Category Archives: Square Food Garden

5 Things Friday

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  1. Overwhelmed yeap that is currently how I am feeling!  Today is the last day of school for Kendall and Zach. This means that for the short run 2 weeks or so we will have less to none things happening at night so maybe I can get caught up on the things that need doing.
  2. Garden- I am amazed at how much and how well things seem to be growing.  We have baby tomatoes, squash and snap peas. We are currently harvesting Kale, radish, dill and chives.. I want to get some pictures up soon!    One of the goals for the weekend is to finish planting. Amanda brought over a 8 container garden she built several years ago, I need to fill it along with one more container I found under the house. I have planted additional squash and zucchini this week so hopefully they will grow and produce as well.
  3. Summer project list- I have started working on the list of summer projects.  First up is finding someone to clear the area of land at the back of our house. We will be getting chickens in the near future so this area needs to be cleared in order to build a coop and run.  I also need to schedule our septic tank to be pumped.  After these two items are completed, we would like to get the bathroom floor re-titled and maybe get some vinyl in the kitchen.  That is the short list.
  4. Saturday goal- Replace the greenhouse roof that was destroyed by hail last week. We are going to convert it to hard plastic in order to extend the life and reduce maintenance.
  5. Financial goal- I need to do some serious bill pay and establish the new budget for June this weekend as well.

Did I mention I am overwhelmed?

5 Things Friday

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  1. My initial thought that things should get a little tiny bit easier this week was WRONG! This week has been crazy full and busy. We did add swim team practice 4 nights just for 2 weeks until the kids are finished with school.
  2. My Guam schools end this week. I have a few loose ends to catch up on but that is a huge portion off of my plate starting next Wednesday.

3..  I am so happy and excited about the way that my plants are taking off.. I would love to harvest several hundred pounds of veggies this summer. I have only purchased flowers and 2 cherry tomato plants. I have replanted basil and I directly planted 7 green pepper seeds this week. I am hoping that with a long hot summer and fall  these green peppers will have enough time to produce at least during the month of September.  We also purchased a lemon and lime tree that will leave on our back deck until the fall and hopefully survive the winter in the greenhouse.

  1. This weekend is busy with a baseball game tonight, graduation party tomorrow and Graduation Sunday at church on Sunday.

5.  I officially have 3 weeks or 15 school days standing between me and summer break. I really want it to hurry up and come but I also need things to slow down so I can finish up on everything I need to before summer break

Wordless Wednesday- Square Foot Garden

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Above are my “green stock” vertical planters.  We have close to 100 “pockets” planted between the two of these!

Front of house beds- 2 tomato beds and a “cooler” plant below

Tomato bed #1

Tomato bed #2. Marigolds are to help with disease, and I have also planted a row of basil in this bed!

Zucchini on both ends with kale, cabbage and broccoli in the middle with at least 30 bush green beans as well!

These are the beds that we moved behind the house.

sugar snap peas
Watermelon
peppers and squash
Peppers
more peppers
cucumbers and green beads
Green beans, zuccni and marigolds

I am super excited about how everything is growing this year!   My goal is to harvest 100 pounds of food.

This does not include the galloon size ziplock bag that is in the freezer of Kale for smoothies!

 

Saving on Saturday

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Today has been a very busy but productive day!

Garden/ Yard

  • Used pavers that we had stored to make the boundary for the new Raspberry bed, used the 2 large bags of dirt and 7 small bags of dirt from the greenhouse in the raspberry bed.  We decided to use some stakes and string that we already had as well so we ended up spending  ZERO on the new bed.
  • Purchased 3 raspberry stalks and 25 bare root strawberries from Stark Brother’s nursery for 1/4 of the cost of what I saw locally.  I ended up planting all of these today!
  • Purchased 3 zucchini plants for $1.50 and a 6 pack of marigolds($4.50) from the local farmer’s market and planted these today.

Food/ Meals

  • Made breakfast bowls for breakfast, used left-over KFC gravy on top. We made 15 breakfast burritos and placed them in the freezer to use as a quick breakfast in the coming weeks.
  • Made a batch of cowboy beans in the crockpot.  We had these for dinner, froze one additional meal and have 4 lunch bowls in the fridge
  • Used a pound of ground beef given to us to make stuffed green peppers for a meal this week. I will need to top with cheese before baking. This should be an quick and easy meal.
  • I found 1 pound rolls of sausage priced at $1.99.  I purchased 15 rolls with most going in the freezer for future use.  In comparison the next cheapest option as $3.49 for a roll and this was a sale price. I will likely be stopping by Food Lion again to see if they continue to carry the sausage at this price. If so I would like to collect about 30 rolls for the freezer in anticipation of prices continuing to rise.
  • Used the chicken legs from dinner this week to make chicken enchiladas that even Lily will be able to eat.
  • We have made at least 10 full meals today and did not need to purchase one single item! In fact our grocery spending for the month is at $60!
  • I was able to find a source to purchase a whole cow from this summer. The price per pound it $4.80 which is $1 higher than we paid 3 years ago so I am super excited to finish cleaning out the freezer so we can order the cow!

Zach discovered a water leak under the house this morning. Matt was able to fix with items already on hand. This saved us not only on the cost of calling a plumber but it will also help reduce our water bill as it was a major leak.

Matt purchased new tires for the camper from Amazon ($250 for 4). He took both the old tires and the new tires to a local shop and had the tires mounted for $40.  I am going to estimate this saved over $300 on tires. He did purchase a special tool that he needed. But this will be used in the future as well.

5 Things Friday

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  1. Barely survived this week with 2 ballgames and 2 doctors appointments.  Not sure what will happen next week with 3 ballgames, 1 chorus concert and 3 nights of work.
  2. The garden is growing!  I am super excited to see how everything is starting to take off. I am hoping for a nice harvest this year.  We are spending about 5 minutes a day pulling weeds so far so good.
  3. I want to get a couple of meals made ahead on Saturday in order to make things go a little smoother.
  4. Sunday we have all day plans which include Cracker Barrel, shopping and a trip to Durham.
  5. Lily has finished the spring semester at DDCC, Zach and Kendall have 3 weeks left of school and I have 6 weeks between me and summer break.

 

Saving on Saturday- Garden Edition

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Matt, Zach, Kendall and I spent most of the day outside planting the garden.  This year we hope to harvest a ton more food than in the past. I have replaced all the horrible soil. I also purchased two vertical planters. My intention was to devote one to strawberries. However, I was unable to fine any strawberry plants last night. So I think we will try to plant some different items and then know next year, it will be devoted to strawberries with probably 3 years until it is full of strawberries and producing like I anticipate.

This year, I decided to try and save money by starting everything from seeds.   I am going to have a master list below.  I have decided to try a variety of items in the vertical planter just to use up some seeds. This will allow me to decide what is a good plant to grow and really since we have the seeds not a waste if it does not work out! We started tomatoes and green peppers inside the first of March. We did lose about 1/4 of out plants while we were at Disney due to a watering problem but we still have more than plenty to enjoy.   After planting all that I wanted and planted to plant in the raised beds I have 2 empty squares. So I may open the Zucchini seeds I have just to plant more.  Depending on how many of the pepper plants live, I may be adding Zucchini and squash seeds as the weeks go on. I would also like to grow some pumpkins this year but not sure about where. I do know to start around July 1st. IF the radish and/or carrot produce well then I will like plant a second time at the end of August as well.  I did purchase several flowers from Lowes but will not purchase any more seeds or plants for vegetables until next year. I need to get these seeds used up and be diligent about what we are spending!

Now in the effort to be transparent as possible. I ended up paying the kids $20 to work outside the whole time with us so $40 and I ordered pizza for dinner $30.  We decided to use paper plates but these are from our camper stash. We had frozen items for lunch.  I don’t regret or feel bad about any of these as I am sore and tired. So there is no way that I could get this much done in a day without all the help that was given!

Things  Planted
1. 35 pepper plants including the one in the tomato bed.
2. 27 tomato plants (I purchased 2 cheery tomato plants because we like to snack on these)
3. 110 bush green bean seeds
4. 5 Zucchini seeds
5. 6 yellow squash seeds
6. 20 cucumber seeds in the raised beds. I am going to try at 12 more seeds in the vertical planter to see what happens.
7. 5 watermelon seeds
8. 3 cantaloupe seeds
9.  30 sugar snap peas 25 seeds and 5 plants ( I had already planted on packet with only 5 plants growing)
10. 24 radishes
11. 50 carrots
12. Basil- packet
13. Dill- pack
14. Paisley- pack
15. Chives- Pack

Now to watch it all grow!

Saving at Home

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Beside saving on gas by not going anywhere the other focus of saving lately has been with gardening. I am continuing to focus on using items in my freezer and pantry to help control my grocery bill but I also plan to do a lot of restocking this summer.  One of the things that I am hearing on repeat from the channels I watch on you tube as well as with most of the blogs that I follow is that we need to grow as much of our own food as possible.

Last year was a complete bust on growing food thanks to the awful soil that I ended up purchasing.  This year we have started with better soil so hopefully that is a better result.  My initial plan was to purchase most of the plants to start with as I think this is easier and have had better luck in the past. But as I started looking at my current selection of seeds I realized that I had lots of seed just sitting her. I also have containers and extra soil on hand.   To start plants from seed would save lots of money especially since the out of pocket cost was nothing.  I decided to go ahead and try and if I failed then I just wasted my time and effort. We started the seeds inside the house so that the temperature would be more consistent. The plan is to move these to the greenhouse next weekend.  Currently we have 27 pepper plants and 46 tomato plants!

In the red cups, I am trying to start our sweet potatoes!  I am very hopefully that after we return from Disney we will be able to move both the green pepper and the tomato plants out of the green house and into the beds.   I have WAY more tomatoes than I have need for or  have dedicated room for but will just plant what we have and use every spare pot and spot I can find in the mean time.

We have ended up with just a little bit of harvest from the greenhouse with some lettuce and spinach. I am not sure it will be worth using year round but it was a fun experiment. We also continue to have kale.

 

5 Things Friday

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  1.  Kendall had the stomach bug last Sunday. Today Zach has a stomach bug. This thing is awful.  I am praying that it only last 24 hours so Zach and I both can enjoy Lily’s performances on Saturday and Sunday.                                                                                         Now for more positive news!
  2. I found several packs of tomato and green pepper seeds in my seed box a couple of weeks ago. I decided to use some of the containers I have been saving along with dirt that we had left to try and see if I could grow any plants from seed.  I planted 2 packs of both.  Currently, we have about 75% germination rate for the green peppers and about 25% for the tomatoes which were planted almost 2 weeks later!   The goal would be to be able to transfer these to the garden in mid April and at least half survive. If I can get even 25% to survive that will decrease my out of pocket for the garden!
  3. Gas prices have seemed to level out and have returned to just under $4 a galloon for us.  This week we have focused on having the Tahoe sit as much as possible and using the Equinox which get a minimum of 10 miles per galloon better gas mileage. It has worked so far as we have put 2 additional tanks in the Equinox this week.
  4. I stopped by the store on my way home from work today in order to purchase a couple of items that we needed because of the stomach bug.  I spent $49 which included TIde pods, 2 containers of deodorant, 4 6-packs of soda, a bag of chips and 8 packages of sausage patties. I found the sausage patties on sale for $2.39 for a package of 8 patties.
  5. Our electric bill came in this week and it is over $100 less than last month!! I am so thankful!  The next bill is typically the lowest of the year due to not needing heat or a/c for several days at a time!

 

5 Things Friday

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  1. North Carolina weather in March…last Sunday 80 and this Sunday expected low of 18*
  2. The greenhouse is currently empty. We have moved all the plants outside, one of the reasons is that it was getting over 100* during the day in the greenhouse and that would cause most of the colder plants I had planted to bolt.  We have been enjoying both lettuce and spinach. The best part is walking by the lettuce and picking some to eat.  We have started both tomatoes and green peppers inside. It is easier to start inside for the first few weeks.  They will be moved outside about 4 weeks prior to plants to continue to grow in the greenhouse and for protection against our final freeze that usually occurs sometime in April.  We also turned off the heater to save a bit on electricity.
  3. This week for the first time in history, we paid over $4 a gallon for gas. $4.11 to be exact. But the knowledge that it took 16 years for gas to go from $3 a gallon to $4 should bring us all comfort.
  4. We are doing excellent on the grocery budget for the year. We have currently spent $2.82 for groceries this month.  For the sake of transparency, we did make a trip to Costco yesterday and used our credit card earnings to purchase sugar, dog food and some other items that we were out of.
  5. Our busy season is starting. Lily’s play is next week, Zach is managing the middle school baseball team while enjoying playing his last year at the booster club. I am now working 2.5 nights a week in Guam. And best of all our Disney countdown is shrinking!

Saving on Saturday

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  • The weather has finally turned nice on a weekend. So today we hung 6 loads of bedding on the line to dry. Which saved us over 8 hours of drying time plus they all smell so good!
  • Last weekend, we inventoried our freezers and listed 50 plus meals we could use. During this process, I realized we had 2 whole turkeys. We decided to cook one tomorrow and will have a great lunch with friends that has no out of pocket cost for us!
  • We rotated all of the cold weather plants out of the greenhouse. The temperature is not supposed to drop below freezing for the next 10 days and during the day the greenhouse reaches over 100 degree so in order to extend the growing life of these plants we have moved them outside.  In the process we discussed some spinach, lettuce and swiss chard that we can incorporate into our salads this week. We also turned off the heater which should save some electricity as well.
  • Matt was able to remove the sliding glass door and locate the defective piece. We were able to order the piece for $90 on Ebay. A fair estimate is that this saved us around $500 in the cost of a repair.
  • We took a clothing inventory and realized that new shorts are needed for most of the kids. I was able to order 14 pair of shorts at Old Navy for a total of $91.  I used my credit card rewards ($17), old navy super cash ($20) and combine with the current sale to really save.
  • I took both our vehicles to a local automatic carwash that is $5 for “the works” this is a huge savings for both time and money!