The headway we have been making has come to an end for the season. The weather has turned, the ground is freezing, and all of our next steps need little-to-no-precipitation and an above-freezing temperature to continue. So we have cleaned up, buttoned up and closed down the yard for the season. Which means, we have finished our last bit of harvesting and I can complete the experiment we started at the beginning of the year. We have weighed all of our harvests this season, to determine how much of each item we grew, as well as our total for the season. We were curious how much we could grow in the small amount of yard we have been using and will continue to measure as we develop more and more growing space in the yard.

I was extremely surprised at how much we grew. I expected a decent amount, but the total weight definitely was higher than I expected from 2 raised beds, some potato towers, strawberry patch and some tomato plants. But we will get to that total shortly. Lets get into the individual weights first. These weights are strictly the produce that we used (went to the kitchen and ended up canned, frozen, eaten, or prepared for future enjoyment). These numbers do not include any produce that was not able to be used.

The value of the produce that we grew is based on an average of in-store prices from Superstore and Save-On Foods. Considering that we are using just a small portion of our yard, and only growing a small portion of the vegetables we consume during the year, it worked out to more weight and value than I would have guessed. Once we start growing our other vegetables (brussel sprouts, corn, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, etc.) and fruits (apples, peaches, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, etc), the value of our garden will steadily increase. Plus, this doesn’t include the value of our mental & physical health, which is very difficult to put a price on, but is equally important!

We collected these stats, not only to better understand how the garden impacts our life financially, but also to start tracking our yields to find the best places in our yard. We know now what we were able to grow in the beds, but as we find permanent places for all of the vegetables in the terraced yard, we want to make sure that we are finding the ideal locations for the highest yields.

Some of the sections noted above are broken into sub-categories. The herbs, peppers, tomatoes and onions all had a few different kinds growing.

Thanks for letting me geek out and show you all the information we have collected over the summer. I imagine once we have finished landscaping the yard, we will likely be doing more stats and tracking of information. I promise not to do posts like this all the time…I know that they are likely a little dull for you, the readers. If you have read this far, then I would love to give you something a little more interesting to look at, so here are a bunch of our harvest photos.