The Worlds Most Expensive Vegetables - Part 5

No pictures this week, kiddies, as I spent the weekend in a foreign country, Cincinnati. However the very day that we left USPS delivered our berry plants from Indiana Berry, leaving the box on our south-facing front porch. Fortunately it was overcast for most of the time so I didn't find a box of baked roots on our return. I was very impressed with how everything was packed. Heck, they might have even survived under full sun.

In addition to a variety of raspberry twigs and some hopeful blackberry roots wrapped in wet newspaper I purchased a strawberry pyramid, also made in Indiana. This came with 50 "free" everbearing strawberry plants. This whole shebang added $107 to our cost, making the total so far $299. While I'm at it I'll include the seeds I purchased this past winter from Heirloom Seeds which I think was $20, making the sum $319. GULP.

But we ain't done yet, kids! While I can stick the raspberries and blackberries into some nicely amended soil that strawberry pyramid isn't going to fill itself with dirt! Where oh where is my dad with that load of dirt? In the mean time it's off to the garden center. The Indiana Berry web site says that said pyramid holds ten bushels of dirt. The instructions of said pyramid say it needs about one cubic yard. As the base of the unit is six feet across and five inches high and pie are square... yep, it needs a cubic yard. That's a whole lotta dirt! As your average pickup truck can hold just over one cubic yard my 1995 Ford Taurus had to take this load in two bites. That's right... my car can hold half as much as a pickup! I should have taken a picture of my car riding real low and the trunk full of bad of compost and dirt. Oh well, your loss. Now we get to add in 16 bags of dirt (.75 cubic feet each) and 12 bags of compost! 21 cubit feet of... wait a minute! A cubic yard is 27 feet. So maybe I only fill the first tier. Anyway, the total for this spree is $42. I think I need to sit down because my running total is now $361 and I still don't have any food to show for it.