The garden in September.

Not unexpectedly, it's been an exhausting month. Harvesting and preserving takes up most of my time in September...and while I'm thankful for all that food to nourish my family, I'm ready for the season to wind down!

The garden has been a series of blessings and disappointments. For example, I was harvesting wonderful, vine ripened tomatoes - which are a big deal where I live; vine ripened tomatoes just aren't a given in our cool climate. (Oregon Spring tomatoes were the clear winner this year. They ripened faster than anything else and tasted wonderful!) Then we had two days of rain and late blight hit big time. I had to pull out all 28 of my tomato plants. I lost a lot of fruit due to blight on the tomatoes themselves, but as you can see by looking at the tally below, I actually ended up with a nice harvest. I didn't really use a lot of green tomatoes this year; I gave most away (and didn't include them in my produce tally) - although I did can a batch of green tomato mincemeat pie filling. I chose to ripen most of the fruit on the counter.

Green tomato mincemeat pie filing.

Crushed tomatoes.

Summer squash was also disappointing, as you can see from the totals below. In all my years of growing food, I have never had the summer squash do this badly! I am comforted by knowing that most people in my area experience the same thing, due to cooler than typical summer weather.

On the other hand, it looks like my winter squash did okay. I think most of it will ripen before a hard frost - Lord willing! And there's a nice supply of carrots, kale, collards, cabbage, and beets sitting in the garden until I'm ready to harvest it. The Brussels sprouts are looking splendid, too - though I'll wait until after the first hard frost to harvest them, since frost improves their flavor so much.

Winter Luxury pie pumpkin.

Overall, despite less than ideal weather, I still grew plenty of food. I am thankful.

In other homestead news, I'm busy trying to clean out the freezer, as the beef we ordered from a friend is expected next week. That added to my food preservation chores, too, but who can complain?

Finally, I added a couple of fun designs to the Proverbs 31 Homestead merch store. There are men's and women's t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, mugs, bags, aprons, and stickers. Check it out here!

  

To learn more about how and why I am keeping these totals, click here.

A little note: While I make every effort to gather accurate numbers on my produce, in some cases, the numbers shared here are definitely a bit lower than the actual harvest. This is because my family steals fruit from the orchard :) and because I sometimes don't weigh leaves off main crops, even though we do usually eat them. (Example: Broccoli leaves aren't counted, just the heads, even though we eat both.)

Apples 103 lbs.

------------> $2.99 conventional; $4.56 organic 

Scarlet runner beans 3 lbs 1 oz.

------------> $9.24 conventional; $14.08 organic (My Walmart doesn't carry scarlet runner beans, so I used green beans as a comparison.)

Tomatoes, slicing 234 lbs.

------------> $463.32 conventional; $575.64 organic (My local Walmart doesn't have organic slicing tomatoes, so I used the price of organic Romas as a comparison.)

 

Tomatoes, cherry 2 lbs. 21 oz.

------------> $1.59 conventional; $1.59 organic 

Broccoli 1 lb. 54 oz.

------------> $2.76 conventional; $22.40 organic 

Patty pan squash 2 lbs. .09 oz.

------------> $3.18 conventional; $11.84 organic (My local Walmart doesn't sell patty pan squash, so I used yellow summer squash as a comparison.)

Walla Walla onions 178 lbs.

------------> $110.36 conventional; $245.64 organic (My local Walmart doesn't sell Walla Walla onions, so I used yellow onions as a comparison.)

 

Bell peppers 2 lbs. .32 oz.

------------> $1.13 conventional; $1.14 organic 

Jalapenos 2.18 oz.

------------> $0.55 conventional; no organic option available

Serrano .27 oz

------------> $0.22 conventional; no organic option available 

Grapes 5 lbs.

------------> $9.35 conventional; no organic option available 

 

Blueberries 2 lbs. 11.21 oz.

------------> $8.44 conventional; $12.66 organic 

Pears 47 lbs.

------------> $88.36 conventional; no organic option available 

Zucchini  14.40 oz.

------------> $1.86 conventional; $2.96 organic 

Yellow summer squash  14.62 oz.

------------> $2.24 conventional; $2.96 organic 

 

Beets 7 lbs. .48 oz.

------------> $1.87 conventional; $129.40 organic 

Cabbage 7 lbs. 12 oz.

------------> $6.11 conventional; $11.11 organic 

Cauliflower 4 lbs. 46 oz.

------------> $8.92 conventional; $14.27 organic 

Yukon Gold potatoes 12 lbs.

------------> $9.00 conventional; $23.88 organic 

 

Delicata squash 2 lbs. 11.08 oz.

------------> $3.33 conventional; no organic option available (My local Walmart doesn't sell Delicata squash, so I compared to butternut squash.)

 

Carrots 2 lbs. 5 oz.

------------> $1.70 conventional; $2.14 organic

Saved in August: 

$736.52 if purchased conventional; $1,472.66 if I purchased the organic options available.

Saved in 2024 so far:

$2,001.54 if buying conventional and $2,868.21 if buying organic.

2024 Gardening Expenses

Walla Walla onion starts: $4

Cherry tomato start: $5.49 (a single plant and a hedge because the new-to-me-variety of cherry tomatoes I started from seed were looking less than robust)

Potting Soil: $47.96 (primarily for potting up peppers in the greenhouse; some will get used for flowers, too, but I won't try to parse that out.)

Organic snail bait $17.96 (I had to use more of this than is typical because we had such a cool, damp spring)

Total gardening expenses so far: $75.41

Total savings minus expenses in 2024: $1,926.13 if buying conventional; $2,792.80 if buying organic when available.