| On Wednesday I met with my clients/guinea pigs. They are a lovely couple with a new house and a totally dead but large yard. They've got clay soil and lots of bermuda grass, same as me. We talked for a while and I got a sample of their soil to send off for testing. We figured out some next steps and decided to start officially on March 1. The next day I got a sample of my own soil, and dried both samples. The day after that, I mailed both samples to a lab for testing. The lab at UMass will test for pH, NPK, organic matter content, and heavy metals for only $13. Awesome.
Between now and March 1, I am going to get everything ready to go. I began by purchasing a bunch of seeds for cold weather crops along with a few trays to plant them in and some potting soil. I also got the book How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons and Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. I compiled the information from the Jeavons book into a spreadsheet, where I have listed each type of seed I have (or plan to get) along with when I've planted them, how many I've planted, and what my expected yield and harvest dates are. That way, you can filter on the word "Harvest" for a particular date and come up with a list of what would go in a CSA box that week.
Right now I am growing:
Lots of carrots
Some winter squash
Lots of sugarsnap peas
Lots of scallions
37 heads of garlic
21 heads of cabbage
18 yellow beets
11 chard plants
6 Lambs quarters
24 spinach
Some arugula
20 heads of broccoli
6 brussel sprouts
27 heads of cabbage
14 heads of cauliflower
6 leeks
6 collards
12 kale
48 dragon carrots
cilantro
parsley
dill
marigolds
24 nasturtiums
basil
tarragon
sage
thyme
lemon balm
9 fava beans
3 lima beans
30 lettuce (various types)
6 sunflowers
2 sunchokes
The first of this should be ready to go by March 1 and then each week after that, there will be more and more to eat. Today I met with the other folks who wanted in on this. None of them were interested in money, but they were each expert gardeners who were willing to offer advice and/or labor. We spent 2 hours going through plans and advice for a number of different plants. I've made plenty of mistakes, although none are too terrible. First, read the advice I got, and then I'll tell you what I've done right and wrong thus far and what I plan to do.
Advice:
Don't bother with plants that meet more than one of the following criteria: people can buy them cheaply, they take up a lot of space in the garden, they require tons of water, or they grow very slowly. These include broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, russet potatoes, parsnips, celery or celeriac, and carrots. However, specialty carrots, potatoes, and broccoli can be a good idea.
Broccoli and cabbage produce one head per plant and take up a lot of space in the garden. Both are cheap in the store.
Carrots are extremely cheap in the store.
Brussel sprouts are great to grow for foliage, which tastes like collards and grows wonderfully. However, if you grow them for brussel sprouts in San Diego's climate, you'll usually end up with an aphid infested mess. The one way to do it is to plant in September.
Parsnips are delicious but take forever to grow. I might try growing them in the future, but not now.
Celery requires lots of water, and celeriac takes a while to grow, so those are out (for now at least... I LOVE celeriac so I might give it a try in the future).
Don't use mulch in the summer! We've got a huge pill bug infestation problem and mulch gives them a habitat. Mulch in the winter is fine but it's wet enough then that it's not as needed.
Do grow plants that are expensive to buy in the store (or unavailable in the store). Grow daikons, watermelon radishes, strawberries, and heirloom tomatoes.
Do grow plants that produce a lot of food, particularly ones that produce a lot over a long period of time. These include the following:
Zucchini: During the warm season, plant zucchini successively. When the zucchini are small on your plants, plant more zucchini so that you'll have a continuous supply.
Chard: Chard grows year-round in San Diego. Plant a new crop every 2 months.
Tomatoes: Pick the ripe ones to get more tomatoes to ripen.
Do grow crops that grow quickly, like chioggia beets, lamb's quarters, and radishes. Watch out with radishes though, because you have to watch them closely or else they get too big to taste good. It might be best to skip them altogether in favor of daikons and watermelon radishes (which grow to the size of a baseball and taste wonderful).
Do grow things that people love like chard, beets, turnips, or heirloom carrots (Cosmic Purple or Atomic Red).
Do grow lots of herbs to use for companion planting (as well as for eating!). Also grow flowers as companion plants and then give flowers to people in their CSA boxes.
Do grow plants that add nitrogen to the soil (like legumes) or plants that don't mind growing in lousy soil (I need to get a list of these).
Do get the most out of a small space by utilizing vertical space. For example, I'll grow radishes and carrots together with lettuce. The radishes and carrots will grow underground next the to lettuce that grows above ground. I'll also plant vining cucumbers next to the sunflowers, which will serve as a trellis.
If you've been following this series, you know that the first thing my family and I did was plant carrots. We used 2 full packets of seeds to plant 3 rows of carrots. We had an excellent germination rate and ended up thinning out quite a bit of carrots. More thinning will be needed before the carrots are ready for harvest. I've got no idea how many carrots are growing right now. Carrots take 70-80 days to grow to full size, and we planted ours in mid-December. We've got about a month to go. In the future, I plan to plant heirloom varieties of carrots (especially the fun colored ones!) and I will plant them farther apart so I don't have to waste so many seeds by thinning them. Also, I'll plant some carrots every few weeks so that they become ripe at different times not all at once. Oh, and I've started getting into companion planting. Next time around, carrots will be planted with radishes and lettuce.
Obviously, I've planted a lot of broccoli and cabbage - plants that require a large amount of space and can be bought cheaply at the store. Whoops. I won't do that again. A good alternative still in the Brassica family is kohlrabi, which is less common in supermarkets and totally delicious. It's a particular favorite of mine and I'd love to grow it. Another mistake I made was planting broccoli and cabbage directly in the ground. Much of the broccoli didn't make it and by the time a few of the many seeds I planted sprouted, they were spaced approximately 12-15 inches apart from one another, which is perfect. The cabbage ALL sprouted and the seeds were each 1 inch apart. So now I've got lots of baby cabbages that either need to be thinned or moved. I've moved several of them, but have many more to go.
I've also planted brussel sprouts. The problem with planting them when I did is that the weather will got hot and they will be full of aphids by the time they grow. Whoops. But the foliage can be eaten like collards, so that's my plan. And I'm not planting any more brussel sprouts for a long time.
I bought seeds for radishes to plant with my carrots and lettuce. That was a mistake, according to Paul's advice. I think it'll be a nice quick food to grow and I don't mind keeping a close eye on them as they grow to make sure they don't get too big. In the future, I'll opt for daikons and watermelon radishes as recommended.
I also planted squash seeds from a few squashes I was eating. Who even knows what those seeds will turn into, since squash plants are a rather promiscuous bunch and it's totally possible for different species to breed and produce strange offspring. I didn't plant them at the right time of year, but the plants are growing so I'll just see what happens.
And I messed up with the garlic too. I planted 9 heads of it in between the carrots and the scallions (with a few squash volunteers nearby). Garlic needs to be all by itself because during its last few weeks in the ground, you have to stop watering it. You can't even water anything within about 2 feet of it.
Other than that, so far so good. As you can see, I've got a lot of stuff growing. Most of it is in little trays on my back patio:
From left to right: Nasturtiums, Sunflowers, Beets, Brussel Sprouts, Kale, Spinach, Spinach, Lettuce, Nasturtiums, Spinach, Spinach.
Here's a current look at the carrots, the first batch of garlic, some of the squash, and the scallions.
The bushy greens are the carrots, the large plants are the squash, the the green plants sticking straight up are the garlic. You can't really see the scallions because they are so dang tiny.
Then, if you recall the weedy area on the opposite side of the driveway from most of our yard (and outside of our fence), we've named that the Ladybug Love Patch because my boyfriend saw a few ladybugs going at it in there. Here it is before we pulled all of the weeds:
I plan to plant sunflowers along the fence (the north side) and then, when the weather warms up, I'll plant cucumbers together with them. Right now I've only prepared one section of the soil (the area that my plan below is for) and I've filled up the rest with seeds for red clover and hairy vetch as a cover crop.
The start of my plans for the first section of the Ladybug Love Patch. I realize you can't see it very well, but the left side (which borders the driveway) is mostly nasturtiums. The top and the area in the top left are a mix of chard, beets, and arugula (with a dill plant too). I'll probably fill in much of the leftover space in the top half with beets and spinach. The right side are my sunflowers and cukes. And the large circles going across the middle are cabbages. I think below the cabbage I'll put carrots, lettuce, and radishes.
So how does the CSA itself work? I'm planning to charge $160 for four weeks or $420 for twelve weeks for full shares. Half-shares are going to be available too. They'd be biweekly boxes at half the price of the full shares. This pricing is competitive with other CSAs in our area. I'd like to ultimately get the equivalent of 15 full share customers (i.e. 30 half share customers or 10 half and 10 full, etc). At the four-week price, 15 customers would bring in $2600 per month and at the twelve-week price, 15 customers would bring in $2275 per month.
For the homeowners who offer their yards, they would pay $100 per month for their CSA shares with a minimum of a six-month commitment plus $20 for an initial soil test. I'll offer the homeowners a discount of $10 per month for each CSA customer they refer who signs up, up to a maximum of $50 (i.e. If a homeowner finds me 5 customers, their price would go from $100/mo to $50/mo for as long as those 5 customers are subscribed). The homeowners would also get:
- free fruit trees
- an amazing herb garden
- some planted flowers in their yards
- vastly improved soil
- access to as much gardening and sustainable living advice as they want
- the option of harvesting their own food so that they can eat it fresh-picked
- recipes for the food in each box from a chef (my boyfriend)
I would love to offer things like jam and sauerkraut but that would require a commercial kitchen and I am not there yet. For now, the most I can do is offer my own help and equipment if they want to make their own jam or sauerkraut. I'd also help the homeowners get started composting (if they don't already) and I'd gladly give them some worms if they'd like. Another option to consider is greywater, drip irrigation, and rainwater harvesting. Currently it's not in my budget to install these things for anyone, but we live in a dry area and they are all important things to think about for the future.
My costs would be:
- Seeds (unless I can get them from seed-saving friends or save them myself)
- Transportation (gas, car maintenance)
- Compost tea brewing equipment (large bucket and a fish tank bubbler thingy)
- Purchased produce from local farms if and when I screw up and don't have enough food to fill a CSA box
- Lots of compost! ($6/bag, and one bag is needed for about 10 sq ft of soil... I should find a way to get compost in bulk for cheaper!!!)
- Potting soil ($7.95/bag for the good stuff, and one bag can be used for starting at least 100 seeds if not more)
- Little plastic seed starter trays ($1.99/each)
- Larger pots for herbs that can't go in the ground (for stuff like mint, because it spreads everywhere if you let it).
- Random soil amendments as needed.
- Beneficial insects like ladybugs as needed.
So that's it! On March 1, we start. Assuming the soil tests say what I think and hope they say (that we have crappy soil but we don't have dangerous levels of heavy metals), I've got my plan. Over at my guinea pig/client's house, I'll plant the entire area in cover crops and then do a double dig (as recommended by How to Grow More Vegetables) in the area I'm ready to plant, mix in some compost, and then plant it with the starts that I've got ready to go (mostly brassica family plants and lettuce). That week, the CSA box will include: alfalfa sprouts, lamb's quarters, arugula, broccoli, carrots, and sugarsnap peas. The following week, we should have all of that plus spinach. The third week will really pick up with everything mentioned already plus some chard, fava beans, and a few types of lettuce. And, depending on when I get the radishes planted, we'll have some radishes somewhere in there. I'll also give them pea vines once the pea plants are done producing peas. I figure I'll continue to do this on a very experimental basis with few customers for now and then try to market it to a wider audience at the Earth Fair (on or around Earth Day).
Now the only thing left to do is figure out the legal side of this (taxes, health codes, etc). That's the part I dread. The rest of this is fun!
For the full story about "Flower Power Farm" (the name we chose for our garden):
Part 1: Preparing the soil and planting the carrot seeds
Part 2: Preparing the soil for peas and cruciferous veggies
Part 3: Enter the Pests
Part 4: The Carrots Sprouted!
Part 5: Gardening with the Kids
Part 6: The Peas Sprouted!
Part 7: The Cabbage Sprouted!
Part 8: The Garlic, Broccoli, and Nasturtiums Sprouted
Part 9: Fruit Tree Propagation Workshop
Part 10: Rain, Rain Go Away
Part 11: Flower Power Joins the Front Yard Gardening Movement |
