I’ve finally had a chance to compile this year’s harvest statistics. It gives an interesting, quantitative perspective on what we did in 2012. I won’t bore you with all the details, I’ll just give you the highlights, much like the Harper’s Index of Peace Crops agriculture.
- We produced just over 1200 pounds of food on 3,700 square feet of beds for a gross theoretical market value of $3,923 (that figure doesn’t figure things like loss, which can be significant, and haggling increases)
- Our average income in vegetables per square foot: $1.06. That’s up from $0.82 last year.
- In revenue per square foot, garlic was the clear winner, at $5.76.
- Potatoes, onions, and root crops made up most of the above-average performers.
Easter egg radishes made a strong showing at $2.64/sf and drew a LOT of people to our stand.- Broccoli was the only green vegetable that performed better than the average.
- All of the legumes were below average in revenue per square foot, except for sugar snap peas at $2.48.
- Our dried beans, if we sold them instead of making awesome chili with them, would be the loss leader at around $0.05 per pound.
- Pumpkins did poorly this year, in contrast to their excellent showing last year, where they produced four times as much.
- Tomatoes continue to produce poorly, though we got some the last few weeks.
- Corn was abysmal this year, and will probably be discontinued for a while.
- Cucumbers fell from the pole position last year at $3.43/sf to the middle of the pack at $1.04.
- Surprisingly, bush beans outperformed pole beans by 73%. I feel like the poles were too far apart, and if I doubled the density, I could bring their production up to the same as the bush beans.
There were a lot more data that came out of the study, boring details that I will use to plan next years’ crop. Our goal next year is to increase production without adding any square footage, by intensifying our growing practices and smarter planning. We’ll see how that goes…
