Independance Day: 100KG of Food from the Garden 2010

The Fourth of July is also called Independence Day. The Farmer's Report today is that the suburban garden has now produced over 100KG of food. That is 220 lbs for people still using the English system. Part of my plan was to try to grow enough calories to support one person for a year. A kilogram of carbohydrates and/or proteins is 4 calories per gram so a Kilogram has 4000 calories and on average you would need 2000 calories or less a day. That means that the produce so far might provide enough calories for one person for 200 days.

Even though there has been quite a burst of harvesting in the last few days we may have had some of the biggest harvest days before entering into the hot summer days.

Lots of tomatoes and cucumbers which leads to the second part of the post. While we are not dependent on the garden to provide all of our food it is nice to put up some of the produce for the rainy and cold days. Right now the colleagues at work and at the neighbors of both the new farmer and the Suburban farmer are benefiting from the bounty.

Pickles is one of the ways you can put up the cucumbers so that they will last through to the next harvest. I took one of the bottles of pickles in for a work pot luck and they were a big hit.
The other thing that we have been doing is cooking up the tomatoes with onions, peppers and herbs and freezing them for use in stews or pasta when you might use a canned tomato.
We stored sweet potatoes all winter from our harvest last fall and have put some of the winter squash and pumpkins in the basement to store for the winter.
June 30  6.78 Kilograms
July 2     4.50 Kilograms

for a total so far this year of 100.8 Kilograms or 221.75 LBS