A garden would produce all the produce it could produce if a garden could produce produce.
Ha! I crack myself up.
But, really. This was a question I had - how much produce would my little garden(s) actually produce? To answer the question, I whipped out my kitchen scale every time I brought in a harvest. Ok, not every time. I didn’t think to start measuring my yield until after we’d already eaten and pulled out all the peas and the one head of lettuce that grew, but once I started weighing I was pretty good at sticking to it.
Now that we’re in October, we’ve had some cold nights, and (here’s the biggest reason) we recently moved and I no longer have said garden, I decided it was time to total up the numbers.
For a little background on my gardening area, I had three roughly 10’ x 5’ areas to work with for a total of approximately (I never actually measured, so we’re going to have to be ok with roughly and approximately) 150 square feet of garden. One bed was dedicated completely to vegetables while the other two also were home to a variety of flowers (both perennial and annual).
In consultation with my garden assistant (aka my now-five-year old) we decided on the following crops: peas (both shelling and sugar snap varieties), rainbow carrots, rainbow beets, green beans, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cabbage, lettuce, Swiss chard, pumpkins, and potatoes. Oh and basil. And a cucumber, but for some reason that never grew, so we’re not going to worry about it here.
Ready for the grand harvest yield totals? Here they are:
*drumroll*
Potatoes: 0.25 lb
Tomatoes: 20.1 lbs
Green beans: 4.3 lbs
Beets: 6.4 lbs
Carrots: 5.4 lbs
Swiss chard: 5.1 lbs
Corn: 5.8 lbs
Cabbage: 4.5 lbs
Zucchini: 7.7 lbs
Pumpkins: 22.6 lbs
Total: 82.15 lbs of produce (not including the peas, lettuce, basil that I didn’t ever weigh)
So that’s how much a garden would produce if a garden could produce produce. Pretty good for a couple dollars worth of seed, an old sprouting potato from my basement, and the occasional weeding.
How much produce did your garden produce?
I’m seriously impressed!! Way to use your space. And way to collect the data! Great stuff!
Now that is a lot of fun! I like your thinking! That would be neat information to record.