Looking at the long-range forecast this week and it seems like spring may be starting to send winter on its way. Two straight weeks where the nights are above zero. Now it’s not quite time to fire up the BBQ and enjoy some delicious craft beers on the deck, but it is time to start thinking about our garden.
We have always had some version of a garden at our house. Some years have been more adventures than others, and so far it has been kind of a hobby where we have been pretty slack on whether it actually produced enough to cover its costs. This year, however we are going to try to go a bit more hardcore and track our expected savings or lack of.
First, let’s talk about what we have to work with. We live on a fairly small subdivision lot, just over a quarter of an acre, with one existing square raised planter, dimensioning 4’ x 4’ built it out of cedar. For this year’s garden, we have decided to up our game by adding four additional L-shaped raised beds, the long sides being 6’ and the short sides being 3’. This gives us a total growing area of 124 square feet.
So first things first, we need to figure out what we are going to grow. For us, this all comes down to what we use and what we can store easily. Some people look at it more from a cost perspective, i.e. which vegetables cost more in the grocery store and therefore provide the most savings. If we went that route we would probably end up with a garden full of peppers, but past pepper failures are many, so we plan on diversifying.
Our list came out like this:
- Squash – Black Beauty Zucchini
- Carrots – Imperator Long
- Kale – Borecole Scotch
- Cucumber – Tasty Green (I mean it says tasty in the title)
- Peppers – Jalapeno
- Peppers – California Wonder
- Parsnip – Hollow Crown
- Tomato – Scotia
- Tomato – Early Girl
- Tomato – Little Napoli (Roma)
- Beans – Top Notch Golden Wax Bush
- Garlic
- Broccolini
- Patio Peppers
- Romaine Lettuce
- Eggplant
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Arugula
- Cauliflower
- Red Zeppelin Onion
- Sweet Onion
- Basil
- Rosemary
- Thyme
The next step is to lay out your garden. We found a great resource in the Farmers Almanac. They provide a garden layout tool that lets you plan a virtual garden.
This really saves time trying to figure out all the required spacings, especially when you plan on planting using the square foot method instead of the traditional drill method to optimize the space available.
Now that we have an idea of where everything is going to go it’s time to start germinating some seeds. Because we live in a plant hardiness zone of 5a, we don’t have a very long growing season so we’ll need to start some of our seeds inside to give them a bit of a head start.
This is the first time we have ever attempted to start our own seeds, so we need to do some research and pick up some supplies. The setup we are going to try will use standard seedling trays with a cover and a grow light.
We picked up most of our seeds at a local gardening shop and were also able to attend a local seed library and seed swap, both great resources if you can find them in your community.
The total cost so far tallies up like this :
- Seeds $19.91
- Seed Starting Soil $5.99
- Cedar 32 pieces 1x6x6 $194.88
- Cedar 4 pieces 2x4x8 $42.52
- 24” Grow Light With Reflector x 2 $ 99.98
- 4 Cubic Yard of Topsoil $220.00
- Standard Seed Trays x 2 $ 26.00
Total Cost $ 609.28 + HST This number will be a challenge to beat as it has a lot of one-time startup costs included and we’ll have to see how cost stack up as things go along.
We are excited to get our seedlings underway and will keep you posted as things develop.