Friday, July 31, 2009

Time Spent Summary - July '09

I can't take credit for the idea of tracking the time and money spent on my garden. That goes to Get Rich Slowly's Garden Project. The idea is this: Does a garden save you money? It's a simple question, but a difficult answer.

Most people who garden will say even if the financial benefit isn't there, the quality improvement over supermarket produce is worth the price. I postulate that if you only look at the money spent vs the value of the produce, that you will come out ahead. If you include the time spent, however, I am pretty certain you will not come out ahead. And that's ok, so long as you look at the time as an investment in an enjoyable, healthful activity.


2009 Summary



June Details



I didn't really think it was possible, but July brought even more rain and cool weather to New England. As a result, many of the warm weather vegetables are way behind where they would normally be. The harvest value is not looking very good compared to the amount spent on equipment and supplies at this point. There's still the majority of the harvest to come, but I am a bit concerned that breaking even may not be possible for this year.

One of the biggest concerns is the potential for late blight to ruin the tomato harvest. If there's any chance at all of breaking even, it would come with the large amount of green tomatoes hanging on the vines currently. If late blight finds my garden, it will take out the fruit as well as the vines. Unfortunately, I've still got a few weeks before the tomatoes are ready.

I do not have store values for several of the vegetables at this time. We don't go shopping very often so I have not been able to search out values. In the meantime I have substituted similar items from grocery store weekly circulars.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Late Blight Watch

Thanks to those big box home improvement stores (you know who, one orange and one blue), those of us in the Northeast have an additional threat to our Potatoes and Tomatoes, late blight. Not familiar with late blight? Ever heard of the Irish Potato Famine? Yep, caused by late blight.

By all accounts it is pretty nefarious stuff, not only does it attack the plant, but it ruins the fruit/tuber as well. It spreads like wildfire too. The only upside is that unlike many other fungi, this one does not live in the soil and, assuming you do not create cull piles of ruined potatoes, should not survive the winter to resurface next spring.

The disease has been spotted all over CT in commercial farms. I'm sure there are many backyard gardeners who are losing their tomatoes (tomato seedlings imported from the south spread the disease initially) and have no idea why. The cool wet weather this summer has been a boon to spreading all sorts of fungi.

Being in a community garden I am quite fearful that we will not escape this disease. I am keeping a close watch on the my plants, so far I believe all I have is some early blight and septoria leaf spot. I am taking an agressive stance on all fungi in my tomatoes. Clipping out any diseased leaves and spraying regularly with Chlorothalonil, which the only fungicide I've found that helps battle this disease. It should be noted that Chlorothalonil does not treat an infection, but will help slow down the spread. Commercial farmers have fungicides available that will treat an infection, however these chemicals are not available to backyard gardeners.

UCONN IPM Info Page

Another info page

Cornell Potato Late Blight Photos

Cornell Tomato Late Blight Photos


Good luck out there!!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Garden Status

Since our laptop died in May, making updates has been difficult. We now have a brand new Asus Eee-1000HA. It's one of those cute little netbooks. I'm loving it so far, the battery life is incredible compared to our bottom of the barrel laptop.

Life in New England has been about as cool and wet as I've ever seen. Needless to say the garden has been slow growing. The cool weather veggies are doing great, but the warm weather ones are pokey.

The snow peas produced nearly a 4 pound harvest. Not bad for a 6', double row planting. I've also managed to harvest 6 heads of broccoli. They look to be similar in size to those in the grocery store. It is unfortunate they all came at once, but they produced a lot better than last year's crop. Granted, last year I planted them just a week before Memorial Day, so they just didn't have enough time before the warm weather set in.

When I planted the onions I also threw some leaf lettuce seed in the between row areas. Not much came up, but what did come up has been producing a few sandwiches worth of lettuce each week. Not enough to track hardly, but a nice addition to my daily lunch sandwich.

The corn is still only knee high. I did some thinning over the July 4th weekend. To avoid wasting the thinned plants I dug up an area in a fallow plot next to mine and transplanted the extra plants there. They aren't looking too healthy right now, but they would have been composted otherwise so it is worth a shot.

The tomato, watermelon, summer squash, pumpkin & cucumber plants are similarly stunted by the cool weather. The peppers are actually holding their own, which is a little surprising given the cool weather. They transplanted much better than the tomatoes, however, so that has given them a head start of sorts.

Hopefully we will break out of this wet & cool weather pattern and get some good warm growing weather soon! Otherwise this may turn out to be a disappointing year.