Recently in Budget Category

There is still time to take part in the Campbells "Grow your own soup" promotion! The soup makers are giving out free tomato seeds (not sure for how long) but go and sign up to receive yours! All you need is the variety and can codes from a tin of their soups, and you are good to go!

The seeds don't note which varieties they are but I think it's safe to assume they are hybrids. Most forums have said don't save the seed but you know what, I tend to disagree don't follow the herd! Save the seeds, plant em next year and see what grows! Gardening isn't about following the rules, it's about trying new things! If the seeds are hybrid (and my gut tells me they are) then so what? All that happens is the seeds don't follow true to the parent, but that's not to say they won't be edible! Or even taste better than the original. And IF they taste bad, or don't grow so what? All you lost was time and potting compost!!! I say go against the grain, try something different and see where it leads you!

I've managed to score another great deal! This time I want to tell you about some free organic lettuce seed from Earthbound Farm. The deal was available on their website throughout March so sorry the deal is over but if you did sign up you'll know they are doing a contest starting in June finding out "how did your garden grow?"

I just cleared out some space for my organic lettuce. Totally the wrong time of year for us here in So Cal, but I'm working with the microclimates in our garden and trying to grow some round the side yard in the shade. That side only gets sun for a couple of hours in the afternoon so fingers crossed that will work! Wish me luck!

Monday I posted about Basil seeds I got free from TomatoHeirloom.com, Wednesday last week I got a parcel in the mail. The box said it was from tomatoheirloom.com, unfortunately I didn't remember ordering anything. I opened the box and found 6 tomato plants. Not sure whether it's a promotion, whether I signed up for free plants or something, which is possible. Anyway I now have 6 beautiful tomato plants!

It was actually my first time receiving plants in the mail but I would definitely do it again and I can definitely recommend tomatoheirlooms.com too as the plants arrived perfectly, well packaged, and very healthy!

I already posted about my freecycle haul of plant containers in March, and I touched on how gardening doesn't have to break the bank, but I thought I'd introduce another element today: dumpster diving :) Now I'm not saying go routing around in every dumpster, but just keep your eyes peeled! I mentioned I have dogs, and well that means walks, three times a day for our active little beasts, which means I get to see pretty quick whenever anyone throws anything out! Some neighbors up the street had a dumpster and sitting ontop were these beauties! Not sure you can tell but those are 15 gallon and 5 gallon containers. The black ones used to contain avocado trees!

Naturally I relieved them of their burden of throwing these out into the landfill, and the big ones now contain my loquat and peach trees :) Sure I looked funny walking down the street with 5 big containers and 2 dalmatians but the neighbors already think I'm a little crazy so whatever.

Last Fall some new folks moved into one of the colonial houses up the street and naturally they were sorting through the stuff left behind in the garden. These were put on the sidewalk with a free sign. Two long planters. Yep they came home with me too!

At the top of our street I rescued 3 tomato cages and 2 tomato towers from a dumpster (Ok DH had to get the tomato towers they were too far in I couldn't reach). All I am saying is be aware and what others are throwing out, keep a look out for gardening supplies everywhere! You just never know what you will find!!!

I mentioned before about my raised beds with cinderblocks but today I thought I'd post about my raised beds made from wood, the reasons why I opted for raised beds etc, and a step by step progress over the last year! When we moved into the house in 2002 our lot was pretty overgrown as the previous owners had poor health and the garden had all but been abandoned. However I took on the challenge and tackled it bit by bit. We had an old fence that was rotten and falling to pieces, behind which was a slope which was pretty unusable on one side and tiered on the other with telegraph poles.

After taking down the fence and removing LOTS of iris plants (they pop up like weeds here) we could see potential. Pretty much over the course of 2003 - 2005 the garden looked either barren or weed city. We had existing citrus trees (orange and grapefruit) which we neglected. We knew that for ANY of our future garden plans we needed to get rid of the palm tree which was located right in the center of the flattest part of our garden. In October 2005 Bob bought a chainsaw and set to work cutting it down.

Again the next couple of years passed with a few gardening activities (dwarf citrus in containers) and then in 2007 I began to see light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to grow edibles again as I had in England and so out came the root stump and in went some edible plants.

What I didn't bank on was the crappy soil. We had clay back home but this here was pretty terrible. The plants did poorly and so I looked into alternatives. I was growing in containers which were doing well so I opted for raised beds. Sure the initial expense would be higher but once in they'd last a few years and the harvests would increase. Most importantly it'd be homegrown. The more I learned about industrial farming the more I knew I wanted homegrown organic produce. So we got wood, we got chicken wire and compost/soil and went to work

Soon we had three raised beds in the ground by October 2008, full of soil and ready to plant. I got busy on that one immediately and got my winter crops in which I have been harvesting for months now. As you can see from the grids I've been using the square foot gardening method :)

Now sure there is still LOTS I want to accomplish in the garden both front and back but it's all about baby steps! Since making these beds and getting winter crops in I've put some bark chips around the beds (everything to the right of the hose pipe is mulched). The back looks TONS better, and as you can see the beds are pretty productive, but still lots of plans to put into action!  [ignore the stepladder! That's there as a precaution due to the trellis buckling in the high winds last month!]

I think that's one great thing about the blogging aspect of gardening, seeing the changes each month. The beds sure do look different right now than they did 6 months ago! And compared to the first clearing it looks much better, but like I said still a long way to go!

Just letting everyone know that HeirloomTomato.com are giving out free Basil seeds if you sign up to their website! The seed availability is limited so hurry and get signed up! I signed up at the end of March and received my Basil seeds in the mail last week!

Love seeds and love free!

Di

I've been a freecycle member for a while now and though most the emails that come through aren't on my watch list I do keep an eye out for gardening items :) Thursday afternoon I spotted an email come through for free 1 gallon and 5 gallon plant containers, naturally I jumped on it, and I was lucky! It turns out the person is literally round the corner! LITERALLY! If it wasn't for houses I'd could walk there in minutes, so I hopped in the car and drove the 1/2 mile round the street to find these:

What a score! Some container gardening in the future this year again! I already have a few big ones, but was looking for more medium sized ones and these are perfect! There are 7 of the 5 gallon size and about 15-20 of the smaller  1 gallon size. Got talking to the lady "Lois" and turns out she is into gardening and is a master gardener! Told me all about the program that runs from Jan - June in Ventura. I must do that next year!!!

Other scores on freecycle have included: gardening books, pots, containers, and fruit trees (yep the peach tree was a freebie!). I've also rescued items from dumpsters including: tomato towers, tomato cages, containers, and BIG plant pots. Just doing my part for the environment!

Oh and ignore the hole in the screen door, that was River thinking that the door was open and busting right through it! We just never bothered replacing it as we figured she'd just do it again! *sigh*

When I was planning my raised beds I took lots of time to measure the garden, at least the flat area of our back garden (I'll go into the slope in another post), and then mapped it out on graph paper and planned the beds again and again till I was happy. I decided on 5'x3' beds with 3' walkways (good for the width of the wheelie bin and wheelbarrow), but I wanted to eek out more growing space. When I started the garden last year the first spot I planted was this spot inground was this space between the Valencia Orange and the gate. It's a small area about 8'x3'.

So I figured make a narrow bed along the wall, but what materials to use? Well we have some spare cinderblocks that were left from the previous owners around the side near the shed. Some digging, some leveling and the project was underway. I didn't want to go right up to the path so I decided to just have a 2ft deep bed, plus there is a lump of concrete under the birdbath and didn't want to dig that out to level the area. Make do with what you have!

After a single row I called it done. The cinderblocks are 12" high so plenty high enough, fill in with compost and called it done. Until about a month later when I added another little bed to the left under the tree, where the plastic container is in the photo below. Couldn't do that at the same time as the carrots were growing there (which were rubbish as the soil is crap as mentioned before).

I do like the cinderblocks as a raised bed medium. They work well. The bed was pretty productive over the fall/winter and I look forward to including it in my upcoming seasons planting schedule.

February I had $58.75 to spend on my gardening supplies. I had a total of three trips to garden centers etc and spent $45.64 which broke down as follows:

$3.00   Strawberry Plants - bare roots
$7.98   Potting Soil 2 cu ft
$1.00   Lavender Seeds
$1.00   Mint Seeds
$1.50   Onion sets
$2.00   Small plastic containers x2
$1.00   Black Radish Seeds
$1.99   Mint plant 4"
$1.99   Thyme Plant 4"
$1.97   Pack of Stakes 6'
$7.87   Compost 3 cu ft
$2.18  Topsoil 2 cu ft
$2.50   Peat Pots x 50
$6.00   Jiffy propagator 72 cell
$3.96   Seeds (nasturtiums x2, onions, pumpkin)

I plan on buying more of the strawberry plants and small 4" herb starters as I get going this month. I'd like to find some cheap, fairly shallow ( approx 6" High, 12" wide), square planters for a strawberry tower in the back (and possibly front) garden, plus I'll need more soil amendments for the front garden as I progress and start planting more.

The main budget breaker for March will be making good trellising for the upcoming season and bark for mulch & walkways! Good job March looks to be a great budget month! After tallying up the figures from February the March budget looks like:

Feb garden credit = $13.11
Feb grocery 1/2* = $142.05
Feb Harvest tally  = $18.92

Grand total for March = $174.08

Wow! That seems a lot!!! BUT, the trellising supplies plus bark chips is really going to set me back this month so I definitely need that budget!!! Plus this was the whole point in having the budget! Finding other areas to cut back in, so that I could finally spend some money on the garden!!! Now the bigger  challenge will be letting myself USE that budget for March!


Di


*Money saved on groceries for February divided by 2

New month begins, and before I get into discussing my goals for March I thought I'd update with my Harvest for February. Each time I harvest from the garden I grab the scales and weigh it. Last year I kind of fell off the wagon doing this, but now with the freedom harvest challenge I am inspired to keep up with the totals this year!

• 5oz Beet Greens
• 2oz Broccoli
  
• 2oz Chard
• 16oz  Collard Greens
• 14oz Mustard Greens
• 27oz Orange (Navel)
• 129oz Orange (Valencia)
• 6oz Peas
• 2oz Radish
• 1oz Tomato

• Orange (N) = 27oz @ 59c lb = 99c
  
• Orange (V) = 129oz @ 59c lb = $4.76
  
• Radish = 2oz @ 59c lb = 7c
  
• Tomato = 1 oz @ $1.99 lb =12c
• Collard greens = 16oz @ $2.99lb = $2.99
  
• Beet Greens = 5oz @  $6 lb = $1.87
  
• Broccoli = 6oz @ $3 lb = $1.12
• Chard = 2oz @ $6 lb = 75c
  
• Mustard Greens = 14oz @ $6 lb = $5.25
  
• Peas = 6oz @  $4 lb = $1.00

total harvest =  13lbs oz  or  $18.92