Garden expansion project – Part 1 – Estimation

There’s not a lot of time so we’ve got to get moving on this garden expansion project

One of the projects we talked about in the winter plant strategy was our garden expansion. Looking back in our photos we can see we put our border beds in around 2011. About one hundred square feet to experiment with hot peppers. While these beds work well for our summer garden crops, we’d like to produce more… produce… and need a little more space.

Here’s a sample of some of the things we grew (or tried to grow) last season in our tiny beds:

• beans (That didn’t make it)
• tomatoes and peppers (that produced such a low yield it was hardly worth it)
• lettuce (that fed the bunnies more than they did us)
• carrots (we had a surprising success with)
• potatoes & corn (that the chipmunks ate)
• cucumbers (or should we say cucumber)
• and some herbs that would have likely done better on the window sill

So what went wrong?

Makes you just want to hang it up and call it quits right? Nah, just learn from your mistakes and try harder next time. No apologies. There were four key factors working against us:

Time

We had a great extended season last year with a really mild early spring starting in early April with no frost… but… there were some things going on outside of the garden that demanded a little more attention than usual (the bills don’t pay themselves). Not to mention the beginning of the season was low quality growing time. If you remember there was a ton of rain and wind, knocking down the amount of time we could spend outside and, well there just wasn’t enough protection overall.

Food

Plant’s need food to produce. While we did an okay job cleaning and setting up the beds in the beginning of the season the aforementioned time issue got the better of us and whelp we didn’t really fertilize as much as we wanted to.  The compost bins turned into mosquito factories and none of that good stuff made it to the garden.

Space

You can fit quite a lot of plants into one hundred square feet. What you’ll find though is that it leaves little room for the gardener to manage, and competition begins to become an issue with higher densities. So we either need to grow fewer plants (gasp) or provide a larger space for them to grow in.

Critters

Fuzzy beasts make us sad. For the most part our pest management crop rotation strategy has been working out okay and reduced our reliance on chemical pesticides to near zero. The larger pests (chipmunks, bunnies and squirrels mostly) are more prolific and harder to manage and we don’t like killing if we don’t have to.

So that sets some of the key requirements for our garden expansion project

1. More space to reduce density
2. Easier access and manageability
3. Protection from fuzzy beasts

And as nice to haves

1. Ways to expand or extend the space for protection from harsher weather and extend growing time
2. Space for the compost bins for easier access and use

Finding space wasn’t as hard as it sounds

Even though it doesn’t look like much from the picture, the way our property is laid out we’ve figured out how we can fit a nearly six hundred square foot space in without it looking awful. If you don’t have space of your own. you should check into near by allotment programs

Having a twenty foot by thirty foot allotment right in our own yard would give the kind of space we’re needing. Now gauging on what we can plant and not this year sticking with our typical pest rotation plan and what we want to eat, we think we can fit the following crops:

• Beans 30 vines
• Corn 40 stalks
• Tomatoes 12 plants
• Squash and Pumpkin 16 plants
• Herbs (6 Basil, 8 Parsley, Chives)
• Cucumbers 8 plants
• Spinach 17 plants
• Potatoes 5 plants
• Lettuce 16 plants
• Carrots 200 plants
• strawberries 2 four foot rows

Obviously this is can change, but you’ve got to start somewhere right? This will help us figure out what we’re going to plant indoors and what we’re going to buy in from the garden center.

A rough diagram of our our plants

Using the list above and a little bit of technical wizardry we pulled together a rough approximation of how everything will fit in

There’s a lot of unused walking space in our first planting for a couple of reasons. First, we figure this year we’re going to be spending a fair bit on the build (hint tools and effort estimation is coming up next). Second we are going to use this season to focus on quality over quantity. We figure with this layout we would like to end up with:

• 60 -70 ears of corn,
• 80 – 100 lbs of tomatoes
• 50 – 80 lbs of zucchini
• 25 lbs of cucumbers
• 30 – 40 lbs of spinach
• somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 lbs of potatoes
• 10 lbs of strawberries
• 25 lbs of carrots
• 12 medium sized pumpkins
• 10 –  20 lbs of lettuce
• 25 lbs of beans
• and an untold quantity of herbs to season it all with

 

Garden expansion project estimation

Planning a project doesn’t stop at deciding on an end state. We need to figure out what it’s going to take to make it all happen. That means, tools, time and resources. For our project we’ll break down our resources into a couple of categories

• Tools
• Building components
• Planting components
• Plants & seeds
• Labor

In each category we’re going to estimate for cost and effort (time) for each.  Some of it might sound a little nitpicky right now but the idea is that we can use this to build a schedule so we can get our leaf babies in the ground and harvest those delicious rewards as soon as possible.

Based on our approach, we know that our 20 foot by 30 foot plot has a 100 foot perimeter, an area of 600 square feet and the estimated height of our plants.  A quick web search will give us round about pricing of each of our items. With that, let’s see if we can figure this all out.

Tools

The spade and the rake are easy. Those we have. We’re going to need a new wheelbarrow on account of the old one met its final season. We’re also going to need a rototiller to rip up the grass and get the soil ready to level in our garden.

• Wheelbarrow $45
• Rototiller $41 per day rental $91 to buy

A round trip to the home improvement store is about 20 minutes, so figure on an hour back and forth if we rent the tiller.  If we get the stuff on line figure 10 minutes in total (yes we just spent more time researching than it would take to actually do the thing, but were would the fun be in that), plus this baseline will give us the ability to see if we can get better prices. We’ll figure out if it’s cheaper to buy or rent another time.

To properly clear the ground amend the soil and get ready for the fence we’re estimating 8 hours across a full weekend for one person.

Building components

We’re definitely going to want to protect our plants as  best we can from the fuzzy beasts. So, we decided on a perimeter fence. To start off with this build (because we’re thinking about different future configurations) we’re not going to border the planting sections, so the fence is the primary job here. We’re thinking we can use standard 6 foot metal T-Posts as anchors.  At a 4 ft spacing we need a minimum of 25 posts. Our cheif fuzzy bandits are chipmunks, so for a fence dressing we need something small enough for them to not be able to wiggle through. We’re also probably going to need something to fasten the wire to the posts in areas where the hooks don’t catch so some aluminum aircraft wire will work there.

• 25 T-posts @ $3.50 ~ $87.50
• Aluminum wire $5
• 4 Mesh Galv Welded 23 Gauge (.025) 48″ Wide $175 per 100 ft roll
  • Standard Shipping $20

The T-posts and wire are a standard home improvement store item (best prices we found) so there’s a 20 minute round trip there (figure we’ll consolidate trips as best we can after we have everything all listed out).  We’re not totally sold on the .25 inch mesh just yet on account of the cost.  the idea of galvanized is great and the .25 inch mesh will definitely keep out the chipmunks we’ll do some research to see if we can get better pricing between now and then.  Standard shipping on the mesh costs $20 and we’ll figure it’ll take a week to get to New Jersey form California.

Measuring and installing the fence posts should go relatively quickly.  Setting up the fence and making nice usable entryway will take a bit of doing.  We’re going to give this part 12- 16 hours across a regular weekend.

Plants and seeds

We know in our seed store we have beans, corn, tomatoes, basil, pumpkins, chives, and (some) carrots

• Potatoes
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Strawberries

Seeds are relatively inexpensive in the small quantities we’re talking about and very easy to come by.  For potatoes we’ll just pick a nice super market variety that works well in our area. Our seed budget here is $35 and we’ll probably spend in the neighborhood of 1-2 hours picking out ones we like based on yield, time to harvest etc.

Picking out seeds is a third of the battle, planting them, tending to the sprouts and starts and then transplanting is the the balance. this is quite spread out.  We’ll plan a half day of planting seeds indoors and another full day for transplanting and seeding outdoors when the time comes.  This is a very generous estimate and will likely take a lot less.

Planting components

The beans are going to need some sort of support and so are the tomatoes.  Most everything else can be free standing.  Indoors is going to be the big deal to get all our leaf babies started.  We need to take inventory on our flats and space and lighting needs here.  Soil amendments and mulch will help get the yields we want for 300 Square feet of our planted space. We’re going to go 2 inches deep or so with our mulched areas to start.

• 10 5 ft plant stakes @$2.00 ~ $24.00
• 25 2 cubic foot bags of mulch  @ 2.00 – $50

So the way we figure it, staking and tying the tomatoes ought to be enough, that’s easy, but the beans are going to get up to 8 feet tall. We planned them along the broad side of the fence to give us a four foot head start. We’re hoping (fingers crossed) if we wire plant stakes to the fence posts and run wire in between, we’ll have enough support for our 30 plants. The mulch goes on sale in March at around $2.00 per bag. We’ll see if we can get a truck delivery any cheaper.

Here’s yet another 20 minute round trip to the home improvement store

We’ve got enough flats to cover ~149 starts and we’ve counted out (with the exception of the carrots) just about that. We’ve got some extra peat pots and planters too so we’re covered. Lights proved enough to get us through last season so we’re going to leave it right there

We’re going to count for this as part of the fence build and transplanting time, so no additional effort is required here.

Bottom line time and cost estimation for our garden expansion project

All that work to get to the bottom line using round figures

Category	Subtotal
Tools	$135
Building Components	$ 290
Planting Components	$ 75
Plants and seeds	$ 35
Total	$ 535

From a timing investment perspective, not accounting for planting

Category	Effort (hours)
Clear and prepare the garden expansion	8
Install garden expansion fence	16
Planting seeds	4
Transplanting and seeding outdoors	8
Trips to the store / online shopping	4
Total	40

Timing for our garden expansion starts…. now

We’re backing into the first weekend of May to have all our seeds started and leaf babies in the ground which is about 17 weeks away.  $535 puts our spend rate at about $30 allowance per week or $120 a month. Indoor seeds get planted in February (just five short weeks away) so we’ve got to get the indoor garden room ready too (it’s sort of been collecting stuff for the past 14 months)… And… if you were reading close, there were a bunch of TODO’s peppered in that list (lets take a look at the actions we accumulated)

• Research rototiller buy vs rent
• Research fence pricing
• Research mulch pricing

Next steps

Now that we know all the stuff we need to do, the next step in this project is to break everything down into a schedule that just sucks the fun right out of everything… uh… er… sets us up for success. That will be a much shorter process toward our garden expansion than all this estimating and will be continued in our next project post. Till then, if you have any questions, feel free to register and comment.