The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Doing recon at the local farmers market

Aug 2, 2009 corn, farmers market, garden planning, garlic 4 Comments

Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to infiltrate a local farmers market to gain intelligence to help aid your personal garden.

Sure, the farmers market is a great place to find some fresh food you can’t or didn’t have time/space to grow in your garden.  It is also a great place to get seeds/starts for your garden.  It is also a great resource to figure out how various fruits/vegetables grow in your area. 

Even if you are growing everything you want/need in your own garden a quick stop at your farmers market can help you check out your competition and see for example in my case, “hey their garlic grew just as bad as mine this year.” 

This is also a good time to try out new fruits and vegetables you are thinking of growing next year.  There is nothing worse than growing a bed full of arugula and figure out at that point you hate the stuff.  If you are lucky enough you might even get a meal and some seeds to plant with next year depending on you seed saving ability.

Now as always you don’t want to blow your cover while doing surveillance, so make sure you have a good cover store.  In my case I used a few people known as “my wife and daughters” to appear less conspicuous.  You can even use techniques of taking a picture of your “daughter” to get some recon picture of their products for further analysis.

In the end it looks like my little spy helpers had a good time and we even contributed a little to the local farmers economy and got the secret ingredient to CVG Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe (ok, it was corn). 

This post will self destruct in 10 seconds (sorry had to say it)

The most profitable plants in your vegetable garden

Jan 2, 2009 Uncategorized 22 Comments

It may be impossible to put a price on the satisfaction of bringing in a basket of produce fresh from your garden.  As well as the enhanced flavors from having truly fresh produce from your garden compared to that of your local supermarket.  Though when I was harvesting my potatoes this summer with my daughter I did have the thought, “Would it have been smarter for me to grow something else in this space?”  I estimate out of the 4-5 square feet I used for these plants I probably got about $4-5 worth of potatoes.

I did a little research first to determine yields of various plants per square foot and secondly what the value (organic supermarket prices USD) of the yielded produce at harvest.  Given I am a city dweller with a fairly small footprint for my vegetable garden (about 30-35 square feet) making decisions on what to buy at the supermarket and what to grow in the garden may be a huge money saver.

Now from the results below you can see the winners for the most produce value per square foot are many of the leafy green vegetables/herbs (cilantro, lettuce, chives, dill, Swiss chard) next comes many of the larger vine plants (tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, peas) with many of the root plants taking up the rear.  Now much of this makes sense where many of the vine plants grow on trellises and are allowed to spread, which I guess is sort of cheating the square foot rule but I will let it slide.  Compared to the root plants whose production is entirely dependent on the space allowed in square footage they have to grow as well as these are normally inexpensive produce items to begin with.

Sources: http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/ppatch.html for plant yield information, http://shop.safeway.com for current produce prices

Now even with this information I will still plan on growing some onions and garlic since I more than likely would be forced to use dehydrated alternatives due to being too lazy to drive to the supe
rmarket to buy fresh varieties.  Though I may be adding some more herbs/greens to my garden this year. 

One important thing to remember is you still have to eat the vegetables, throwing $20 worth or arugula or cilantro into the compost bin is not exactly a sound investment.

Cheap organic fertilizer for your lawn and garden

Feb 23, 2008 cheap, fertilizer, organic 8 Comments

We all know if you walk into a grocery store the organic produce is always more expensive than produce grown using non-organic methods. Using deductive reasoning it seems easy to determine that this would mean growing vegetables organically will cost me more than if I used non-organic methods. What is a cheap vegetable gardener to do?

One disadvantage (and advantage) to organic fertilizer is that it is not as potent as chemical fertilizers. So my 2 lbs of organic will not nearly go as far (at least short term) as the same amount of chemical fertilizer. One trick to being cheap is to purchase products that are not being marketed for your planned purpose. So to solve my expensive fertilizer issue I used this same logic to solve the problem of finding a location to buy organic fertilizer that was not marketed as “fertilizer.” After some research I determined a source from my local feed store. For $10 I was able to get 25 lbs of alfalfa pellets compared to 2 lbs of alfalfa meal at my local nursery for around the same price.

One great thing about using organic fertilizer is my kids can help spread it around, unlike chemical fertilizers. It also contains triacontanol which is a root growth stimulant along with plenty of organic matter to help boost some extra microbial activity. This not only helps the grass but also improves your soil at the same time. By taking a few cups of alfalfa pellets and mixing with water you can also make alfalfa tea, which I am planning on doing later but will sure to let you know how it works out. One more tip, make sure you distribute the alfalfa pellets before a big rain or watering, currently my lawn looks like some geese are using it as their bathroom.

Harvesting spinach seeds from your garden

Jul 22, 2009 harvest, seed saving, spinach 2 Comments

Growing up in rural Washington state, the job market was a somewhat lacking for those under the age of 16.  Given this at the age of 14-15 I was sucked into the attractive and lucrative career of spinach rouging, also known as “The Worst Summer Camp Ever”  The basic premise of the job was to walk down endless “female rows” in the hot sun and destroying any male spinach plants.  For every 12 “female rows” there were 4 “male rows” of higher quality spinach plants which were desired for pollination.  So in other words I was facilitating the hybridization of spinach plants.

Hoping to keep these memories behind me when I decided to grow spinach seeds this year, I realized I actually learned something which I thought I would share.  In my case I am open pollinating so no rouging required though it is good to still know how to identify the boys and the girls since no matter how hard you try those boys will not be creating any seeds.

The plant on the left is a male plant, you can identify it by the little yellow balls under the leaves.  As you may have guessed the one on the right is a female plant which only have green balls under the leaves.  Not to over complicate things there is also monacious plants which are basically both male and female which I would normally just pull up since it will make things easier during harvest time.

Spinach seeds for the most part will wind pollinate on their own but if you garden is somewhat protected from winds it may be helpful to flick the male plants every week or so to help out the process.

Once the plants turn yellow go ahead and pull them up.  If they are males throw them in the compost.  If they are females hang them in a dark dry place.  I chose to hang mine off my mountain bike’s brake cable.

After a few weeks of drying you should see the seeds brown and dry just like they came out of the package you planted them with.  Store the seeds in a dry cool place (jar in refrigerator) and you should have a great stock of seeds for the next year.

How to freeze berries

Jul 21, 2009 blackberries, freezing, raspberries, strawberries 3 Comments

A well proven way to save money on your food budget is to stock up on produce while they are in season.  Not only do they taste better but they also can be significantly cheaper.  Now these “purchases” can be from your local grocery store, U-Pick farm, fruit stand, farmers market, free roadside berries, or even from your own garden.

Given the attractive prices of these fruits it may be tempting to buy more than you need.  Which I would say go ahead and buy to your hearts content.  After you have made all the jam you can eat in a year (don’t make 15 jars of jam when you only consume 4 per year) one effective and easy way to store your extra berries for winter is freezing.

For the impatient one you can simply dump the berries into a Tupperware or freezer bag and toss them in the freezer.  Though in the end this will give a solid clump of berries which you would need to pull out an ice pick to separate the berries if you only require a few.

The more preferred technique is the following:

1. Wash your berries: Give your berries a quick rinse and let them dry in a colander for about 10-15 minutes
2. Spread your berries: Lay down some wax or parchment paper on a cookie sheet and spread your berries on a single layer just ensuring that the berries are not touching.  If a couple touch it is not the end of the world they will just be close friends in the freezer.
3. Freeze your berries: Carefully put the berries in the coldest part of your freezer overnight.
   
4. Pack your berries for the winter: When it comes to freezer storage and fruit air is always the enemy.  If you have a vacuum sealer that would be your best option but if you are like me and don’t here is a cheap alternative.  Take a regular old Ziploc freezer bag and insert a straw on one end, close the bag as tight as possible around the straw, suck air until you get dizzy, and quickly seal the bag.  Just to be extra cautious I will then throw that bag in another bag for an extra layer of protection.  Note: You have a little time to complete this step but don’t want to allow enough time for your berries to begin to defrost and refreeze stuck together. 
   
5. Label the bag(s) and throw them in the freezer
   

Now to avoid getting too scientific (size/speed of water molecule formation) the faster you can get your berries frozen the better the quality your berries will be when you pull them out.  If you have enough berries (or not enough cookie sheets) you can also add your berries and some broken up dry ice to a metal bowl (be sure to wear gloves) and stir to replace step 3.  This will get you the fastest freeze and best quality though unless you are freezing many flats of berries I would recommend the cookie sheet method.

Following these steps you should have some tasty berries you can pull out individually from the freezer all winter long.

Aquarium with plant filtration system powered by fish poop

Jun 11, 2009 aquarium, fish poop 4 Comments

Yet another design concept, though seems like there are definitely plans for this one to go into production next year.  The concept is very simple, fish poop in the water, pump brings “soiled” water to filter through some river sand, bacteria converts “impurities” to nitrates, and finally the plants absorb the nitrates as food returning cleaner water back to the fishes.

Now this has a couple of good target markets for environmental friendly types  who can feel good about the natural filtration of the water.  Second is lazy types who can use this as a reason to not have to change the water for an extra week.  I fall under both categories so if priced right I may be seeing one of these on my desk in the next year, unless the price is horrendous in which I will be creating my own version which I will be sure to share here.

[Duende Studio via CoolHunting vi Gizmodo]