Flour Sack Friday - Frugal Garden Fixes

Now that I'm getting back into the swing of regular posts, I thought today would be the perfect day to bring back Flour Sack Fridays!

And, hear me now, they will be coming back in full force.  In fact, in many coming posts to this blog the emphasis will be placed on our efforts to live as intentionally frugal as possible.  This concept has always been in our family in various ways, shapes, and forms, but now we plan to "step it up a notch!"

There are lots of good reasons for this (one being that we will soon have another sweet mouth to feed) and the other is that it can be just plain more fun and interesting to live this kind of life!  I have found that I am always at my most inspired and creative when we have set goals, both financial and lifestyle, that we're working toward.

So, without further ado,  our humble little vegetable garden will be launching the new and improved Flour Sack Friday!

My four little tomato plants are doing quite well.  (Yay!)  The bed rails were sawed and laid by yours truly from an old board I found in the garage.  Our stakes were generously provided by the many pine trees that live (rent-free) in our backyard. 

I spent about $8 on the four plants.

We returned from our vacation only to find our little pepper and cucumber bed overrun with grass.  I was not too surprised, since this is the first year we've planted in this bed.  I was contemplating getting some garden plastic at the hardware store to kill the grass, when my neighbor suggested using newspaper and rocks.  It's what her grandmother used to do, she said.

And do you know what?  It's worked like a charm.  The cucumbers are lovely but the peppers, sadly, are not.  But even if I get  four peppers out of them, it will still pay for the $6 I spent on the plants!

I spent $6 on the cucumbers, and I can already feel in my blood that we will get a fabulous return on our cucumber investment.

And the basil?  Well...there is nothing spectacularly frugal about this one....I just thought it was a very nice picture of basil. :)  (We did buy it from a fundraiser, though, if that counts!)

All in all, I am pleased to predict that our little harvest will be quite bountiful for just about $20!

Comments

[Ellen]

Yeah! Flour Sack Fridays! Love love love the sticks for the tomato plants. I think we may use that next year. Unfortunately many of our tomatoes are not doing well. It's a real bummer.

[Kristen]

Uh....just put the paper right over top. The pregnant lady's way :)

[tara]

You have no idea how timely this post is!!! I have been needing to weed the grass out of my garden for about a week, but it has been so hot.Did you weed first or just put the paper down?

[jen]

I'm so glad you're back to blogging! And I hope your cucumbers do well. Our vines were doing sooooo well. THen we got some kind of wilt. We probably got our money's worth but it's such a disappointing thing to know that we have no more cucumbers this summer. :-(