I am very happy to report that our greenhouse worked very well while we were in Disney. We came back to healthy and growing plants. We have continued to leave things in the greenhouse until I was a bit more comfortable with no frost or freeze. The predicted last frost date is April 24th. I have been stalking the weather and with no temperatures below 40 in the next 2 weeks, I wanted to get started!  This week, I have been focused on getting some seeds in the ground in order to give them a good start. I have planted cucumbers, basil, zucchini and cantaloupe from seed.  I also purchased flowers, a few strawberry plants and herbs over the last week. The green stalk containers are starting to look pretty.

Yesterday, I was able to get 20 Roma tomato plants and 1 cherry tomato plant in the ground as well.  I want to remember that I need 22 Roma tomato plants for next year to completely fill the long bed.  I was pleasantly surprised to have 4 more Roma tomato plants that what I had counted before we left. I am hopeful that this trend continues! The goal is to get all the tomatoes and peppers planted in the ground by next Saturday unless of course a chance of frost pops up!

We have spent some money on the garden this year. I spent $85 in Mocksville at the farm stand and $21 at the Lexington Farm stand.  Last Sunday, we purchased a new pear tree, a new blueberry tree and a load of dirt for a total of $124.  Last night we also spent another $75 at Home Depot for some supplies such as ant killer and weed killer. This brings our total to $305 currently.  In order to plant the regular tomatoes we have decided to purchase a cattle panel to use as trellis.  I am hoping to keep the total cost to under $400 which is half of our grocery budget for the month.  If we can produce enough salsa and spaghetti sauce for the year then this is a huge money saver!

Hopefully next week we will have a recap of all the numbers and compare to what I thought we started with!