Shopping my wardrobe for shirts

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 April 2011 in frugal, less than 12 clothes challenge | 8 comments

Last night, I decided to go shopping in my wardrobe for shirts.

It’s about five months since I bought (or acquired by any means) any items of clothing or related apparel. The less than 12 in 11 challenge has been easier than I thought in many ways and my tally for the year is still zero – but recently I’ve been getting a bit more tempted towards breaking that embargo. After the long winter, I’m a little bored of my warm woollie options (or rather warm cotton hoodie options) and lately I’ve been getting a bit meh about my selection of my Spring-suitable tops too. A couple of weeks ago, I sorted out my chest-of-drawers drawers, which was great for refreshing my memory about my t-shirts and last night it was the shirts in the wardrobe’s turn.

I had 29 shirts & blouses in my wardrobe and another one in the wash. How many of those 30 shirts have I worn in the last month or, hell, the last three months? One. The one that’s in the wash (I’ve worn that all of twice). Admittedly it’s not really been light-cotton-shirt season of late and I don’t have anywhere that requires me to be smartly dressed but still – that’s a lot of shirts for someone who doesn’t wear shirts much. Ten – one-third – of the shirts were solid black from the days when I wore solid black shirts as a work uniform and standard going out wear. No one needs ten black shirts. Last night, I dragged them all down into the living room and tried them all on in turn (giving John a free boob flashing floor show at each iteration).

Of those 30 shirts, 14 straight up didn’t fit. They were either too short (especially as I wear my jeans low) or didn’t come close to closing around the boobs (I’ve got somewhat large sweater cows), or both. I think I’d kept at least half a dozen out of wishful thinking – because I love the patterns so much and won’t be able to replace them. The one at the back of the picture above with green stars on it hasn’t ever been worn because not only was it a little snug upfront, the arm holes were blood-pressure-band tight on me. (Having said that, it’s a lovely, lovely shirt – if anyone wants it, let me know and I’ll post it out. It’s a size 14 and there is a bigger picture here.) Those shirts will go to charity shops or into my crafty fabric stash depending on re-wearability/pattern.

Out of the remaining 16 shirts, two need repairing (button replacements) and five need to be worn over a vest top or under a jumper. Nine – less than a third of my shirt collection – were fine — they fit and I still like them.

Getting rid of nearly half my shirts might not sound like “shopping” but it was really useful to go through them all and remind myself what I have (I’d straight up forgotten about at least three of the keepers), and what they look like/how they can be worn. I think I’d stopped even thinking about wearing shirts because it was depressing to look in my wardrobe and see so many that didn’t fit or couldn’t be worn as they are for whatever reason. Looking at it one way, I’m losing near half my shirt collection; looking at it another way, I just gained nine new shirts ;)

An afternoon of sowing and potting on

Posted by louisa on Thursday 14 April 2011 in growing | 3 comments

Just so I’ve got a record of what has been planted/potted on and when — and what I have to do on Sunday.

Sown:

• Achocha – weee, I’ve been super-excited about these since I heard about them from The Cottage Smallholder
• Borage – for my mini forest garden bed
• Broccoli – misc cheap variety
• Broccoli Rabb/Rapini – only heard about this at the weekend but very excited about them
• Carrots – just a misc variety I picked up for 75% off late last year
• Courgettes – two hybrid varieties (Cavali F1 and Parthenon F1)
• Dwarf beans – some from the packet, some from saved seed
• Marigolds – I don’t normally do flowers but a good companion plant. Winning of the weirdest seeds of the day award – they looked like baby octopus tentacles.
• Oregano – winning the tiniest seeds of the day award
• Perpetual spinach – leftover from last year, not sure how they’ll do
• Sweet peas – the only other flower generally allowed here

Potted on:

• Butternut squash
• Cucumbers batch #2

To sow at the weekend:

• Lettuce – more tom thumbs for when the current batch are harvested
• Mixed CCA salad leaves – ditto
• All sorts of wildflowers
• Cat grass & cat nip
• The rest of the potatoes
• Greens for the chickens if I make a feeder like Kate from Living the Frugal Life

To be potted on/transplanted at the weekend:

• Tomatoes – first batch big ones and the smaller second batch ones
• Swiss chard
• Beetroot
• Potatoes – well, not transplanted on but the very earlies need levelling up

Poll: what seeds have you started so far this year?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 14 April 2011 in growing | 0 comments

I’ve been seeing lots of people blogging and tweeting about their greenhouse contents recently – what’s been sown and when. It’s interesting that some people nearby are planting some of their things much later than me – but other things earlier. I guess we all find our sweet spots between ours schedules and our plants’ demands.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see what people have sown up until now so I made a poll – feel free to tick all that apply. Sorry some things have been grouped together and other things have been missed out entirely — the only way to avoid the list getting super-super long!

I’ve put my answers in now but I’m hoping to add to it by the end of the day – I’ve got a whole load of “to plant in April” things just begging to jump into soil!

Tomatoes: determinate or indeterminate, that is the question

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 13 April 2011 in growing | 2 comments

I think I’ve just about reached the stage where my first set of tomatoes needs potting on.

These are the ones that survived the Great Damping Off Disaster of 2011 and they seem to be doing quite well. I have some later ones that are still in modules – they’ll need moving up a stage in a week or so but I think this first batch could use moving on ASAP as I think they’re a little cramped now and starting to suffer as a result.

Up until now, I’ve been more interested in the resulting type of tomato than the actual growing process – I’m a naughty gardener, naughty naughty – and I suspect my crops have suffered as a result.

Now that I’m trying to be more efficient though, I want to do things right. This “potting on” stage now will potentially be to the plants’ final destinations so I’ve been reading about determinates/indeterminates and that sort of thing to make sure the right tomatoes end up in the right pot. According to the wonderful Wikipedia,

Determinate, or bush, types bear a full crop all at once and top off at a specific height; they are often good choices for container growing. Determinate types are preferred by commercial growers who wish to harvest a whole field at one time, or home growers interested in canning. Indeterminate cultivars develop into vines that never top off and continue producing until killed by frost. They are preferred by home growers who wish ripe fruit throughout the season.

I have planted three main types of tomatoes this year: some rich Roma plums for sauces, some sweet cherry tomatoes (Sweet Million F1 – I sowed some yellow cherry Golden Nuggets as well but they all died in the aforementioned Damping Off Tragedy), and some “standard size” Moneymakers. Nothing too exciting but some variety – some for now, some for sauces, some for whatever.

According to a bit of Googling around, I’ve found Roma tomatoes are a determinate bush, Sweet Million an indeterminate vine and Moneymaker is another indeterminate vine, albeit with slightly bigger fruit.

I had hoped to grow some in the greenhouse (in big pots and growbags) but had thought I’d take advantage of some vertical height in the garden by growing some in hanging baskets/upside down containers too. (Although I’d keep said baskets/containers in the greenhouse for at least another few weeks until it gets a bit warmer.)

eHow (which I admittedly always read with a slightly sceptical eye) tells me:

For baskets, you will want to use determinate tomato plants because they will not continue to grow bigger than the basket can hold, while indeterminate ones will.

But equally, I have to consider tomato size:

The size of the tomato plays an important role in whether or not it is going to be best for growing in baskets. Traditionally, there is less room in hanging baskets for a plant to reach full maturity. Therefore, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and other dwarf tomatoes will work best in hanging baskets.

Ok… The “standard size” indeterminate Moneymakers seem destined to grow as cordons from pots/bags in the greenhouse – easy peasy. But what about the Roma & cherry tomatoes? The determinate Roma may be suitable for a hanging basket as they won’t sprawl, but perhaps the plum size fruit will be too big/thirsty for in a basket? The cherry tomatoes are the perfect size for a basket but my variety’s indeterminate nature may cause problems there…

Any experienced tomato growers care to weigh in? Do you prefer all determinate or all indeterminate or a combination of the two?

Using our homemade olive oil soap

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 April 2011 in making, soap | 9 comments

Last week, we started using our homemade olive oil soap.

You might remember I spent A MILLION HOURS waiting for the damn thing to trace back in February but didn’t think it would work because it was sloppy in the moulds for a few days. Then it started to solidify and I did a happy dance.

So, anyway, after a few more weeks of curing/drying, we started using it last week. I went with one of the 100% olive oil ones, not the one-third olive oil, two-thirds other veg oils (more on those later when we try them).

I was really paranoid at first – worried it would be too caustic or something – so made sure to scrap off the bits of white powder (soda ash) from the edges, rather than just washing it off. Cavitch’s troubleshooting guide says to beware of “excessive” white powder as that can indicate too much lye or hard water has been used – but I don’t think my white powder was “excessive”, just some.

The soap is very pale – almost pure white. Apparently the better quality of olive oil, the paler the resulting soap. My olive oil (which came from Netto) claimed to be extra virgin so this fits. It has quite a neutral smell – slightly olive oil-ish but nowhere near as strong as the olive oil I started with. It’s pretty hard now and doesn’t lather much at all – but that’s expected with pure olive oil soap and the latter isn’t a huge problem as it’s not like we’ll be using it as shaving soap or anything like that.

So anyway, the verdict. It feels nice to use – smooth and silky, and no alkaline burns at all – always a good thing in a soap ;). Because of the play and stuff last week, I haven’t actually got my hands that dirty since we started using the soap so can’t comment on the actual cleaning properties but it leaves my skin feeling clean – and … not “squeaky”. I don’t know how to describe it but whenever I usually use normal bar soap, my skin feels “squeaky” afterwards – presumably either dryness or some sort of residue. That isn’t a problem with our olive oil soap – even when I washed them five times in a row to double-triple-quintiple check that it wasn’t too caustic (yes, really overly paranoid).

As I said explained in my last soap post, we’re not interested in pretty or pleasantly perfumed soaps – we want them to clean us, be long lasting, to have an inoffensive smell, create minimal waste and be frugal. The hardness of this soap means it doesn’t turn to mush in the soap dish and the only waste produced were two plastic bottles (which can be recycled – but one of which was actually reused as a soap mould first).

As for the frugalness, I had used this recipe and method which called for 1 litre of olive oil, 126g of caustic soda and 300g of water. I paid £2.52 for the olive oil from Netto, about £1.50 (I’ve lost the receipt!) for 500g of caustic soda from Wilkinsons (so about 38p for the amount I used) and tap water (which is effectively free), so the consumables cost around £2.90 for the batch. (I did buy a pan and steel dish to use too – but they’ll be used again for soap making and other non-foody pursuits (such as dyeing) so I considered them a general craft supply costs rather than including them in these figures.)

Weighing it just now, I’ve got around 1050g of dried, ready-to-use soap – or 35p per 125g bar — my bars differ in sizes (from about 50g, for the ones from the fruit tray mould – as seen in the pictures – to about 125g for ones shaped in an old mini roaster tray) but that’s the size of a bar of Oliva soap, which is the 100% olive oil soap we’d used previously, so is a good comparison. Oliva usually costs about £1 a bar.

All in all, I’m glad I tried it and I’m very happy with the result – but it was a bit of a faff. I think I did the right thing by processing two loads of soap on the same day so made economies of scale re: faffiness. Hopefully the soap we’ve got now will last us about a year – I’d happily do it once every six months or a year but I couldn’t be bothered doing it much more frequently than that.