|
|
Musings Report #46 11-15-14 The Cash (Tangible) and Intangible Value of Gardens
You are receiving this email because you are one of the 450+ subscribers/major contributors to www.oftwominds.com.
For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook,the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
The Cash (Tangible) and Intangible Value of Gardens
I addressed the many hidden values of gardens back in Musings 33, and today I want to address the actual cash value of gardening.
Longtime correspondent Bart D. (Australia) recently shared a spreadsheet of the cash value of his garden's yields and his cash/labor costs.
Rather surprisingly (at least to me), his garden produced over $1,000 in cash value and netted him over $30/hour. Here is his commentary:
"This economic summary excludes my fruit growing and poultry enterprises.
A major point of value that this overview doesn’t show is the huge improvement in the ‘quality’ of the product being consumed as prices are only for ‘supermarket grade’ product. I believe that the real value amount should be raised by somewhere between 50% and 100% of the amount shown to reflect the improved quality.
The quantities are metric. Conversion is 1 square metre is about 10.7 square feet. There are 2.2Lbs to the Kg.
I feel the $33.30 per hour of time invested is a return worth pursuing for anyone in a low to medium income household. Beats the $8.50 per hour being offered by Walmart!
One hour in your own garden means 4 hours you don’t have to spend shifting stock at Walmart to earn money to buy food."
Thank you, Bart, for sharing your calculations. I suspect my time probably nets out at a much lower rate per hour, but I have never attempted to weigh our small garden's harvest or the cash value of the yield.
I think Bart is absolutely correct that one of the less quantifiable yields is a better quality of soil and thus of vegetables/fruits. I think it is quite reasonable to double the value of the garden to $2,000 on this basis alone.
Many people live in apartments and condominiums with no yard for traditional gardening. But that doesn't mean gardening is not an option for those without yards.
Correspondent Michael G. recently introduced me to a hydroponic method that everyone interested in sustainability and/or taking control of at least some of your own food sources should consider:
the Kratky method, developed by Dr. B.A. Kratky at the University of Hawaii (my alma mater).
Here is Michael's description of his own experience:
"This hydroponic system requires no maintenance after the initial setup, nor does it require any electrical power for pumps. You need net pots, an opaque tub with a lid, water, light, and a little nutrient additive. I've been growing lettuce and spinach using this method and it is literally maintenance-free. You don't even add extra water since a dropping water level is part of the magic.
The produce is lush and vibrant. Seed to table is about 5 weeks. I have 18 lettuce plants growing in three 10-gallon Rubbermaid tubs. I don't harvest them whole. I just pull a few leaves off each one and they grow new ones.
Here is a photo of one of my tubs with plants in various stages. This was taken 10 days ago and the plants are gigantic now. That's a spinach seedling I brought in from outside top left. I haven't done anything with these plants since the initial setup.
I use a highly concentrated nutrient solution called Flora Nova Grow. It's the first one I tried and it worked well so I haven't tried any others.
I really like the buffering FNG does. Plants need a slightly acidic pH or the roots can't transport minerals. I have never had to do a pH adjustment with this solution.
A quart runs about $35. The math works pretty well. The first 35 heads of lettuce recoup your cost for nutrients for about 120 plants if you go with 6 plants per 10 gal. The tubs and 3" net pots are a one time expense. If you use hydroton for your media you can wash it and re-use that as well.
I don't harvest the whole plant. I pull leaves off several plants to make a salad and let them regenerate.
I am trying Kratky with 4 plants in a 3 gal, 8 in a 10 gal, etc to see if I can increase cost efficiency. 6 plants in 10 gallons is just what I saw a lot on the web.
Don't try to save money using a dirt fertilizer like Miracle Gro mixed in water. The pH will be hard to manage and it will be missing trace elements. You can compensate by adding stuff in but then you're back spending more money.
Some things Kratky growers learn fast:
1. Place the tub where you want it THEN fill it with water.
2. You need to keep the rain out. The water level has to fall to aerate the roots so you don't want rain filling up your reservoir. A sheet of plexiglass works.
3. Use opaque containers or you'll get algae growing in your reservoir.
4. The initial setup is vital. I use an empty net pot to check the starting water level. I have the water just above the bottom of the cup. Until the roots grow down into the water you need to keep the media moist. Once they set roots in the water your work is done.
5. When you research hydroponics 90% of your hits will be MJ (Mary-Jane i.e. cannabis) grower sites. I suspect that most of them struggled through high school chemistry and biology but if there's a way to tweak yield they'll know. Sometimes I think the missing workforce participation might be these underground entrepreneurs. They are very sophisticated farmers.
I have a booming crop of veggies. What a delight to come home and pick fresh salad from the garden, add some chicken strips, oil and vinegar and settle into a nice meal."
Thank you, Michael, for sharing your hydroponics experience.
As a closing point, I want to mention an intangible value of gardening: it is one of the few sources of authenticity left in a largely inauthentic world. Our day-to-day reality is mostly fake: fake news, fake work, fake food, fake statistics, fake politics, fake drama, fake sincerity--fake, fake, fake. Gardens, and the food they produce, are intrinsically real, intrinsically authentic. Authenticity provides value that cannot be quantified.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
The Rubber Band Is Stretched--Will It Break? 11/15/14
It's Not Just Japan That's Failed; The "Asian Miracle" Model Has Also Failed 11/14/14
Why the Rising U.S. Dollar Could Destabilize the Global Financial System 11/13/14
Which Cities/States Will Be the First to Default When the Economy Rolls Over? 11/12/14
What Have We Learned From 24 Years of War? 11/11/14
Where Will Risk Erupt This Time? 11/10/14
I think the essays on risk in foreign exchange markets and why the rising dollar is destabilizing are two of my most important posts.
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
My friend Adam T. shared some pork chops from his home-raised livestock project. I simmered the cutlets with whole peeled shallots in wine, seasoned simply with pepper and a dash of fish sauce for salt and nuance. delish!
Market Musings: Gold Miners and the U.S. Dollar
Today in the blog I suggested the stock market is like a rubber band that has been stretched to extremes. It can be held there by buying pressure, but if the buying evaporates (which judging by volume, it already has), then the rubber band will snap back.
Similar extremes are visible in the gold miners and the U.S. dollar. Now you all know I have long been a dollar bull, but all markets, even those in strong uptrends, reverse every once in a while as profits are taken or buying dries up. Simply put, USD is due for a pullback from months of steady climbing.
The reverse is true of the gold miners, which have suffered an extended downturn for years. (I am using the ETF GDX as a proxy for gold miners.) There are many gauges of sentiment, and one informal one is the level of bearishness on display in message boards. Right now, gold bearishness is quite extreme, and anyone with the temerity to suggest gold and the miners may have bottomed is deluged with gold-bears promoting targets for gold at $850 or lower.
When everybody is on one side of the boat, it eventually capsizes. I think the gold miners are poised to make some very strong gains as all the gold miner bears will be forced to cover their short positions.
Very few believe any uptrend in the miners will last longer than a few days, so the confident miner-bears will hang on until the pain gets extreme. Their capitulation will eventually vault the miners higher.
What is the fundamental basis for the rally in miners? There are two keys: 1) the price of gold is rising off a bottom and 2) the cost of oil--critical to the production costs of gold miners--has plummeted, lowering the break-even cost for miners.
I have long held that the USD and gold can both rise in parallel as both serve "flight to safety" roles in global markets. We may finally see this parallel uptrend manifest.
From Left Field
Post-Election Analysis: Blue Twilight and Red Dawn? (via Mark G.)
Les Simerables: SimCity isn’t a sandbox. Its rules reflect the neoliberal common sense of today’s urban planning.
No exit: Britain’s social housing trap
The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From -- surprising to whom?
Continuing Proof of Structural Changes in the U.S. Workforce -- End of Work kicking in....
U.S. Household Incomes: A 46-Year Perspective -- wage stagnation apparent--would be worse of the top 10% were excluded....
Walk a mile in my teaching shoes -- poverty and dysfunctional families matter....
Mystifying Poverty: The jargon of school reformers only masks the poverty that stifles student achievement.
Few Signs of Construction at Yujiapu, China's Manhattan Replica -- credit bubble and misallocation of capital writ large...
What do metrics want? How quantificaton prescribes interaction on Facebook -- sounds academic and boring but actually quite interesting...
1,000 True Fans -- how musicians, writers, etc. can earn a livelihood despite being in the "long tail" of modest sales...
Iran in the 80s – a glimpse of a forbidden place
German photographer Casey Hugelfink had access to the Islamic republic in the dark decade after the 1979 revolution, throughout the Iran-Iraq war, when the country was sealed off to reporters and most of the world.
"This is not what you might want to hear, but no amount of psychological awareness will overcome people’s reluctance to lower their standard of living. So that’s my bottom line: there is not much hope. I’m thoroughly pessimistic. I’m sorry." Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Prize winner for his work on the psychology of human decision-making)
Thanks for reading--
charles |
|
|
|
|
|
