[Community_garden] Dollar value of produce from gardens

[Sharon Gordon]

Janet, 

Thank you for posting that.  They got a tremendous amount of good food from
their garden.

Did they use any space saving strategies such as planting their squash at
the edges of the corn and letting the vines run in to the corn?

Were most of their plantings in rows or wide beds?

One strategy that people here use quite frequently is to grow lettuce or
salad mix between pepper plants.   Or actually they plant peppers into the
lettuce beds.  The lettuce can often grow another month or so before it gets
too warm for lettuce and the peppers need the space.  Many radishes can also
be grown in between other plants while they are young.

If they are interested in growing cool weather vegetables on both ends of
their summer vegetables, we often have better luck with some of the asian
greens making it further into the winter and surviving the shorter snows.
We haven't had 3 foot snows since I've been gardening in this area  or
temperatures below 10F, so I can't say how those might be affected deep in
the winter, but if they put on double row coverings like Eliot Coleman,
things may survive and revive in the early spring.  Two asian seed companies
with a good variety of greens are:
http://www.evergreenseeds.com/
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/
Also they might have good luck with winter hardy varieties of kale,
collards, leeks, and garlic.

If they are growing biointensively in a pattern similar to what I described
in the post about watering and the two plots are together with only 1 center
path between the two plots, they would have 
306 + 306 + 14 square feet of growing space =  626 square feet

They are already at an impressive half pound of produce per potential
growing space at 302 pounds.  If they grow the cool weather vegetables as
well, as their soil improves, they could likely double and later quadruple
their yields.

Sharon
gordonse at one.net