Garden economics update

Last months garden on November 8th.

December 8th garden

The past month in the garden has been relatively slow.  It has been the sit and wait period between planting and harvesting.  Only 1.25 hours have been put into the college garden and 2.25 hours into my home garden doing light duty tasks such as watering, thinning, weeding, and a little bit of harvesting.  Chives, chard, and lettuce are the only things harvested up to this point.  12 ounces of chives were produced at my home garden, valued at $11.34 with 113 calories.  8 ounces of swiss chard were produced valued at $2.49 with 45 calories, and 8 ounces of romaine lettuce valued at $1.99 with 40 calories.  Values were determined by the cheapest price found at the local grocery store (Fry's or Sprouts) and calories were determined using this website: nutritiondata.self.com/.  A different website to determine calories burned was also used due to the old website not working anymore and its lack of "light duty aerobic exercise" for light duty gardening.  This is the new website used to determine calories burned: www.myoptumhealth.com/portal/ManageMyHealth/Calories+Burned+Calculator.

Weather conditions have been near perfect the past few weeks with highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's most of the time.  We did have a night or two with frost but they were so lite frost sensitive plants easily recovered.  This winter will probably be a dry one being we missed the late November rains we often get and I suspect we will have some more freezing temperatures due to this lack of rain.  Problem with pests is also minimal due to the cooler temperatures.  We probably won't see a return of many pests until March or so.  But that said, everything is growing extremely well.

So here is a garden update for the month of November:
                               Home       College
Hours of work:        2.25         1.25
Calories burned:      715           397
Food produced:      .75 lbs.      1 lbs.
Calories produced:   113           85
Production:              $11.34     $4.48 
Total Cost:               $0            $0
Net:

Summary of garden project:
                               Home      Garden
Hours of work:        7.5           5.75
Calories burned:      2049        1540
Food produced:       0.75 lbs.  1 lbs.
Calories produced:   113         85
Production:              +$11.34   +$4.48   
Total Cost:               -$61         -$61
Net:                         -$49.66    -$56.52

So nothing impressive at this point.  At this point I'm a little concerned about even breaking even, but we'll see.  Over the next month or so things should really pick up though.  A lot more chard, lettuce, and chives should be produced along with some snow peas, carrots, radishes, and turnips.  I'll post an update for the garden in about a month.

Mixed romaine lettuce