Striking Gold in the Garden

This has been a great year for potatoes. The picture shows the yield for one Yukon Gold potato plant harvested on August 27, 2010. The monster-sized one weighed over a kilogram!

Have you ever wondered if it makes economic sense to grow your own food? Today I decided to crunch the numbers for this batch of potatoes and check it out.

Costs: Total outlay $1.70
- one seed potato $0.20
- rental of two square feet of space in a community garden to grow the potato in (water, compost, and tools were included) $1.50

Yield: 4.02 pounds of potatoes at $1.49 per pound (reasonable estimated price for organic Yukon Gold potatoes in the stores) gives me $5.99 as the market value of my harvest.

Return: In just a little over three months, I’ve achieved a whopping 253% return on investment. Wow! If only the stock market was so generous.

Conclusion: My analysis confirms that it is economically worthwhile to grow your own potatoes. If I save one of these potatoes to use as seed next year, my returns could jump to 300%. Yay!

The following garlic varieties are still available.

Order at mccluregarden@gmail.com and pick-up at 5510-26th Avenue NE on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10-3:00pm when your order is ready.

Purple Stripe - The oldest group of the garlic family and closest to its wild origins. These garlics are very flavorful and good at retaining flavour after cooking. The plants are smaller, with more slender leaves, but the bulbs can grow quite large.

Belarus (Early) Starts off sweet and mild and the heat builds to medium. Lingering, warm taste.
Chesnok Red (Mid to Late) Very productive. Can grow quite large if growing conditions are favorable. More cloves per bulb so cloves are closer to regular garlic clove sizes. Good for roasting.
Persian Star (Mid) Produced very well. Has more cloves per bulb. Building heat. Very striking looking cloves. Spicy raw and good for roasting.

Glazed Purple Stripe – The bulbs have a glazed appearance with a metallic sheen. The cloves are shiny and more squat than the Purple Stripes. Glazed purple stripes have good flavour and bake up sweet.

Purple Glazer (Early to Mid) A favorite for eating raw. It’s fairly mild and the flavour and heat develops gently over time and lingers for a while. Adds a subtle richness to cooked foods.

Rocambole – Prized for flavour. These garlics produce squat cloves that peel very easily but don’t store very long. They produce scapes with 1-3 tight coils.

Russian Red (Late) Available in rounds only. A highly aromatic garlic with deep layers of flavours and a sweet finish. This garlic can grow very large in good growing conditions.
Ontario Purple Trillium (Early) Hot, direct garlic flavour that does not linger long.

Porcelain – Big, brawny plants with scapes that can grow over 5 feet tall if you leave them on. The cloves tend to be few (4-6) and large. The bulbs are usually white and symmetrical which gives them an elegant look even though they are hefty. The flavours are strong but not necessarily hot. These large plants will produce better if given more space.

German White (Mid) Best enjoyed raw. Mild to medium heat. Large bulbs with very few cloves.
Music (Mid to Late) Very large cloves (4-6). The most commonly grown hardneck variety in Canada. Brought to Canada in the 80’s from Italy.
Northern Quebec (Mid to Late) Available in bulbils only. Hot. Grows easily.
Yugoslavian (Mid to Late) Available in bulbils only. Hot. Heirloom commonly grown in B.C.


Unclassified Hardneck Garlics

Fireball (Mid to Late) The name refers to the colourful bulb wrappers. It’s hot, but not too hot and the heat is short-lived and there’s very little aftertaste.
Kazakhstan (Very Early) Available in bulbils only. Smells great and has a hot, lively, garlicky flavour. Blazingly fast to mature so harvest sooner rather than later.

McClure 2010 Garlic Varieties

Pick-up at 5510 – 26th Avenue NE: Sat. Sept. 18 from 10:00 to noon or Tues. & Wed. from 10-3pm.

All of these rare, hardneck garlics were organically grown in Calgary so you can be confident they will grow in our climate. Proceeds go towards supporting McClure’s gardening programs.

How to choose your varieties - growing garlic yourself gives you the luxury of selecting based on good flavor. Since garlic changes in taste depending on where and how it is grown, the best way to select the varieties you like is to grow several and try them out in different ways in your favorite dishes – raw, sautéed, roasted, etc. Or try layering two or more different varieties in the same dish. Ex) sauté shrimp with Chesnok Red and finish with finely minced raw German White or Russian Red. Taking the time to experiment is well worth it because using the right garlic in the right dish can elevate it from good to fantastic.

Harvesting times: Early - midle to end of July, Mid - beginning to middle of August, Late - middle to end of August or beyond

Growing instructions: Plant cloves/rounds pointy end up and 3”-4” deep. Full sun. Snap off scapes in June/early July. Dig up when half the bottom leaves have withered.

Pricing:

Bulbils – FREE packet for each person. Additional packets $2 each.
Cloves – $0.50 each
Bulbs - Wee $1, Small $2, Medium $3, Large $4
Blind Date Package: For the adventurous, an assortment of unknown/unlabelled hardneck garlic cloves. Plant them all, try them all, and keep growing your favorites. $5

McClure Community Gardens

August 24, 2010 - McClure Garden Member Update

Workbee

A big thank-you to all the members who came out to last Saturday’s workbee. Thanks also to the three youths from the YMCA’s Y-Map program who came out to help us. We accomplished a lot, and here’s a list to update everyone on what got done.
Composting
- Patrick and his crew built a brand new 3-bin composter. Yay! The funds for the materials were mostly donated by Community Natural Foods and the rest by the Shell Environmental Fund. We will be putting up a sign shortly to acknowledge Community’s contribution. A second new composter is planned for the NE corner. This one will have a lid and will be used to store finished compost. We are looking for volunteers to build this one so please let us know if you or someone you know can help. The remaining funds from the Shell Environmental grant will cover the cost of materials.
- There are bagged leaves beside the new composter and also beside the second composter that you can use to layer with your green materials. Please remember to put all diseased plant material and weeds in the dumpster in the parking lot.
- The middle composter and the black plastic composter that’s beside it was turned and tidied up. The finished compost has been moved to the left side of the two-bin composter and the right side has new and working materials.
- Help yourself to the finished compost and please add some water to the working side when you can to help speed up the decomposition.
Weeding & Seeding
- The raspberry patch has been weeded and a cover crop of White Dutch Clover has been planted in the hopes it will help suppress the quack grass once it’s established. Please help keep the raspberry patch well watered in the next while to help the clover germinate and grow.
- A goodly amount of weeds came out of our orchards – enough to fill the dumpster. Once the weeds are cleared, the long heap of woodchips behind the cherry trees can be spread around the orchard. The mulch needs to be renewed on a regular basis because it does break down over time.
- The perennial flower bed beside the church got weeded and extra edging was added to help keep the weeds at bay.
- The weeds from between the patio stones of the handicap area were removed.
Fence Jumping Deterrent
- Ruth zip tied dead branches to the fence to increase the height at the Northeast corner where kids often scale the fence. She will be building a little bed at the bottom to grow sweet peas that will climb the branches. Better the peas than the kids.
Next Workbee
- Saturday September 18, 2010 from 10-2:00pm