Gunner wrote:
songbird wrote:
Gunner wrote:

...

any other ???s....ask I will get back to ya with a real answer.

yes, how much do those tomatoes cost per pound.

I don’t know… how many fingers am I holding up, Bird? Still trying to
make a billy salad with all those apples and oranges you guys have
left over.

i'm holding up ten over the keyboard.


I wouldn’t know how much it will cost him to grow his tomatoes, now
would I? I am not the clairvoyant Shamanista. Now we both know this
is the same propaganda trick billy uses all the time. it’s almost
like your birds of a feather . Now I don’t think you’re really
wanting an answer but let’s run with this for a bit and see where it
goes.

no, i really do want an answer.

rough guessing, my costs for raising tomatoes this
year is about $0.10/lb, after considering the other
expenses and costs of canning i'd guess it at about
$0.20/lb.


If you are looking for the cost of electricity for a 400w light, my
monthly cost for a 400w @ 14 hrs a day is ~ $18 a month. If you want
to cost lighting for a specific project and you know what your
paying :try http://www.sunlightsupply.com/t-faq.aspx or www.sunlightsupply.com
... quest. 8.

BTW don’t know of many folks using lights in the summer , but for the
other 9 1/2 months of my growing season, it’s a small cost of having
a 12 month season or even for a season stretcher of 2-3 months and its
priceless. I use an 85 w. 6500k CFL or a pair of 10$ shop lights w/
some cool whites depending on the crop for starters, stagger them out
so there is a small cost there to stagger.

sure, some people use lights to start their crops early
and they use heating pads to keep the temperature good for
growing and they use fans to keep the air circulating and
they have to have extra heat if the space isn't normally
heated.

all of this adds to the costs of raising the crop and
all of this adds to the electrical demand that has to be
met somehow.

each of the lights and lightbulbs have to be manufactured
and then later disposed of. same with the fan, heating pads,
trays, etc.

if you are using a greenhouse that is a possible large
expense, if you are using a spare room in the house then
that means you have a larger house that you are building,
keeping up, paying for, etc.

so even more demand made upon the world's resources of
which some are renewable and others are not.

still i think it is a rather high cost compared to
having seeds and putting them in the ground at the
right time and then taking care of them.

the taste isn't comparable. so getting a worse
result for a higher price. that's making a lot
of sense (for the sellers of lights, greenhouses,
pumps, electricity, bigger houses, etc).


Pumps are low energy, now
I do use a few air pumps @ 3-10 w ea. , a 100w aquarium heater for
one of the systems (much easier than heating the house) and 2 x 20”
box fans. Say 25-30$US a month in energy. but my energy cost is very
reasonable.

lucky for you, but those costs are not accurate as
they are not covering accumulated environmental damage
(mercury poisoning, CO2, mining costs, habitat loss,
species extinctions, etc) or the coming effects of
losing 20something meters or more as the sea levels
rise (all around the world). that's millions of people
to move, all that infrastructure that will have to be
rebuilt or expanded. all that land that will no
longer be available for farming... trillions of
dollars wasted. people don't think of it that way
do they? all those highways built that will be
useless. all the subways flooded. cities lost.
buildings eroded away. it makes me shake my head
at the stupidity of it all.


Now my labor is less in my CEA than in dirt gardening.
so tit for tat. Your mileage however, may vary.

sure does. my labor for the tomato patches is very
minimal. five minutes of weeding a week, thirty
minutes to water when the rains aren't coming, a few
minutes a day scanning for worms, lately we are spending
more time picking than anything else.


If they are piping
in sunlight along with your electricity, your cost per unit could be
expensive and this would not be for you, especially for those unable
to get outside the billy et al mind set of one size fits all.

one size doesn't fit all, but my concern isn't about
size fitting but about environmental cost per unit
raised. that is the ultimate evaluation that must be
made. i'm not burning any extra electricity to get
this crop to harvest, i'm using locally generated
composts or materials that i'm getting for free or
growing green manures and using them on the gardens
so i'm not contributing to CO2 buildup for the crop
either.


Oh yea
my water costs are very low also, yet I don’t need but perhaps a 10th
of what you will waste. And it very good water, almost a neutral pH.
Real easy on a hydro system. But we are on the subject of lighting and
not hydro. Yet if you want to ask a specific question on hydroponics,
I will answer those ???s also

we have pretty good water here too. if i
ever get a chance to set up a rainwater catch
and gravity feed i'll do that too as it is
even better for the gardens and wouldn't need
any pumping.


Don’t know what your supply costs are nor your labor, water, tools,
fertilizers, etc.

no cost for fertilizer, labor is free as is my
time, water costs minimal, tools not much for those
most the time, i tend to buy the heavy duty kind
so something like my pruning sheers or the shovel
lasts ten or more years. the rest of various
costs are included in my estimate below.


Probably should include the gardens as a portion
of the mortgage? what do you figure is your cost per unit is, bird?
Throw out your figures and I will compare apples to apples w/ ya. As
a side interest how fast can you produce a crop? a quick little hydro
propaganda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhvnJpJu18c

i gave mine up top: $0.20/lb after canning.

the mortgage is not too bad, taxes suck but
it could be a lot worse, the house is small
so we don't have much for heat or cooling
expenses.

87120sq ft (2 acres), of which 600 is
tomatoes. we'll get anywhere from 200-600lbs
of tomatoes by the looks of it this season
(being conservative at the low end because
we've already picked over 100lbs already and
there is plenty more out there).

doing the quick math i come up with $55.09
including mortgage, taxes, electricity and
heat for the year. so to divy it up by
lb of tomato that comes in between $0.28
and $0.09 per lb. (which is pretty funny
considering my first guess of $0.20/lb was
a very quick guess). i could reduce that
instantly by 2/5 but i keep getting over-
ruled (i want to pay off the mortgage and
she doesn't ).

crop goes from planting to first harvest
in about 60-70 days and then will continue
producing for another 25-40 days -- of
course tapering off as the weather cools.
the last harvest will be green if i can
pick them before the frost damages them
(but i didn't include that amount in the
above total estimate anyways because they
need additional processing or ingredients
to put them up).

so i think that about covers it. long
day, bedtime...


songbird