vituperation: Adventures in freakdom » 2007

Answers

by Fred @ 8:48 am. Filed under Green acres

In February 2006, I made this post, a link to little girls who participate in beauty pageants, over in my Crazy Links blog. In the sixteen months since, it’s taken on a weird sort of life of its own, culminating in me receiving an email from the boyfriend of a pageant girl this morning asking me to remove his girlfriend’s name or take the whole thing down.

Crazy stuff, and kind of a fun read.

Taking a page from my wife, I’m going to answer some comment questions here:

If you are bothered by the idea of things leaking and spilling in the truck bed, have you thought of buying a truck bed liner?

I’m definitely not concerned about leaking paint in the bed of the truck. The car, on the other hand, I would’ve been pretty upset, but trucks are made for that.

Well, trucks like Jezebel are.

I’ve contemplated a spray-on liner to protect things I put in the truck, though. I’m sure it would come in handy the next time we buy some big antique something at an auction.

Not trying to start shit. Just wondering. Why is it important that there were lots of Hispanic customers?

It’s not important, it was interesting to me that of six individual customers (plus one caller) in the place, I was the only non-Hispanic. As this journal is generally about life as it’s viewed through my eyes, feel free to think me a racist for noticing that I was the only non-Hispanic customer there.

I did my best as a white man to oppress all the other customers while I was there, but I’m not sure if I was successful or not (I got too excited about my truck to give it my all).

How is the garden affecting your overall bottom line in general, and your food bill, in particular?

Also- have you ever thought (once you get the hang of it) of putting in another, larger garden (perhaps where the pond was?) and selling your veggies? Perhaps its because we’re in the uppity north, but restaurants are always looking for organic, locally grown veggies, and if yours are up to par you can make some side money selling your crops or joining a veggie co-op. Ever thought of doing that?

The overall effect of the garden on our bottom line right now is negative—but that’s to be expected. I’m having to buy lots of things to support it: the cultivator, hoes, hoses, getting a water line run, gloves, tomato cages, fertilizer, etc. With the exception of the fertilizer, those are mostly one-time (or ‘few times over a lifetime’) purchases.

We just made another big garden purchase this week (and I hope I’m not stealing any of Robyn’s thunder here) in the form of a canner, jars, and the Blue Ball canning book. Again, more or less a one-time expense, but a hefty one. Overall, we’ll be losing money on the garden this year. Next year or the year after, however, should be different.

Robyn’s dad told me when he was here that we’d always spend more on our garden than it saved us. I guess we’ll find out. I don’t count my time in the cost of the garden, because the garden’s not really keeping me from anything except boredom and little things around the house I don’t want to do. That’s a plus, as far as I’m concerned.

As to the food bill, the garden’s having great benefit. We don’t really buy vegetables any more (because really, is it possible to get tired of squash, green beans, and green tomatoes?) unless a recipe calls for something we don’t have, which saves some money. Another big savings comes in the form of lunchtime salads for me. At $3.00+ per bag, salad’s expensive when you go through four bags a week.

Not any more — I eat leftover dinner veggies with lunch, and cherry tomatoes.

I would guess the garden is saving us about $100 per month on groceries. In another couple of months, when the melons start coming in, I’ll be able to stop buying fruit for a while, which will mean more money saved. An added benefit is that the garden making us try new recipes (like “green tomato chili” this weekend, woohoo!) because we have so much food.

Even better than the savings is the taste. Nothing’s as good as eating food that’s one hour—or less—off the plant. The taste beats the grocery store any day, especially when you’re talking about things that we normally buy frozen, like green beans. There’s a world of difference in the taste and texture.

Now for the part that will tick off some people.

I’m not an organic grower, nor do I intend to be one. I have no qualms about ripping into a bag of fertilizer or lime, or opening a bottle of liquid Sevin to solve a particular problem. Particularly the Sevin. Bugs are horrendous in the deep south, and I’ll take any tool I can get to keep them from eating the garden. The green beans are suffering right now because I don’t want to spray them and the leaves are getting eaten to hell. After you spray, you need to wait three days before you harvest again, and with the beans already producing 3 meals’ worth every single day I’m dreading going so long without picking.

Next year, I plan to put down a chemical pre-emergent over much of the garden to help with the weeds. One thing I do plan to do that’s a little more natural is harvest chicken shit from the henhouse for fertilizer. It’s full of nitrogen, I have lots of it, and it’s free. You can’t get any better than that.

I joke with Robyn about how I should till up the whole back 40 next year and make it a pick-it-yourself garden, but I’m only kidding. Probably I’ll try to sell some of our melons around work if they do as well as I expect, because they can’t be frozen or stored, but that’s about it. If I can pull enough from a garden to keep us fed the whole year, I’ll consider it a done deal.

But the thought of extra money IS nice.

I want to make the garden a little bigger next year, to make for more room between the rows. This year was the learning year; next year ought to be the really productive one. I’ll probably also skip the onions next year because they don’t offer much bang for the buck (ie, they’re cheap in the store, and a pain in the ass to plant). I think I’ll also look for some good stringless bush green beans next year. This year we have both bush and pole (hee!) beans. The pole beans taste better, but the bush beans are easier to deal with.

And on the note of the garden, here’s a preview of coming attractions:

The corn, it is a-silkin’.
If you check the big version, you can see more stuff in the background:
bug-eaten green bean leaves, okra, black-eyed peas, and tomatoes in the very back.
You might also see an onion or two peeking up in there.

We have three of the cutest little eggplants. This is the largest.

I’ve started letting the girls out in the back yard in the afternoons. They seem to like it, and run around as if they had no heads, hunting for bugs.