What We Grew in 2024: Our Total Urban Homestead Harvest

Every season on our urban homestead here in Hespeler teaches us something new. Whether it’s finding creative ways to stretch our growing space, preserving more of what we harvest, or learning even more ways to work with nature instead of against it.

We won't ever get tired of this view from our deck. Our backyard is only 35 feet wide and 70 feet long. 

One of the most rewarding parts this year was sitting down at the end of the season and tallying up exactly what we produced!

In past years, this was impossible. Our kids were so little and so excited about growing their own food that the second they spotted something ripe, they ate it!

Let's be real - many times I can't help myself from snacking in the garden either! 

I’ve always loved that enthusiasm, and they still have it today (a perk of growing up in the garden!), but now they’re finally old enough to understand our simple request: “let’s weigh it first, then you can eat it.”

To my surprise, they actually got excited about the weights, especially when it came to the raspberries. It quickly turned into a friendly competition to see who could pick the most! 

So many trays of raspberries went into our freezer. We ate up our frozen berries by October! Definitely a crop we need to expand as we all love them so much! 

As a result of this friendly competition, more berries made it into our baskets and fewer were left behind for the birds once the kids eventually got tired of picking. 

This year, our homestead harvest tally reached an incredible:

309.01 lbs of homegrown food!

ALTHOUGH, 

That’s not everything!

That's just what we kept track of! 

We didn’t total the pounds of fresh herbs we harvested throughout the season or the endless spring lettuce we enjoyed. We didn't include the maple syrup we collected and we didn't weigh our sorghum as it will be turned into a craft and not used as food. We also skipped harvesting our sunchokes this fall, which would have added another 60+ lbs just on their own. 

Our oldest collecting sap at the start of this year's maple syrup season!

Even though I teach people how to grow an incredible amounts of food in small spaces, and know how achievable it is, I’m still blown away that we produced nearly 400 lbs* of food in just over 800sqft. of growing space (for perspective, there is 43,560 square feet in 1 acre and our backyard totals 2450sqft.). 

*If including herbs, lettuce, and the fall sunchoke harvest.

 A basket filled with freshly picked veggies for a workshop I was teaching. Growing food allows you to tuck in extra plants to make sure it's easy to share the wealth! 

From peas to tomatoes to cabbage and cherries, here’s a small breakdown of many (not all) of the foods we grew, how much each crop produced, and a few reflections on what worked and what we’ll do differently next year.

2024 Urban Homestead Harvest Totals

Fruit tree netting helped prevent the squirrels from stealing all our cherries this year, which allowed us to finally gather a decent harvest! 

Peas - 3.77 lb

Our spring peas are always delicious and one of the first crops the kids are excited to snack on right out of the garden. We planted fall peas as well that grew beautifully, but these were for seed collection only, so not included in the totals. 

Raspberries - 7.51 lb

Our raspberry patch is maturing beautifully.  This year’s harvest was steady, colourful, and full of flavour.

Beans - 3.28 lb

We were late in planting our second succession of pole beans, so overall harvests were less than years prior. Even though they weren't our heaviest producer this year, we still grew enough for many meals. Beans are one of the simplest veggies to grow! If you are just jumping into growing food for you and your family or your community, starting with beans is the perfect choice! 

Cucumbers - 5.04 lb

We had a slower cucumber season, but still enjoyed some crunchy snacking cukes. 

Peppers - 3.69 lb

Most of our peppers were given away this year! We have many fans of the peppers we grow and love to share the abundance. This year we didn't grow nearly as many pepper plants as we prioritized filling our shelves with tomato products. 

Speaking of tomatoes... 

Ripe Tomatoes - 141.87 lb!!!!!

A huge year for tomatoes! These kept our canning pots busy and freezers filled to the brim all season long (even as I type this, our deep freeze is still full of bags and bags of delicious homegrown tomatoes destined to be turned into sauce, ketchup, salsa and allll the tomato recipe goodness).

Green Tomato Harvest - 43.82 lb!

I separated these from our total tomato harvest as not everyone would find these helpful in their kitchen. We disagree wholeheartedly. Green tomatoes are the reason we haven't purchased sweet relish in over 2 years. We make a delicious "Chow Chow" recipe, made popular in the east coast of Canada that tastes equally as delicious as your store bought sweet green relish. 

We always have an abundance of green tomatoes left at the end of the season, so it's more productive for us to use them for relish as opposed to attempting to grow bushels and bushels of cucumbers. 

Interested in trying the recipe yourself? Reach out! I would be happy to share it with you :) 

Kale - 1.94 lb

Kale is always a steady producer all season and remains gorgeous in a fall and winter garden. Our total weight does not include the massive kale plants that still remain in our garden waiting to be harvested. 

Onions - 2.71 lb

We prioritized space for our tomatoes this year, so did not plant nearly the same amount of bulbing onions as we normally do. Thankfully, onions are fairly inexpensive, so this didn't impact our budget all that much. Onions are fun to grow, so I will always be sure to grow some even though we have the nearly non-stop harvests from our Egyptian Walking Onions.  Our walking onion harvest is not included in this onion category, but was tallied in the total weight of this year's harvests. 

Blackberries - 0.71 lb

For a first year plant, we were thrilled! The berries were huge! Each and every year to come will bring even larger harvests. 

Cabbage - 3.95 lb

This weight would have been higher, but our cabbage was part of an experiment this year. Could we sow the seeds directly in the spring and still end up with a head of cabbage at the end of the season? The answer was yes! 

Next year I will still plant seedlings to help give more time for succession planting of another crop, but the experiment was reassuring - if you don't have the means to start seeds ahead of time indoors, you can still plant and harvest a head of cabbage! 

Carrots - 5.77 lb

This is our hands-off crop. We plant them early spring and harvest after the first frost so they are extra sweet. We fed at least 10 to the neighbours dogs this summer as more than our average bolted from the very unusual weather patterns we had this year. 

Spring Sunchoke Harvest - 50+ lb

It is always so mind-blowing to see how much food this native plant provides! We use them most often like you would use a potato. We have also dehydrated them turning them into flour for our sourdough breads. This came with mixed reviews by our kiddos as the flavour profile became quite strong when used as a flour, so we probably won't be doing that again. 

I do want to try my hand at making 'Torshi' - an Assyrian mixed pickle recipe that I learned about from our dojo family. It uses sunchokes as one of the main ingredients. With 50+lbs of them each and every year, we could sure make a ton of pickles! 

What Worked Well This Year

One of the MANY baskets overflowing with tomatoes this year. 

• The tomatoes were outstanding. Without a doubt our best year yet!

• Raspberries and blackberries are thriving and expanding naturally. Well worth the pruning efforts to keep the patch in order. 

• Kale and greens are always low-maintenance and reliable. They also tend to be quite expensive, so this helped save us a lot of money! 

• Sunchokes continue to be our easiest long-term perennial food crop.

What We’ll Improve for Next Season

Growing even more beans is on the plan for next year!

• Even More Tomatoes!! I know it sounds crazy, but having our canning shelves lined with the flavour of homegrown tomatoes is priceless to us!  

• We will be planting strawberries for even more berries.

• We will get back to planting our beans on schedule, as well as our cabbage to increase our succession plantings once again.

• More perennial plants! We will continue to establish a perennial garlic bed and add more fruit & nut trees. 

Why I Loved Tracking Our Harvest

Totalling up the harvest weights, even the tiny handfuls, gave us a crystal clear picture of what’s working on our homestead. 

It helped us:

• Plan our garden layout even more efficiently for next year.

• A clearer idea of production and our estimated yearly food needs.

• Helped to build more seasonal eating recipe plans. (I am working on a year long dinner recipe plan. It will take some time, but having this information is so helpful when creating a year long plan!) 

And most importantly: it shows just how much abundance can come from even a small urban space!

Growing Space Used 

14 determinate tomato plants thriving in a 3x7 foot space. 

The most common question I get asked is "You must have a massive yard?" 

300+lbs of food grown on a suburban lot may seem impossible, but it is so far from it! 

Our garden space totals 822 sqft. 

Just a single tomato bed this year that was 3 foot by 7 foot (21 sqft) and grew a total of 14 tomato plants provided us with 26.5lbs of ripe tomatoes!! 

When a bushel of organic Roma tomatoes can run $2.50/lb when in season and up to $3.50/lb out of season, this 1 single bed of tomatoes could have saved us anywhere from $70-95!

Now picture if you didn't need 26.5lbs of tomatoes... 

Instead you fill your garden with greens, beans, onions, maybe a single tomato plant or two, along with some peppers and maybe even some basil for good measure... 

That 3x7 foot bed would provide you many different meals, saving you money on multiple grocery hauls, all while increasing your flavour and overall nutrition* 

*Homegrown, freshly picked produce is always more nutrient dense when compared to items that were picked prematurely and shipped long distances to a store.

Final Thoughts

Our 309+lb harvest wasn’t grown on acres - it was grown on intention, creativity, and the knowledge that even ordinary city yards can feed families.

Marketing throughout the years has made people believe that gardening costs a fortune. 

You need this style garden bed, this type of soil, these tools, this particular (but expensive) fertilizer...

I'm here to tell you that is NOT at all accurate.

We fell for it too. We purchased the expensive soil, we bought a tiller, we invested in expensive hand tools.

10+years later, we don't use any of it and yet we just had our most productive year ever!

If you're interested in learning how to grow your own food, need help planning your garden, or want to join our local crop swap community here in Cambridge, Ontario - Sunnyhill Homestead is here to help!

Visit our website for more information and be sure to check out our local crop swap Facebook group here!

Here’s to an even more abundant growing season ahead because you are just one seed away from harvest! 

Until Next Time, 

Sarah & The Sunnyhill Homestead Family