100 square metres

In the gardening section of the Christchurch Press on Saturday, Mary Lovell Smith mentioned it taking at least 100 square metres to provide vegetable for a family of four. She made no mention of where she got that figure from, but it did inspire me to get the measuring tape and the calculator out.

I measured all parts of the garden which get sufficient sun to grow food in all year round. I have been creating bits of garden against walls and fences for the last two years so I labelled each patch and then calculated how much garden we had growing food last summer and how much will be onstream this summer. Last year was 17 square metres after taking into account tomatoes in pots. This forthcoming summer looks like it will be just over 27 square metres. We do have room to enlarge our vegetable garden but slowly will be the most effective course of action I think. Putting another ten square metres of garden in each year is plenty enough work and quite doable. I've since stumbled across discussion on this topic online which I will go back to and read more closely. The ones which say at least a quarter acre (1000 sq metres) may well be right. But our entire section is only 809 sq metres and I'm not about to pull down the house and garage just so we can live in a tent and still need to buy some vegetables.

I also looked up one of my gardening books for instructions on growing asparagus. They say I'll need at least 25 plants for an average sized family. I expect we are quite averagely sized, but I don't think I'll be spending $50 this week buying asparagus crowns. I'm also supposed to plant them deep enough that there is 15-20cm of soil covering them. I've planted one so far, covered by only about 8cm of soil. It is probably not in the best place either. Up where I've started digging out the tobacco plants appears to be much better draining and perhaps I'll put the other two asparagus crowns up there, beside the one echinacea plant which survived last year. Poor potatoes, they often get squeezed out of my plans. There should be room for some still. Perhaps I could reorganise to one row of asparagus and echinacea (still have seeds for another go this spring) and peas and then a row of potatoes. The peas are annuals and nitrogen fixing and the asparagus is perennial for 20 years and the echinacea should be in the ground for about three years before being dug up for the medicinal properties of the roots.

Walked down to the beach this afternoon and found some logs brought down from the river/up from the sea by recent stormy weather. Brought two back for various garden projects.