Plants & pots & seeds

Posted by louisa on Monday 4 July 2011 in growing | 5 comments

Thanks for all your batch cooking and what-to-grow-in-my-empty-spots suggestions! I’ll reply to the comments as soon as I can but I’m feeling very inspired by both! :)

I mentioned on the empty-spots-in-the-garden post that I was visiting my mum & dad on Saturday and my dad might have some spare plants for me – well, he certainly did. He gave me:

Six lavender plants – he was offering more (he’s gone a little lavender crazy this year) but I don’t have room for them. As it is, a couple of these will go to our neighbour who loves lavender.

Three (admittedly slightly pot-bound) chillis and eight (capsicums) pepper plants. These will need potting on immediately and I’m not convinced we’ll have quite a long enough season to really benefit from them – but I’ve got others of both so these will just be bonuses (and I’m going to try overwintering all my chillis this year too). They will, of course, have to stay in the greenhouse rather than filling up my currently empty containers/bed – and last week that would have worried me because I’m running low on decent sized pots … which I mentioned to my dad and lo & behold:

40+ decent sized pots. (Leaves in the photo for scale and not just because we’ve not swept the porch recently ;) ) He has hundreds stashed near his old greenhouses (from when he knew a landscape gardener and saved them from landfill) — I only took 40 this time but could have taken ten times that. I feel confident I might never need to buy a medium size plant pot again ;)

My mum also had a box of goodies for me – old jars, egg boxes and whatnot – and included in that were some seeds that they’d got free but wouldn’t use: packets of peas, coriander, tomatoes, land cress, rocket and all year round lettuce. I’m going to use a couple of my foot-square scrap wood planters for the rocket & land cress, and the rest can join my seed stash for use next year. (At last count, I’ve got about 18 packets of seeds free this year from one source or another – about half flowers, the rest veg – so hopefully next year will be a cheap year!)

So not only did we get to introduce Lily-dog to the sea (funny!), have pink-and-white ice creams and a visit to Broadhursts – oh, and see my mum & dad, my garden is a little fuller now too :)

What did you get up to this weekend? Did you get to enjoy the sun?

Falling short – empty spaces in the garden, boo

Posted by louisa on Friday 1 July 2011 in growing | 9 comments

I’ve spent most of this afternoon pottering in the garden and as time went on, I had a strange realisation: I’ve actually fallen short in what I’ve sown this year.

I have everything planted in final positions now and I’ve still got a bed, two wooden troughs and some containers empty. Well, the bed’s not empty, it’s full of self-seeded borage (pictured above – which I was happy to let grow until I needed the space for something else) but the wooden troughs are empty-empty — and annoyingly, it’s the nice ones I made at the start of the year. I’ve been using them as extra temporary staging in the greenhouse so all the others were filled up first, and here I am now with nothing to put in them. Boo.

I had problems with damping off at the start of the year and some stuff went to seed because I didn’t pot it on soon enough during the warm (and chaotic here) spring – if those problems hadn’t happened, I’d probably have actually sown about the right amount of stuff this year (amazingly!) but since they did, I’m left with some empty spots. Shockingly bad behaviour, isn’t it?

So now I’m wondering what, if anything, I could put in them. Any suggestions?

I’m going to see my mum & dad tomorrow* so my dad might have some spare things he could give me in exchange for the eggs and courgettes I’ll be taking. (*Mum, if I haven’t called you by the time you’re reading this, we’re coming tomorrow. Hope you’re not working all day or out. Also if you’ve been shopping today, I hope you didn’t buy lots of eggs and courgettes. ;) )

My beloved Hessayon book tells me I could plant some late peas for autumn sowing — and actually I’ve already got some seedlings that we were going to eat as pea shoots. I do though have issues with growing peas so maybe we should just eat them in their childhood form as planned.

I think we’ve got just about enough salad leaves in containers dotted around the place – although if I can’t think about anything else, I’ll grow some more lettuce.

I *could* just leave them empty, but where would the fun be in that? ;)

Have you got any empty spots this year or are you filled to the proverbial rafters? What would you plant if you had an empty bed/some empty containers at this time of year?

What are your favourite recipes to batch cook?

Posted by louisa on Friday 1 July 2011 in cooking, Featured, frugal | 9 comments

I mentioned in passing the other week that we’ve got a bit more freezer space these days and I’m keen to fill it with homemade ready meals and good food, so there is no room for processed stuff (or vast quantities of ice cream) from the supermarket.

John and I don’t particularly batch cook but we do generally cook large portions of things – nearly everything that takes longer than, say, 20 minutes is made in double portions (so it’s two dinners for the two of us) but a pasta sauce or curry might be eight or ten portions (two fresh dinners for us, the rest frozen for future use). Making a large batch of pasta sauce or curry doesn’t take any longer than a small one but the leftovers only take a few minutes to reheat next time.

But then I hear about people doing proper en masse batch cooking and I feel like such a homemade ready meal amateur. For example, this wonderful lady managed to make 46 dinners for her family of four, from things that cost just $96 in a reduced-to-clear meets batch cooking extravaganza.

I’d like to start batch cooking more – making eight to ten portions of any one thing at a time – but I’d like a bit more variety — the aforementioned curry (usually keema & chickpea achar) and pasta sauces are great, as are soups and versatile bean chillis, but I’d welcome more ideas for a bit of a change, and also to have ideas in mind so I can take advantage of more reduced-to-clear type bargains.

Do you batch cook? Do you set aside an afternoon/evening every so often to do it or do you just do it as you’re going along? What are your favourite recipes?

First half of 2011 spending breakdown

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 June 2011 in frugal, low spend 11, personal finance | 6 comments

After the one I made for my June spending at lunchtime, I’m in a graph making mood so I’ve made one to show (myself) where my money has gone in the first half of 2011.

Here’s said graph:

And here’s the details in a table:

(** Takeout food and restaurant bills; my share of all bills or the total bill if I paid for everyone.)

Inspired by Shoestring Alley, I started tracking my spending at the start of the year and decided to record everything I spent “frivolously” – ie. not core bills or to-be-eaten/prepared-at-home food, but everything else. I wanted to start doing it to make me more conscious of my spending habits – to see where the money goes and to know that if I buy something silly/completely frivolous then I still have to hold myself accountable over it. A tool to help me reduce spending & consumption across the board.

It’s really worked – I’ve spent far less money on random things than I ever have done before. I’m actually really surprised how low “books” is as back when I was working full time, I could easily spend that on books each month and I got my money’s worth out of my book buying even then. (Disclaimer: most of the work-related stuff is books too, but books I wouldn’t ever buy or read if I didn’t need them – I would NOT be reading Shakespeare if I had a choice in it! ;) )

Apparently it takes just over two months to form a new habit and I think in the last six months, I have formed a habit of being conscious of my spending and not giving into temptation/the desire to buy things. Over the last month in particular, I’ve not spent a lot (by my previous standards) of frivolous money but I’ve not in any well felt hard done by, which is good, because that could lead to binge spending. There is still room to easily cut down – on lazy/convenience food, on pretty household stuff (related to us still settling in/decorating our house), and on craft supplies – but aside from food & travel costs, I’m pretty ok with it.

Do you track your spending? Do you find it motivating or restrictive?

June – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 30 June 2011 in goals, less than 12 clothes challenge, low spend 11 | 5 comments

I seem to have been writing a lot of review-type-posts lately – all very introspective (sorry!) but I do very much learn from my past mistakes so it’s good to think about them. So then, June….

Goals in 2011 progress

We’re finally starting to get good food from the garden so I could see myself easily doing “full meal from the garden” thing in July. I haven’t made any provisions for the off-grid stuff though.

I’ve been starting to take cuttings of various herbs and will continue to do that – and I’ve come up with a way of measuring success of that goal — a list of things I’d like to successfully propagate this year (and a few things I’d like to try to overwinter – since that’s a similar idea).

My making stuff with wood has slowed down – boo – and aside from a little embroidery, haven’t done much craft stuff either – no outfit sewing either. Inspired by this tutorial though, I’m going to set aside a day in July to do a bit of sewing and I’m also tempted to join the Crazy Aunt Purl holey jumper KAL — that would be my first knitted jumper (and, um, actually my first knitting since I fell in love with crochet nearly two years ago!).

No more fishing progress – boo again – but I might try to get us a day booked in before the main school holidays start – I think I have a week window between being busy with drama and the holidays so better get a move on!

Not really baked that much, not made cheese, not done any cold-smoking and not met any internet people. Been a bit lazy recently really! Recapping that here make me feel I should be a bit more motivated in July!

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

Not bought anything this month – so my clothes buying tally is still zero (with just a few second-hand/BNWT bras from my exception list last month). I can’t believe I’ve not bought any clothes for over seven months now!