2013 Year's End Review

Since the weather has finally become consistently cold and the plot is in the throes of winter hibernation, it's time to do a review of 2013.

2013 has been the most productive of any year we've gardened to this point.  We had bursts of success in the past -- when The Boy was 1 and we didn't have a plot we had a lot of tomatoes in the yard, for example -- but this year was consistently good.  From the snow peas in the spring to beans/tomatoes/peppers in the summer then lettuce and onions in the fall, it was a good year.  A lot of the lessons I learned from failures in the past also panned out.

Financial Review

In August, I wondered if gardening really could pay off from a financial standpoint.  Unfortunately, my curiosity was a bit belated in that I hadn't weighed the snow peas from the spring harvest, but I was able to create a bit of a baseline.  From that point, I kept a spreadsheet that tracked certain bits of info.  It wasn't all-inclusive.  I never harvested enough carrots (by weight) to justify comparing them vs store prices, for example.  Having said that, I'm pleased to report that this year was "profitable" when compared vs the $191.50 that went into the plot this year.  Even if I included money (which I would have had I tracked those expenses) spent on structure building this year, given the purchases were from Community Forklift I still would have come out ahead.

Lessons to Learn

As I mentioned above, a lot of the lessons I learned from the past paid off this year.  There's always more to learn from to improve.  Here are things I want to do in the future.

• Become more proficient with composting. 
• My compost bin finally yielded some good soil this fall.  It took two years to get to this point, though.  There has to be a better method to use to get things to break down faster than what I've done to this point.
• Row covers
• In order to really become more organic (less/no use of "bug dust"), I'd like to use row covers for the beans.  They could also extend the growing season.
• Fine tune crop rotation
• I lost the ability to grow more crops because I had an overlap in the growing seasons of snow peas and green beans with them in the same boxes.
• Learn more about crop plant dates
• Carrying on from the crop rotation theme, I need to get better at knowing when to planting additional crops of plants.  I should have planted two crops of beans instead of the single crop, for example.  I could have also done so with tomatoes.
• Improve soil prep
• I have a lot to learn here.  Doing soil testing to amend the soil to add nutrients and adjust the pH are things I need to do.
• Figure out what I need to do to get cucumbers to grow.
• Two years of trying to grow cucumbers have yielded very few cucumbers.  I imagine this has much to do with soil prep.
• Learn more about companion planting and other natural ways to deter pests.
• Sort out more efficient ways to support tomato plants.  
• Cages take up a lot of space.  Creating teepees from stakes doesn't really do a good job supporting them.
• Learn how to improve green pepper yield.
• This year I tried pinching off leaves of the plants when they were first getting established.  That worked to a point, but I either need to do more of that or add something else.
• Experiment with emulsions.
• A neighbor at the plot occasionally makes a fish emulsion to use on his plants.  This is a good organic way to fertilize his plants.  It's also "free" in that he's fertilizing with his waste food products.