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Year End Roundup

purplerallimpurplerallim Posts: 5,287
in Fruit & veg
I do like to keep a record of how things went each year. I like to feel the time, effort, and money have been worth it. ( dont like to think I'm spending without a return🙂) So this is my growing year.

Roma/Cherry Tomatoes 25kg good for me
Cucumbers 21 poor crop
Spring Onions 52 good from one bought tray

Carrots and potatoes are in 4 foot rows, 4 rows of each
Carrots 46 best as I've never managed to grow any before
Potatoes 6 1/2kg

From above made 50 portions of soup

Raspberries 3kg
Plums 4kg
These made 5 jars of raspberry and 4 jars of plum jam
Plus the lime tree has had enough to make 8 jars of lime curd to date, plus cakes.😁

This for me has been a very good year, and taking into account all the costs of producing these , I have 50% profit, and they all taste much better, no additives and low carbon footprint ( if you look at that stuff)😁
Not everything grew no beetroot,  little french beans and no Aubergine .

I do hope everyone else is as happy with their produce this year.😁

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Posts

  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    My food produce had been mediocre at best but the wildlife value of the garden has amazed me this year.
    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • NollieNollie Posts: 7,529
    Interesting, purplerallim. Do you count your hours of labour in your costs and if so how much do you pay yourself? 

    Given material and labour costs of preparing ground, building and filling raised beds before I even start on costs of growing, I expect I may show a modest profit in about 10 years time (by which point the beds will have rotted and I will need to reinvest that profit in new ones). I admire your discipline and accounting skills, but I don’t grow fruit and veg as an economic exercise, if I did I would be seriously disappointed with my bottom line, so I don’t count or weigh.

    Everything cropped pretty well for me this year, with the exception of longer/later croppers like peppers and aubergines - they barely got a chance to get going before the heatwaves in June and July hit and fried them. My autumn-sown leafy salads/veg are currently suffering from lack of rain as no amount of my extra hard well water hits their spot, but the leeks are bearing up. 
    Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
  • cornellycornelly Posts: 970
    Never used raised beds, never seen the point of them, dig and sow and plant vegetables, using garden compost to feed, and a little growmore fertilizer, not a bad year, for potatoes, peas, broad and runner beans, good onions from sets, very good beetroot from seed, summer cabbage from seed, lettuce from seed, and spring onions again from seed, and broccoli.
  • purplerallimpurplerallim Posts: 5,287
    My labour costs would be through the roof @Nollie 🤣 good job I do it for the love of it.
  • purplerallimpurplerallim Posts: 5,287
    My raised beds are because I cannot kneel on the floor @cornelly , so need the level raised. I manage most things but ground level is out for me.
  • NollieNollie Posts: 7,529
    @cornelly you haven’t seen my ground or you would understand! Thin layer of impenetrable clay on rocky mountain terraces, not deep enough to get half a fork in, so a necessity, not a choice.

    Phew, that’s ok then, purplerallim, for a minute there you were sounding far too efficient. Glad to hear my bottom line is in good company :D
    Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
  • cornellycornelly Posts: 970
    Sorry purplerallim and Nollie to see your reasons for raised beds, am lucky I haven't those problems, my veg plot is over a redundant railway line, and I must admit on built up soil, the bed of the track is still there though not the rail lines, it did initially take some time and effort to get a eighteen inch to two foot layer of soil to enable veg to be grown, 
  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    edited October 2019
    I built raised beds because a former owner of my house buried half the garden under concrete, and I thought building beds on the concrete would be less effort than breaking it up, and less expensive than getting the broken concrete taken away.

    I had my first ever crop of tiny carrots this year, grown in pots in 50/50 soil and coir, next year I'll do the same on a larger scale.  And the first little apples on my Egremont russet tree.  I wouldn't have planted such a hard, crunchy apple, could I have known that, during the five years it has taken to get fruit off it, I would lose half my back teeth.  I can only eat them cooked, which is a damn shame as the raw flavour is so good.
  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    Strawberries, runner beans (eventually), potatoes, carrots, apples, pears and blueberries did well for us this year, but raspberries, sweetcorn, peas and asparagus were very poor.
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    I'm the only person who read " year end roundup" and thought it was about some weed killing regime?
    Devon.
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