To be honest most of the time, saving money takes time and/or effort. There are, have been and will be times that I do not have the mental capacity to even attempt to add one single thing to my schedule. This week have been mentally and physically exhausting.  And I knew that we needed to get some major things checked off the list as we have a fun outing planned for next weekend.  My major goal for today was to get the tomatoes planted. I am happy to say that I accomplished that goal and will hopefully share more about it tomorrow.  And I definitely did not think I had time to save money but I decided that sometime you just have to go ahead with your plan.

We worked or should I say Matt worked adding automatic watering systems to the gardens last night. He focused on getting both our tomato beds set up to water at least daily.  We have been slowly working on this project and it was crunch time as I could not plant the tomatoes until it was complete. While we did end up purchasing a new solar pump and drip line, I am happy to say we re used both the solar pumps and now successfully have a watering system on all the bed. We also had enough of the drip line to not only complete both the tomato beds but also the front bed which this year contains watermelon. After some thought, we ended up using a food grade bucket as the source of the water.

Basically the watering system for this bed was free as we purchased nothing.

I have been watching the sales especially at Dollar General because they have been the cheapest place to purchase soda’s.   Today, I ended up going to two separate stores as the first store did not have enough pack for me to complete the deal. I was able to purchase two small plastic bags/containers for ninety cents each. My plan is that one is a spare bath basket and one is a good way to transport sunscreen.  I was able to purchase 6 twelve pack of soda and some chocolate bars for next weeks adventure for $31, which makes the cans around thirty-seven cent each.

While waiting for CVS to open, I was scrolling Facebook and noticed that the local farm was running a buy two get one free special on strawberries today.  I knew we needed the strawberries and this made them $14 a gallon or $3.50 a quart, this is half price and very similar to what you can purchase in the grocery store. I debated grabbing these as it meant that we would have to spend some time and effort in capping and flash freezing most of them.  I am so glad I did . The strawberries are juicy and delicious and we have frozen three gallon which means that I should be able to grab another two gallons and have enough for the next 12 months.