Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Time to Plan Your Garden

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Spring is finally here.  The sun is shining a little brighter (and warmer too), and the ground is starting to warm up.  And with all of that, those of us who garden are beginning to get a little antsy to start putting seeds and plants in the ground and begin growing them.  In many parts of the states, it’s still much too early to start planting though.  So, what is a anticipatory gardener to do?  It’s a great time to begin planning the garden and preparing for the planting season.

Maintenance and Clean-up of your Garden

I like to start with the maintenance and clean-up of the garden area as soon as I’m able.  I get to go outside and, while I can’t plant anything, I can begin to prepare for doing so.  There’s always some leaves that fall after I rake for the last time in the fall that can be collected.  We do most of our growing in containers, so it’s a good time to make sure the dead plants from last year are removed (fall quickly became winter last year and I didn’t get a chance to remove them) from the containers.  If you’ve got any gardening structures, like lattices, nets, etc, you can give them a quick once over to make sure that they’re all still in usable condition and don’t need any repairs.

Plan Your Garden

What Will You Grow?

For several years, we’ve been playing with and experimenting in our garden.  We’ve been planting some new varieties of plants that we haven’t before (last year we had Eggplant and Brussels Sprouts) and planting some things in different locations than we have before.  This year, we might do the opposite and refine what we grow a little bit.  There are a few staples that we’ve grown every year that we’ll grow again, like Tomatoes, Potatoes, Green Beans, and Cucumbers.  We added some Snow Peas to the garden last year and they did really well, so we’ll be planting more of those this year as well.  A couple of crops that we have grown in the past, but all depend on space are Carrots and Onions.  We’ve never had a whole lot of success with them, so they might get scrapped to leave more room for more of the other plants.  We’ve also got a few smaller containers that we’ve discovered are a little small for most of the stuff we’d like to grow, so we might throw  some herbs in those and see what we end up with.

Start Your Seeds Indoors

This is one thing that I’ve really struggled with over the years.  For whatever reason, I always end up with most of my seedlings dying before I can transplant them, or with them dying shortly after transplanting.  It is much cheaper to buy seeds and then start them indoors for transplanting, than it is to go and buy plants at the nursery, though, so I keep trying.  I’ll do so again this year, and we’ll likely supplement with a few plants from the nursery just to be sure we get some strong plants.  The growing season (outdoors) here doesn’t really start until late May or early June, so I generally try and hold myself back from planting seeds indoors any sooner than mid to late April.  Even that is probably pushing it, and probably should be pushed out to early May.

I find that giving some thought to the garden before you get to the planting stage acts a little like a budget.  If you’ve got a plan for what you want to plant, and when, you have something to stick to and keep yourself from going overboard with plants you won’t have room for, or that won’t do well in your garden.  It saves you money, and work.

What do you do to begin the gardening season?

World Diets: A Week’s Worth of Groceries

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Ok, so I saw this post over at FStoppers about What a Week of Groceries Looks Like Around the World, and I couldn’t help but mark it for a second look, and eventually an article here.  Click on that link and go take a look.  Look at what each picture contains and then come back and see if you come to the same conclusion that I do.  I’ll wait.

Done?  Ok, first, let’s talk about some “givens” that I found to be somewhat ironic, simply because they also could be considered stereotypes.  I’ll start at the top.

  • Mexico: OMG, you guys like Coke!  
  • Germany: First thing I noticed was all the beer and wine right up front.
  • Italy: Lots of the expected breads and pastas
  • Japan: Fish, noodles, and rice.
  • Mali and Chad: That’s it?

Obviously, there are some things that we expect.  Countries like Mali and Chad that we’re hearing about starvation or near starvation like conditions in sometimes have an obviously lesser pile of food.  Japan is notorious for it’s high-fish diet.  And Germany.  Germany!  I suppose I can’t expect much else from the country of Octoberfest.

A couple of surprises.  I’m a little bit surprised by the lack of sausages in the Poland picture.  For the number of Polish sausages we eat here in the states that is.  (Ok, that’s kind of tongue in cheek.)

Now, let’s see if you noticed the same thing I noticed.  Every single country on that list eats way more fresh food than the American family.  Seriously. Look at that picture.  There’s a little section of it that’s got some produce (a couple of tomatoes, some onions, and some grapes), and another small section of fresh meat.  That’s it.  The rest looks to be processed and packaged foods.  The only other countries that appear to even be close are Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.  Which is funny.  In an ironic sad way.

All four of those countries are usually lumped together as “first-world” countries.  We’re rich!  We have everything we could ever want!  And somehow, every other country on that list eats better than we do…  Heck, let’s look at Mexico.  Most Americans tend to think of Mexico as a drug addled, gang run, hovel.  But, look at that food!  Fresh herbs right off the plant!  A whole table of fresh fruits and vegetables!  Same story for India, Bhutan, Guatemala, and Equador!

Why is it that we all think that produce is so expensive, but we’ll gladly pay $10 for a large pizza?  Or $10 for a burger and fries?  It also makes me wonder just how much of that food those people grow themselves.  It’s not that expensive to start a garden.  Heck, even a container garden will do.  We’re just getting ready to plant out our second season (see season one’s results) of container gardening.  So far, I’ve spent about $2 on seeds.  Buy a few pots, get some soil, and plant some plants.  Fresh produce!

I’ve gotten a bit ranty, but it amazes me how poorly we eat in our “rich” country.  You’d think we’d be smarter than that…

 

My Container Garden: The Season is Over

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This spring, frustrated by the lack of any good growing space in our yard, we decided to give a container garden a try.  We bought up a whole bunch of pots to put everything in, got some good potting soil, and planted away.  Once we were done, we planted a couple pots of tomatoes, a couple pots of cucumbers, a longish pot of green beans, a pot of green peppers, a longish pot of carrots, two pots of onions, and two large pots of potatoes.

Last weekend, with the low temperatures in the forecast dipping below the 32 degree mark, we decided it was a good time to pull up the root vegetables, and pick anything that was ripe.  Considering the few silly things we did, and the terribly hot summer we had, I think we did O.K.

Container Garden Harvest

In the picture, you can see some of what we pulled up last weekend. I wasn’t quick enough on the camera trigger to get pictures of the carrots or peppers before they got taken into the house. Also not pictured are any of the cucumbers, beans, or tomatoes we’ve harvested throughout the summer, or any of 10 or so potatoes that we pulled out from the bottom of the potato bag in August.

Overall, I’d have to say that I was slightly disappointed with the harvest.  None of the onions grew to very good size.  What cucumbers we did harvest were all seeds and no flesh.  The heat really played havoc on most of the plants in the containers.  There were several weeks where the plants really needed to be watered every night, but we were either gone, or didn’t get home in time to do it.  I also made the mistake of planting a few too many plants in some of the containers, and I think they got crowded which stunted their growth.

The quality of what we got, however, was pretty good.  Fresh potatoes taste nothing like what you get from the store, they’re so buttery and sweet.  The onions, while small, were very good as well.  My wife made a salsa with some of the tomatoes and onions, and it was very, very good.

I’ve already got a pretty good mental list of the things that I’ll be changing next year.

  • We get such a short growing season here, that I either need to start the seeds much earlier in the house, or just spend the money and buy greenhouse plants when it’s time to plant.
  • I’ll have to be careful to reduce the number of plants in the pots as well, to cut back on the crowding issue we had.
  • I’m also thinking about building a few planters attached to the deck so I don’t have to buy any more pots.  Of course, I could try and find some second hand pots as well.
  • The soil we use may have to change a bit as well.  The stuff we bought this year, while good potting soil, just didn’t seem to keep it’s consistency very well.  Part of that may have been the need for more watering.
  • I’ll be changing the mix of plants that I plant as well.  The cucumbers didn’t seem to take to containers all that well, so I might cut those in half.  I’d also like to add a few more tomato plants, and a few more varieties of peppers.  We only planted green peppers this year, but I’d like to try some jalapeno, and maybe another variety of hot pepper.

How did your garden turn out this year?  Do you plant in a garden or in containers?