sll be harvested soon. The only losses weve had so far are a head of lettuce and about half of the bok choy tobig damaged leaves...well the lettuce was lost to a hoe that fell on it....

Here are new pics. We have harvested most of the lettuce, a lot of chard, bok choy, broccoli, green onions and raab and a handful of radishes. I dont think any of the cauliflower are going to do anything as they are still much smaller than all the othe {{gwi:135187}} {{gwi:135188}} {{gwi:135189}} {{gwi:135191}} {{gwi:135192}}
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either. And hoing ots not too hot when the second planting of peas gets up and flowering.

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Hi Mindy,
Great job you are doing with everything, it all looksn very good and healthy ;-)

PS... Is that an egg in the lower right hand corner of the last pic ?

Lmao! Yes it is jon. I took that right before the egg hunt. Lol. And thanks!!!

$59 as of today. So far that covers the cost of one bed without season extension. Some things im not sure how to assign value to. Some of it is not sold in the store. Some of it i use in such small amounts, like scallions. Even when i buy scallions half the bunch ends up getting slimey in the fridge. My scale also broke so ive been guessing by volume rather than weight lately. I have to rethink how the side yard will be used also. Im going to put the melons, bush beans and tomatillos there along with some cutting flowers. I think yield will be lower than normal because since the sun has moved higher the fence actually shades longer!

Fun to see the pics.
Nice toenails :)

At about $110 dollars. Scale is completely broken though. Not sure how much i feel like buying a new one.... we also had our first carrots today!! Theyre tonda something or other and my 3 yr old was begging for more. I also decided i wont be growing buttercrunch again. Of the 7 or so varieties we grew this one was the second latest and every single one had some kind of fungal growth between leaves. Onlu the hearts were usable. Peas are covered in pods so i cant wait for those!

Well, here's an update on teh garden. There has not been a whole lot ot harvest, at least not in quantity. A squash here and there, herbs, some cherry toms and both raspberry bushes seem to have a disease so there was essentially nothing harvestable from them. We've also been harvesting lots of green onions and scallion and more carrots. I honestly don't have the time to keep track of ti all but here's some pics of whats going on!!

Mint and the left over onion seedlings we had which didn't grow much in this container. We've also harvested the mint pretty heavily and its beginning to flower:
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The strawberry bed:
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Fortex beans...what the baby bunnies didn't eat:
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Chard and celery, also been harvesting pretty heavy:
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Oregano getting ready to flower. Still any good after flowering?
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Big beef toms:
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Cherry toms:
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Bush beans (wax), parsley, and a couple cucumber vines that haven't produced anythign yet. The bunnies ate 2 of the vines already:
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More pole beans, had to be replanted.....twice....thanks bunnies!!!
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More toms:
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This bed has 4 toms, 4 peppers, salsify and some shallots and onions. I've reseeded more carrots where the straw is but its just too damn hot to get anythign to germinate:
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This bed has 4 toms, 4 peppers, and 3 honey bear squash that are just forming buds:
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Big beef nest to brandywines which so far are setting about the same number and size of fruit, just brandywine was slightly later:
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More toms and peppers, there are also basil plants between all the toms but they are hard to see, genovese and purple. THe genovese is definitely out producing the purple variety:
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More toms.....
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Closeup of two cherry plants pruned to a single stem:
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More peppers, I planted lipstick, poblano and a color mix and I honestly don't know which are which. So far only two have actually set fruti and they both appear to be lipstick peppers:
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Peppers in the next bed, I also seeded more carrots in both these beds...twice, zero germination :( :
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Whats left of the cippolinis, some have nice bulbs, some have not much and growth has been really varied, even in the same bed:
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San marzano toms, these are also pruned to a single stem, producing great:
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This bed gets the least sun and it shows, it has green zebra, cherry and san marzano toms and 4 eggplants which are just starting to bud as well as a second planting of zucchini and the rest of the leeks that we didn't harvest as babies:
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There are two honey bear and 3 zucchini here, all of which have been producing well. We've already had 3 acorn squash and a handful of zuc's:
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Mystery squash growing in the compost...:
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Kenearly beans (dry shell), mostly an experiment:
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Second planting of chamomile...and cosmos:
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Butternut, pie pumpkins, second planting of watermelons, and corn (and yes I know I'll have to hand pollinate) None of these have blossoms yet:
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Watermelosn and charentais:
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My little ones sunflowers and eggplant, he planted them all by himself!!!
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Tomatilloes that have me stumped. The larger one has not produced a single fruit. THe smaller one has a decent amount but also hasn't grown ahrdly at all and they were seeded at the exact same time:
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And the artichokes. I don't expect much here. I think its just too hot and something has broken off most of the leaves of 3 of 4:
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Other than that our crab apple is so loaded its leaning over so even though I'm not a huge fan we are going to pick as many as are easily reached and make some jam.

So there is my super long update, hoep everyone elses summer is goign great!

Oooops. There are some pics missing....oh well, you get the idea. lol

What an inspiration your garden is. Thank you for sharing!

Mindyw3 is that Forellenschluss or Merveille des Quatre Saisons?

This post was edited by Gary_Snail on Sun, Jan 20, 13 at 1:34