A Makkelijke Moestuin raised bed produces much more than you put into it. To demonstrate this, we recorded what we harvested throughout a whole year.
The MM-Hero harvest bed in late April
Does a Makkelijke Moestuin raised bed really produce much?
Die vraag krijg ik best vaak.
"Ja." zeg ik dan, "Méér dan je erin stopt. Minstens 200 euro per jaar."
Meestal kijkt men me dan wat ongelovig aan.
Maar in 2017 hielden we al van één van onze bakken precies bij wat erin ging en eruit kwam. En omdat dat al best een poos geleden was, deden we het in 2023 nog een keer.
Dat lijkt makkelijk maar valt vies tegen: alles wegen en opschrijven. Voor je het weet vergeet je wat 😐
Weighing and recording every harvest
How it all began
I sowed the first seeds on 1 March. It was still quite cold, so I covered the raised bed with an MM cover:
1 March: the first seeds go into the mix
The first week was quite lovely, but then it began to snow, followed by rain.
The rest of the month wasn't much better. By late March, there was still very little to see:
Where's that lovely spring weather?
April
April wasn't much better: cold, rainy and hardly any warm days. Anything but lovely spring weather.
But on 23 April, I managed to harvest something for the first time:
Hooray: the very first harvest
On 30 April, I could make my first entry in the harvest log: a few radishes, some winter purslane, a bunch of rocket and a little spinach. Enough for a generous salad!
April harvest value: €3.50
May
May was much better: lovely sunshine, fairly dry and an average temperature of about 14°C. From then on, things really picked up and we could harvest regularly:
Radishes, rocket and spinach.
Lots of mixed lettuce: cos lettuce, winter lettuce and leaf lettuce.
Four heads of pak choi.
Stir-fry greens: radish leaves, turnip leaves and older rocket.
Winter purslane, which is very expensive in the shops.
Turnip roots.
In the back row, we removed the last rocket and radishes, then planted a climbing courgette, a tomato and a square of climbing flat beans.
May harvest value: €31.90
June
In June, more vegetables came out. The winter lettuce, pak choi, rocket, radishes, spinach and winter purslane made way for basil, Salanova lettuces, another round of rocket in a different square, French marigolds and dill.
Alongside lettuce, we were now harvesting plenty of mangetout and sugar snaps. At the end of the month, we picked the first sprigs of basil too.
Herbs aren't just healthy: they're valuable crops as well. A few sprigs of basil or dill can easily cost a couple of euros.
June harvest value: €33.50
July
July was when things really got fun, because the first summer vegetables arrived: courgettes, tomatoes and climbing flat beans.
We could also harvest our Salanova lettuces, red Crispy and green Batavia. They produced an enormous amount of lettuce.
July harvest value: €43.25
August
August usually brings the biggest harvest. No wonder it's known as harvest month!
We harvested no fewer than nine courgettes, 1.5 kg of yellow and red tomatoes, and more than 600 g of climbing flat beans. That's alongside the lettuce, dill, basil, chard and cavolo nero, which also produced plenty.
August harvest value: €46.10
September
We happily kept harvesting in September, with a total value of €36.65.
Tomatoes, Asian leaf lettuce, although the caterpillars had eaten half of it, cavolo nero, chard, quite a few more climbing flat beans and yet another ridiculous number of courgettes.
Honestly, I've never had a courgette plant in my raised bed produce so much: no fewer than 35 courgettes over the whole year!
35 courgettes from a single plant
October
The harvest dropped sharply this month. Insects nibbled some of the plants, birds (or mice?) disturbed my newly sown squares, the beetroot wouldn't grow and the weather wasn't helping either.
Here's the raised bed on 23 October:
Late October: the raised bed isn't looking its best
I could still harvest courgettes 32, 33 and 34, quite a few climbing flat beans, which had a little late revival, some sprigs of basil and the last leaves of the Asian leaf lettuce. Their total value was €11.80.
November
November was extremely wet but fairly mild. All that rain made the raised bed deteriorate quickly.
The harvest? The last lettuce leaves, topped up with beetroot leaves, plenty of chard and cavolo nero, and on 23 November the very last courgette:
Courgette 35: the very last one of the year
It certainly wasn't the prettiest, but together with the small ones still on the plant, it added up to one whole courgette.
Total harvest value: €10.50.
November ended with snow:
The raised bed started on 1 March, pictured on 30 November
Look closely and you'll see green shoots from the garlic and onions, and still plenty of leaves on the cavolo nero. I'll harvest those next spring. That's enough for this year.
The final total
De totale opbrengst aan groentes was dus € 222,32. Trek daar de kosten van een zak mix, een pak voeding en wat zaadjes vanaf (ongeveer 30 euro) en er blijft € 192,- euro over.
Da's minder dan ik gehoopt had - dat was meer in de richting van € 250,- - maar voor een jaar met vaak waardeloos weer, brutale vogels en hongerige rupsen en muizen ook niet slecht.
Het toont in ieder geval weer aan dat één Makkelijke Moestuinbak van 16 vakken behoorlijk wat opbrengt.
En dat op zo'n klein oppervlak en met zo weinig moeite 😀
PS:
Want to see the day-by-day harvest log and how I calculated the values? You can find it here (PDF in Dutch):
