Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Community Garden Project - TCGP

I started this lovely idea back in Feb. Sorry I didn't share it here, I wasn't think it would be very big... though I use the term community is a GRAND scale! As I see it, the internet is a new age community, we track each other through blogs, forums, chats and 'communities' (ie. Facebook) so why can't we all garden together too? Think I'm crazy? Try this on for size (super sized)...

In a community garden people work together to create as much from a plot as possible, sometimes for extra space they don't have at home, but also to get involved at an affordable rate or to learn about gardening from everyone else involved. Well, I garden at home, I want to do it at an affordable rate and I want to get help gardening too. So I turn to the internet... I blog about my garden, my learning and my spending (yeah, I'm cheap..so what!). I use forums, my blog, email, chats and google. Just like sooooooooo many others do, and that makes us all part of a new age gardening community.

Well what I want to know is about savings? What is my produce worth? Am I getting enough out of my land, or is my land getting enough from me? And what about you? Is this really saving you cash? Is your time well spent when it comes to your budget? Could you or I better organize our land and become more efficient?!

So I come to share this, and I hope you share with me to for the year of 2010:

http://www.rent-my-hubby.com/Trial-Garden-Spreadsheet.xls

That spreadsheet is what I will be keeping track of my expenses for 2010 (I'm not counting purchases from previous years in my costs column, and you shouldn't either),  I'm also weighing produce, comparing that to market value for that time of year when I harvest, and I'm sharing it all with you! So please download this spread sheet if you would like to keep track of yours and we can all compare.

If you would like more info, have more questions or would like to have more people to ask questions and to compare with come here: http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=27660

This is the site I originally started the idea. There are several people involved and they are sharing their garden as they go, they are interacting as a community with the project already, so please come jump in... ask anything... share some of your struggles through the season.

Also, I am going to write a book eventually from my experiences from this, so if you would like your data to be entered at the end of the season let me know!

Enjoy, I think this project will be an eye opener for a lot of us!

1 comment: