So why a garden? All around, the cost of living is increasing. Fruit and vegetables are expensive at the grocery chains and are beginning to increase dramatically at the farmers markets as well. As the price of fuel increase, so will the cost for goods.
Sometimes instead of increasing revenue, a family should reduce costs. We have done this already to an extent with the sale of the boat and a good number of other items that we just really don’t need. Sometime next week, the Mountaineer will be put up for sale.
But what about reoccurring costs such as food and utilities?
Lisa has been looking over our eating habits, our monthly menus, and pulled out the most common ingredients that we could produce on site.
Here they are, listed in order of highest quantity used each month:
Broccoli, Cabbage, Spinach, and Carrots.
The next tier contained corn, beans, and potatoes.
Looking at our climate, we can get in the following before the first fall frosts:
2 harvests of bush beans.
1 harvest each of carrots, cabbage, broccoli, spinach and corn.
Depending on the success of the first planting of beans, we may increase the number of garden boxes before the September planting dates roll around.
Anna plans on planting some tomato bushes and Caleb wants a square for flowers.
Our goal for this first year is to study the true yield of our squares and to determine how many squares are required to significantly reduce out grocery costs.