Throughout the growing and harvest season I kept tabs on what we have harvested. In this post I’ve constructed some pretty graphs in an attempt to illustrate how well (or not!) I have done this year and how we might change things next year.

Before I dig into the data there are a couple of things worth mentioning. First of all I haven’t included the infinite plants. These are the ones who have given me as much as I wanted consistently for the best part of a year, namely the chili plants (varieties: Thai, Lidl and unknown) and herbs (rosemary, chives, basil, oregano, sage, lavender, thyme and bay). As long as these plants are providing me with enough to cook with and are modest in size, I am not concerned too much with maximizing their yield or looking for growing inefficiencies.

The other thing to bear in mind (not “bare” – had to check that!) is that meticulously logging gardening and eating habits over many months is not as fascinating or riveting as it sounds so I have undoubtedly missed some harvest here and there. There are also a number of plants (kale, lettuce, tomatoes) which are still growing and their harvest is ongoing. The data used here accounts for up until about the end of September.

It should also be noted that this is just a bit of fun. Obviously we grow food for enjoyment and so we can enjoy using our homegrown ingredients in cooking. We are not devoted to calories per square metre as a measure success (though it’s 670.275 kcal/m² for our 8 square metres if anyone’s askin’!).

Even though we devoted quite a bit of space to growing potatoes, it is obvious that they significantly outperform any other single plant in terms of mass (kg) harvested. Maybe there is good reason this island was once so dependent on them. Also noteworthy is that although the tomato plants took up 3-4 times the room of the cherry tomato plants, the yield from the cherry tomatoes was 3 times as much. I don’t think the tomato plants quite had the light that they needed to do well. Either way, I think I will be seriously considering concentrating more heavily on cherry tomatoes next year.

As a broad measure of nutrition I used calories (kcal). Though this does not capture the specific nutritional advantages of certain vegetables (vitamins, protein etc.), I figured it would provide a good yardstick to see what kind of bang for our buck we are getting with the various plants. As you can see above, both of the types of beans (green and borlotti) punch above their weight when it comes to calories. The overwhelming winner once again though is potatoes, which provided 68% of our balcony calories.

An optimal vegetable may be thought of one which we can grow the most of and while at the same time providing the best nutrition. I have plotted our vegetable harvest on a scatter plot below to illustrate this. Ideally we want vegetables in the top right (high calories per gram, high harvest). Top left means good for calories but small harvest and bottom right is big harvest but not good on the calorie front. Bottom left means neither did we harvest much of the vegetable nor is it good for calories.

The obvious winners here are potatoes and beans, both of which were delicious to boot. I need to find a way of increasing the harvest of the beans though as our current yield only provides for a few meals (ideas welcome!). I am fully confident I can increase the yield of the potatoes further too by planting them denser having seen how others have been growing them in tight spaces.

An honourable mention should also go to salad leaves and lettuce. Although they weren’t heavy or calorific, we got more mileage out of them than any of the other vegetables in terms of the amount of meals they were used in over about 4 months.  The are also very efficient in terms of soil (15-20cm is fine), unlike potatoes or tomatoes which require buckets and troughloads of compost.

It should also be noted that the total calories is quite low, especially considering an individual should be ingesting somewhere around 2000-2500 calories a day. Still though, I have learned a great deal over the last year and am looking forward to beating this yield next season!

On a parting note, I would like to apologise for misspelling “broccoli” in all of the above charts. I couldn’t face going back to change them all now .