Vegetable Garden

This Morning's Harvest!

We planted our very first Vegetable Garden this spring.  I love my flower gardens and have enjoyed planting and caring for them, but food is a completely different animal.  After I presented the first little batch of green beans to the family at the dinner table I felt a very strong mixture of emotions.  I felt pleased, happy, strong, content, proud, secure, giddy, loved, joyful, obedient and some I don't have words for.

Next year will be better.  I've learned a lot of very important lessons.  For example:  don't let the dog out unsupervised until we have a fence around the veggies.  Not pleasant.  I will be expanding and staggering my planting so hopefully we can get a larger yield for my tiny planting area.  Thank goodness for the internet, I'll be doing a ton of research this winter while my yard is under snow.

I'm also very interested in how much money can actually be saved by planting a garden.  As such, I have been keeping track of just how much produce we have harvested from our little plot.  I've also computed about how much I would have spent at the grocery store for the same amount of produce.  You can check out the spreadsheet here:

Garden Harvest 2011

Next year I want to track my expenses as well to see if I break even.  But, even if I don't the pleasure of providing food which we have grown ourselves far outweighs any difference in expense.