Having thought hard about my diploma journey, I've decided to leave the bulk of the design for this project until next year.
However, I've lived here for seven years now, and had plenty of opportunity to try out things in our little garden, so I do have some background information to draw on. Each year I make a few changes to the garden, and grow a few things, and I'm slowly learning what works and what doesn't. I've kept a blog elsewhere for many years now, so I have plenty of photographs of food I've grown and changes I've made.
Tracking the harvest
At the start of 2014, before I decided to sign up for the diploma, I started tracking how much I spent on the garden, and how much I harvested. Having decided to include this as part of a diploma project, I'm counting this as an observation year.
I started counting in December, when I spent just over £17 on copper 'slug collars' (later revealed to be a waste of money) and seeds. January and February, strangely, were all harvest - dried rosemary and home made compost.
Things started getting more exciting in March, when apparently I harvested 59p worth of cabbage and kale (oh, the excitement!) and spent £58 on a second water butt, several large planters and peat free compost.
Since then I've been trying to encourage my harvest to catch up with my spending.
Throwing money at the garden
I'm not really a consumerist gardener. I try to make do where I can. In the last couple of years I've bought two 100 litre water butts with stands, and that is plenty to cover all watering in my small garden for the whole year.
So water butts, containers, compost and seeds have been my main spends in the last year. I have nearly as many pots as I can fit in the space now, and don't need any more water butts, so that will save some money next year.
Food for not-quite-free
In terms of harvest, I've had to make decisions about what to count, and how to translate it into monetary terms.
I count food (obviously), and home made compost (necessary for growing food), but not the willow I've lopped from my (possibly ill-judged) living fence - much of which I've used for trellis or climbing plants. Should I count that too, since I might have bought bamboo canes if I didn't have the willow?
When I've harvested food, for simplicity I've counted the closest thing I could find on a supermarket home delivery website. So, for example, with cabbage, I've counted a bag of spring greens - the mostly likely thing I would have bought that's similar. With lettuce I've counted a bag of basic salad leaves.
Plans for next year
I'll keep a spreadsheet next year, rather than a page on my other blog which is difficult to update.
I think I'll keep two columns - one for the cost of what I would have likely bought (same as this year) and one for the cost of the local, organic alternative (which is, after all, what I've got). I suspect it will be very interesting to see what the difference is.
This year I've mostly costed the 'raw' ingredients rather than what I made with them - so, for example, 1.66kg of gooseberries rather than the 10 jars of gooseberry and elderflower jam I made with them. Again, I think I'll keep two columns and see what the 'value added' cost is.
In terms of my diploma design, I'd really like to make a proper scale drawing of my plot. I've attempted this in the past, but I'm no expert and it's always been scribbled on a bit of paper with half-accurate measurements and no real clarity. I'd like to know what area I'm actually working with - is it as small as it feels?
I didn't choose this garden, and there are many things I'd change if I could, but over the years I've learned to love it and done more with it than I could have imagined. We have a space to sit, enough room to compost, and I'm sure we could grow much more of our own food if I was a more proficient gardener.
I'm looking forward to sharing more of my garden plans and triumphs in this space.