Value of the vegetable garden

Our vegetable garden is a 17'x14' area in our front yard - small but easy enough to tend in 1 or 2 hours a week.

I've been wondering if it's really worth it. I mean, other than the pleasure I get from toiling in the dirt and the smallish chance my children will be inspired by the sight of vegetables growing and actually want to eat one of them.

So, part of this project is keeping track of the cold hard cash value of what we're pulling out of our garden. So, far, we've gotten about 5 pints of strawberries, 1/2 lb of snap peas and several bags of lettuce and spinach. I'll forget that what we have is local and organic and that that combination commands jaw-dropping prices at the local Whole Foods, and focus on the price of these items as if they were plain old vegetables from the regular grocery store. Current price are $2.50/pint of commercially grown California strawberries, $4.99/pound of snap peas and $4.99/box of mixed greens - bringing the total value of our garden to $24.99, (and it's only June 19th!) and that's ignoring all the snips of chives, basil, garlic scapes, oregano, parsley and cilantro for which I can't begin to calculate the value.

Black bugs on Nasturtiums

These little buggers are kind of aphid and they descend with ferocity on my nasturtiums. Nasturtiums serve 2 purposes in the vegetable garden. Firstly, they're delicious. But I'll discuss edible flowers more when I actually have some flowers to eat. Also, they act as a "trap crop" which draws little haters like these aphids away from my more valuable vegetable crops.

My first course of action has been to pick them off by hand. If the assault continues, I have heard of some pepper-based organic insecticides that might keep them away.

Growing cucumbers in Boston

We've successfully grown marketmore cucumbers from commercially grown starts in our garden for years, but buying the starts doesn't seem nearly as efficient as starting my own cucumbers from seed.

Last year, I direct sowed cucumbers in the garden and got nowhere. We got 1 or 2 cucumbers from the 20 or so seeds I planted. The few seeds that sprouted never really grew. This year, I started the seeds indoors in newspaper pots (persian cucumbers and an asian variety) in late April. My first problem was that a sunny south-facing window sill does not provide enough sunlight to start seedlings. I need to get a grow light. The seedlings emerged quickly enough, but they grew tall and spindly and not thick and strong. Nonetheless, I planted them out where I knew they would get a lot more sun and hoped for the best.

Late May and early June have served us a hearty helping of cold, rainy weather - which is not a curcurbit's best friend. My seedlings languished. Several died (hey, that's why you plant so many!). Facing the terror of another summer without cucumbers, I went to the greenhouse and bought 2 well-established marketmore seedlings ($3.99 for both), and started feeding everything regularly.

There is some sign of hope amoungst the seedlings I started myself, but can you see the difference between the vigorous 4-leafed marketmore in the bottom left and the other plants in the picture? These cukes get sun from about 12:30 until 7:30 or so in the evening and 2-3 inches of water per week. I'm hoping the weather warms some more, and we get some cucumbers this summer!

Growing leeks from seed part 2

Growing leeks from seed has turned out to be a tedious venture. These leeks were started indoors in early March. Here they are 14 weeks - finally starting to add some girth!

The ones that I direct sowed in the garden in early April are even smaller - barely more than a blade of grass!!!

I have been feeding them every other week with Neptune's Harvest, and the regular feeding has really helped.

I have maybe 12-14 more weeks before there is a frost in Boston. I wonder if the leeks will be ready before then....

Growing green beans

The green beans (a combination of Kentucky Blue and haricot verts) are finally looking happy.

-some of these beans were started indoors in newspaper pots in late April
-some were started in plastic bags in early May
-some were direct sown in the garden in mid-April
-some were direct sown in the garden in early June

There is very little difference. OK, the ones started 10 days ago are definitely smaller, but the rest of them are about the same size. The ones started indoors in late April struggled for a long time after I planted them out in mid-May.

It seems the warming summer weather has perked them up.

Three sisters garden (corn, beans, squash)

When the corn was up 4 inches or so (around June 8th), I thinned the corn to about 12" and planted 3-4 pole beans seeds at the base of each stalk (a mix of Kentucky blue and haricot verts). 10 days later, the corn has survived a rabbit attack and the beans are starting to sprout.

I also planted pumpkin at either end of the corn bed. This is the "three sisters garden", a supposedly beneficial planting arrangement where the beans climb the corn stalks and the squash, in this case pumpkins, fill in around the base to form a natural mulch. Greg normally does not go for such promiscuous co-minging of plants, so I've never tried this approach before.

Vegetable garden in Massachusetts

It's been about 10 weeks since the garden was started with some of the earliest seeds - bibb lettuce, mesclun mix (spinach, blood beet, mustard greens, lettuce), carrots, snap peas and mache.

The bibb lettuce and mesclun is in full swing. We are eating salads exlusively from the garden right now and have been for about 10 days. Unless the weather turns suddenly hot, I think we'll have lettuce for a few more weeks. The mache never really took off, though. I'm thinking it needs more water...?

We are also starting to get snap peas - which are delicious snapped right off the vine (so delicious I've been eating most of them before they make it to the kitchen).

The carrots are almost, but not quite ready.