Saving Green by Growing Your Own Vegetables

I planted a vegetable garden.

In my mind’s eye, it will be brimming over by mid-summer with a bounty of string beans, yellow wax beans, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, spaghetti squash, acorn squash and other delectables.

Right now, it’s a barren-looking rectangle, newly planted with my cool-weather crops — lettuce, snap peas, radishes and spinach.

Despite living for 14 years on well over an acre of land with good-looking topsoil, it’s just the third time I’ve attempted an in-ground vegetable garden. I was foiled early on by resident woodchucks who demonstrated their aptitude for razing beds of delicate coral bells, astilbe and other perennials in a single evening. But they’re not fussy, they’ll eat almost anything.

Of course, it’s a rare Connecticut homeowner who doesn’t have deer problems, and I, unfortunately, don’t fall into that hallowed category. The deer are comfortable enough in my backyard to give birth in the blackberry brambles. For a time, I was mesmerized by the fawns that raced around the lawn in circles; they were so close I could hear the sound of their pounding hooves. By that fall, my fascination with what a co-worker once called “rats on hooves” had worn a bit thin, as did my azaleas.

So my gardening of recent years was limited to a few potted tomato plants and a lone basil plant that nonetheless delivered up some great homemade pesto sauce.

Last year, I hastily threw some vegetable plants in a bare patch of earth and surrounded it all with plastic fencing. I made the mistake of anchoring the tomato seedlings to the fence itself, but as the tomatoes grew — hugely — their weight caused the fence to slowly implode toward the center. I could no longer walk inside, but I still collected a bounty — 130 tomatoes, 35 or so cucumbers and a half-dozen bell peppers.

This year, I decided to get serious, encouraged by woodchucks who seemed to consider the front yard beyond their God-given territory. So I expanded the original footprint of the 5′ x 5′ garden to 11′ x 18′, investing in a more durable 6-foot-high metal fence and posts.

While I’ve always enjoyed gardening just for the fun of it, my little experiment this year will be to measure how economical it is to grow my own produce. So as the garden grows, I’ll be tracking my output, weighing everything I get on my kitchen scale and calculating what it would cost to buy comparable veggies at my local supermarket.

I’ll share my progress with you from time to time, and by season’s end, I’ll report back with my final tally, weighed against expenses. (They were considerable, thanks to that fencing, which only comes in rolls of 50 feet. I needed 59 feet but couldn’t expand the garden further due to some serious tree roots and pre-existing shade.)

The garden will be planted with radishes, lettuce, snap peas, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, red potatoes, string beans, yellow wax beans, garlic, basil, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, zucchini and bell peppers.

Elsewhere on the property I have asparagus, chives, strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, blueberries, black raspberries and blackberries growing. Assorted critters usually get to the strawberries, blueberries, cherries and gooseberries first, partly because their output is not huge and it’s often not worth the trouble to do more than snack on a berry or two if I’m in that area. The wild brambles, on the other hand, cover a huge area in the backyard and during their peak in July, I feast on wild raspberries and blackberries with my morning cereal, bake berry crisps and drink berry smoothies.

There’s nothing like using the resources in your own backyard.

Tags: grow your own, save money on groceries, vegetable garden

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