The end of the leeks
So on Monday I harvested the last of the leeks; hence the mammoth blanching exercise last night. That was a first, but the end of the leeks marks a far more important passing: they are the last of last year’s vegetables to leave the plot. All that’s left now from last year is three bags of potatoes still growing on one of the patios, but I’m unsure as to their quality. Perhaps I’ll turn one out this weekend.
Anyhow, with the plot now empty I gave it a thorough clean up and removed a wheelie bin full of tall weeds, then dug over and raked the soil ready for planting. It was pretty back-breaking stuff that left me jelly-legged for the next three days.
Everything that goes in there from this point on will be counted as 2008 crops, which means it’s time to do a more or less final account for our produce in year one.
Sainsbury’s leeks range from £2.29 per kilo for bog standard loose stems to £7.94 per kilo for the special Taste the Difference variety, so the £4.72 per kilo organic ones sound like a fair compromise – we’ll use that for our calculations. At that price, our 5.01kg of leeks were worth £23.65. Not bad going.
Adding this to the total harvest for 2007 to date gives a very respectable total of £211.37. I was hoping we would break the £200 mark when everything was accounted for, so we’ve exceeded that.
If we manage to produce around the same quantities of each crop this coming year, we should easily break that total as the Office of National Statistics is reporting that food price inflation means we’re now paying around 12% more for a basket of groceries than we were this time last year (see here), which would push up the total to £236.73.
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garden, gardening, self+sufficiency, self-sufficiency, vegetables
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