My Garden this summer

So this summer my wife and I planted a vegetable garden in our backyard. We mapped out yard to find the area that received the most sun. This part happened to be a hilly area of our property. This then required me to terrace this area so I am including those costs in numbers below.

This garden yielded fresh organic vegetables all summer and allowed us to can the extras for the winter. All season the plants absorbed CO2 and provided me food. The biggest environmental savings is in the fact that I only have to walk outside to get the vegetables rather than has a truck ship them to my market from a farm. This is about as local as you can get. If every family had just a small garden think of how much that could help clean the air and reduce our carbon foot print.



What we planted:

2 cayanne pepper plants

1 habernero peppler plant

1 cherry pepper plant

2 jalapeno pepper plants

3 publano pepper plants

3 Serrano pepper plants

6 cherry tomato plants

8 sauce tomato plants (mix of heirloom and other large tomatoes)

6 head of lettuce

12 leeks

2 parsley plants



the cost of the seeds and starter plants was ~$85 and another $30 for starting trays, fertilizer, (organic worm poop), and other misc. supplies.



During the growing season I supplemented the watering from the hose with a 55 gallon rain water collection barrel. due to the great rain season we had this summer there was only a hand full of times I had to water the garden with the hose.



So what did I get out of the work and ~$115 investment....

The fabulous weather this year gave me cherry and whole tomatoes starting early July. We did get them into the ground a few weeks later than we liked so the peppers did not start yielding till august. With only the addition of store bought onions we had fresh salsa all august and September.

what was canned:

6 pints of cherry tomato sauce (garlic and olive oil were bought)

8 quarts of regular tomato sauce (basil was grown indoors in my aerogarden)

8 pints salsa (onions added from store)

3 pints of various hotness chilli pastes


so not a bad year. Next year I plan to add more terracing and some netting around the bigger tomatoes because it seams that chipmunks love them.

I just recently got my data server for photos running again and will include a link to the garden pictures shortly.