How Much Produce did the Tiny House Garden Grow?

Now that I have a bit more time to catch up on some things thanks to winter slowing my life down, at least compared to summer, I wanted to check in on how the garden actually produced this year. Does the work it takes to grow fresh food here produce something useful? How much food did I get? This year I did something I've never taken the time to do before and weighed all the various things the garden grew as I harvested them so I would know the total poundage of food produced through the year. What would you guess that total ended up being? Read to the end to find the answer! And then comment and tell me what your guess was as I am curious to hear. 

The last update here on the blog about the garden, was just as I was starting to harvest a lot of things. And then I did one video just before everything started to freeze really hard again if you want to see what that looked like. 

The gopher proof beds have continued to work well. And though the little guys tunneled and munch all through the yard, old garden area, herb beds, flowers, etc. they did not get to one thing in the veggie beds. 

Through the summer the purple cabbages expanded so their leaves shaded all the ground around them well before they started to form heads. Planting the beds in a staggered pattern like that allows me to get more stuff in a smaller space while the plants I want fill all the space leaving almost no room for weeds to try to grow. 

After cutting the main broccoli heads the plants continued to produce an on going crop of nice side shoots every few days through the fall.

The beans, one of the few things I try to grow that are almost not cold hardy enough for summers here, finally started to bloom.

The onions grew thick and strong. 

Green cabbage, there are two varieties pictured above, always starts to form heads faster than the purple varieties. 

The garlic started to form scapes. Those curly bits on top that would turn into garlic flowers if I didn't eat them first. 

The potato plants all grew lush and green. I had four varieties growing, Yukon Gold, Red, German Butterball, and Blue. The blue's even flowered with a slightly blue blossom!

The peas which had started blooming several weeks earlier started to become weighted down the all the peas filling out. 

I really enjoy just looking at and walking through the garden. It brings me a sense of peace and contentment. 

Those peas swelled a little more and I was able to harvest my first baskets full. 

Garlic scapes were cut and added to various meals. They taste just like garlic cloves but with a fresh green color. 

I dug some horseradish root to make another batch of fire cider (see that recipe here if you missed it!). 

The garlic was the first crop to be totally harvested as it's leaves started to die back.

While other things like cabbages and onions continued to swell. 

I started to harvest carrots, pulling handfuls to eat and letting the rest continue to grow.

Zucchini and summer squash started to form on their plants. The thing other than beans that I try to coax into surviving all the frosts and freezes.

The lush green potato plants started to yellow and die back as they reached the natural end of their life.

You can see the onions starting to form the protective drier layers around the outside as the bottom leaves started to yellow and die back as well.

Meanwhile cabbages really started to swell, now turning into nice big solid heads. 

The various kales thrive here in any weather as they love the cold.

The "green" beans started to weigh down their plants. Like everything else where I enjoy growing many colors, I had green, yellow, purple, and red "green" beans.

Though always slower than the green cabbages, the purple ones started to get nice little heads going. 

I get a lot of questions about how I keep the wildlife from eating the garden. There is a fence the whole way around the clearing that I keep up all summer. (See that here if you like.) But any time a tree branch or something falls across part of it, there are critters like this deer waiting to come in! So I check the whole perimeter regularly and just put it back up every time that happens.

As the summer winds down, you can see the yellowing leaves on many of the plants. 

From early in the year on, I cut baskets of lettuce regularly and enjoyed all the different colors of that as well.

Purple and red beans, summer squash, and more carrots, which of course I grow in all colors too, were harvested.

Overall the beds were looking mature, filled out, and on the downhill slope now.

I started pulling beets like the golden ones.

Picked more baskets of beans.

Weighed things with this cool antique scales that was once my grandparents.

More peas, beans, squash, carrots, beets, kholrabi, and the first few potatoes.

Now even more of the foliage was dying back.

Though there were a few weeks where I didn't use them, the frost covers still came into play most of the summer to keep the more tender things like beans and squash from freezing.

But then on September 8th we got several inches of very heavy crushing wet snow. That put an end to the potatoes which were close to dead anyway. And the beans and squash. Late the night before that happened, I picked every last squash large or small before they turned into mush. And the next morning picked and promptly cooked and ate the remaining beans off their now dead plants.

Everything else I grow though can handle the cold and snow and continued to thrive. Cabbage is a truly tough plant. The morning I picked the heads below they were all covered in ice.

Knowing even colder weather was on the way, I continued to harvest, eat, and preserve everything I cold. 

Picking the onions which were the best I've ever grown with a couple truly huge ones in there. At least for my climate.

Once almost everything above ground is harvested, I stop keeping the fence up so those deer come on in and help trim back everything. Like munching off the tough outer cabbage leave that are left after I cut the heads. Which is just fine with me. 

I dug, which is not really a good term since my soil is so soft that I just go through it with my hands, all the potatoes. The German Butterballs seemed to produce really well. This was the first year I've grown them, but the reds and golds have always been reliable for me. The blues were another first try on this scale for me. They actually produced the highest volume per plant. But seemed to have a severe case of potato scab.

I've actually never seen any this bad before. On almost every potato the skin was scabbed so badly that they were cracked down into the flesh. I would say they were the biggest crop problem I had this year. I will be doing some research into how to help prevent this in the future, but also may not plant the blues again since they seem much more susceptible than the other varieties. Though that is a bummer since they were also the heaviest producer. All four kinds were growing in the same soil, in the same two beds, and right beside and touching each other. They were all still edible, but with that much damage to their skin, I knew I would be eating these first as they were not likely to store well. 

With only a handful of the root crops like carrots and beets still in the ground, the deer and sometimes elk and moose were coming and going freely through the clearing. Every leaf and stalk they didn't munch went into the compost pile. Below is the view literally from my pillow on my bed in the loft. Where I can open my eyes and look out the window over the garden and anything else that's in the clearing without even needing to lift my head.

Another snow blanked everything for a bit before dissolving yet again. 

But the nights were now all well below freezing and the ground was starting to get hard so I pulled all the rest of the carrots and beets.

Now everything is long frozen, under snow, and the temps haven't been above freezing for more than a handful of hours in the past 7 weeks or so. But I am still enjoying the results of the garden. Eating carrots and beets that have been in the fridge since I lack a root cellar. Eating the potatoes, starting with the blue ones that won't keep as well. And enjoying everything else that I fermented like sauerkraut, canned like Danish Christmas cabbage, pickled carrots and beets, and so on.

All total the garden, and I am talking just the veggie garden here, not my herb and flower areas, berry bushes, or any wild foraged or hunted foods, (I will probably do a separate post on some of those things.) produced 535 pounds of food. Congrats to Melissa Peltier who had the closest guess a couple days ago on MeWe! That breaks down like this if you're curious. Some foods are obviously much heavier than others. And some I simply grow and use more of than others. I rounded to the nearest pound so this is not measuring every single ounce.

Rhubarb - 6 pounds

Asparagus - 2 pounds

Strawberries - 2 pounds

Garlic - 9 pounds 

Garlic Scapes - 2 pounds

Summer Squashes - 6 pounds

Broccoli - 10 pounds

Kohlrabi - 1 pound

Sugar Snap Peas - 6 pounds

Hull Peas - 11 pounds

Kale - 7 pounds

Chard - 4 pounds

Lettuces - 14 pounds

Horseradish - 1 pound

Carrots - 36 pounds

Beets - 20 pounds

Beet Greens - 3 pounds

Onions - 47 pounds

Green Beans - 4 pounds

Cabbage - 146 pounds

Potatoes - 199 pounds

535 pounds of produce total.

My garden beds total just over 600 square feet of actual bed space. Not counting pathways space etc. That's hundreds of pounds of fresh nutritious food that I was able to enjoy right from the garden with no need to go to a grocery store. All the things that I can coax to grow in my cold area. In the same amount of bed space, if you are in a warmer area, you could easily grow several times this volume! As you could probably grow everything I grow twice, in the spring and again in the fall. And then a whole lot more warm season crops through the summer. Or even grow what I did here, in your winter! As many of you live in places where your winter is about the same temp as my summer. ☺ I'm already looking forward to planting again once the snow recedes in the spring, but in the mean time, I am very satisfied with the food my garden gave back to me this year.