Garden Give-Away

For the first time, I am doing a give-away here on Every Day Frugal, Every Day Green. The prize is:







Burpee's Eco-Friendly Seed Starting Kit.
I chose this give-away because I want to encourage everyone I know to try to grow something edible this year...whether it's a full-scale vegetable garden or a few herbs in pots.

The seed starter kit, which comes with 25 planter cells, a watering bamboo watering tray, growing pellets (these take the place of regular soil), 6 plant markers and a some organic fertilizer. The entire kit is made of sustainable and compostable materials. Starting some seeds indoors is a great way to ease your way into gardening if you're a novice. And if you're an old hand, you can always use some new equipment, right?

For an opportunity to win this item, simply leave a comment at the end of this post. You will need to include your email address in the post, or check back later to see if you have won and then get in touch with me. I'll announce the winner on Saturday, March 6.

Good luck!!!

Time to Plan the Spring Vegetable Garden

Here we are at the end of February and all my gardening friends are really getting itchy to be in the garden. Some ordered their seeds months ago and have started seeds on trays under grow lights in the basement or on sunny window sills. Others are still pouring over the catalogs (on line, I hope - paper catalogs aren't very green). And the lucky ones have already been able to dig in the dirt and plant seeds outdoors. One of my favorite bloggers, Deanna Duke of The Crunchy Chicken, just started her Urban Farming 2010 series and reported yesterday that daffodils and cherry trees are blooming in her Seattle backyard. She has planted asparagus, parsley and cilantro, and is getting ready to put in the peas and beets.

In southeastern Pennsylvania where I live, we still have a foot of snow on the ground. Despite current temperatures in the 40s and several days of rain in the forecast, it will be weeks before we can begin to work the soil. Traditionally, we plant peas on St. Patrick's Day. While I'm hoping that will be possible, I'm not going to expect it.

In the meantime, I've placed a small order with Burpee Seeds (full disclosure: I have written for Burpee publications in the past; have tested and written about some of their seed varieties; and will be reviewing a group of seeds on this blog during the gardening season; they will be giving me some of those seeds, others I will purchase).

The Burpee order is for arugula, Bush Champion cucumbers, Oregon Sugar Snap II snow peas, Classic Mix mesclun, Sunburst Hybrid patty pan summer squash, Early Acorn Hybrid winter squash, Blue Baby Hybrid hubbard squash, Cornells Bush Delicata winter squash, Heatwave looseleaf lettuce and 4 Seasons lettuce.

I also plan to buy additional seeds for green beans, zucchini, gold and red beets, butternut squash, dill, parsley and basil. Later, when all danger of frost is past, which will be somewhere around Mother's Day here, I'll buy seedlings - tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers along with sage, thyme and rosemary - from local growers.

The garden I'll be planting is a cooperative one. My friends Michele, Leah and Kim and I are developing a 400 square foot vegetable garden at Michele's home. Our goal is to grow as much fresh produce as we received from the two CSA shares we had between the four of us for the past three summers, but for less money (we paid $800 per share). We also hope to have more of the veggies we like best.

In the fall, we hired a man to rototill the space. His fee worked out to $38 each, which was less than the cost of renting a tiller for the day, transporting it to the site and back to the rental firm - not to mention the fact that he was much better at that chore than we would have been. Michele has generously offered to pay a contractor to erect a fence around the garden (rabbits, ground hogs and deer are an issue) so that is an expense we won't have to share..

We have met twice - once in the fall and once in January to fine-tune the list of plants we will grow (no Brussells sprouts because Kim hates them; lots of summer and winter squash because we all love them; a little rainbow chard because it's one of my favorites, and I've decided it's a non-negotiable item; and tons of tomatoes because what's a summer garden without tomatoes?!).

We have decided that we will use only organic fertilizers including chicken manure from Michele's chickens; we will deal with insects without commercial pesticides; and we will not limit ourselves to organic plants and seeds. The work load will be divided up as evenly as possible. Michele will take on a lot of the watering duty since, because, depending on the weather, some plants may need watering more than once a day. Everyone will plant and weed. And we'll need to work out a harvesting schedule.

Our next pre-planting task will be to plot out the garden. We'll use a graph-paper type planner to determine what plants will go where, how many rows we'll need, how long and wide each row will be, and how many plants we'll have room for.

We'll also start collecting materials for staking the tomatoes using postings on Craigslist and Freecycle. We may attempt to make our own tomato cages. Fortunately, we still have plenty of time for that.

What do you have planned for your garden this year? What do you do to keep your gardening expenses in check? Please share.

Using Home-Grown Herbs Adds Big Flavor For Little Money

Last week I made several onion quiches for a couple of open houses at listings, and for a party. The filling was really simple:  onions, a little olive oil, eggs, salt, pepper, and a bit of finely grated locatelli cheese. But what really added flavor were the herbs I used - fresh parsley and rosemary and some dried tarragon, thyme and sage. The parsley was straight from the grocery store, but I plucked the rosemary from the sorry-looking plant pictured here. The other herbs I picked fresh in the fall and dried in paper bags before putting them in jars for storage.

Most herbs are very easy to grow, take up very little space, will grow happily in pots and cost next to nothing if you start them from seed. Even if you buy small herb plants, the cost is low.

Many herbs are perennial - they come back year after year. Thyme, marjoram, sage, tarragon, oregano and mint are reliably perennial almost everywhere. In warmer parts of the country, rosemary, which I've grown from cuttings, gets as big as an azalea in my father's southern California garden, while I struggle to keep my rosemary alive in the sunroom when it's cold outside her in southeastern PA.

Cilantro, dill and parsley are typically grown each year from seeds, though technically parsley is a biannual. That means it will come back a second year to set seeds. But the leaves taste best in the first year, so I treat it as an annual.

As my gardening group plans and plants our garden in the weeks to come, I'll be reporting on what we're doing. In the meantime, I hope you'll share some of the ways you use herbs to "spice" up your meals.

For the Birds

The birds have been especially active since we had the big snow on Saturday. They've been going through the sunflower seed, mixed seeds, thistle and suet at a fast clip. But we have noticed that many of the birds are still picking away at the leftover seeds in the garden.

Wrens, sparrows and chickadees are still gleaning from the autumn blooming clematis vine that is draped across a large section of fence. The butterfly bush, phlox and sedums still seem to have a little left for the tufted titmice and junkos to harvest. Holly berries and dogwood fruits are popular with the cedar wax wings and cardinals. And all of them seem to enjoy the stray sea oats that have self seeded in a small corner of the garden.

We spend a few hundred dollars every winter on feeding the birds. And I'm sure the little heater we use to keep the bird bath from freezing costs a bit to run. By leaving seed producing plants standing through the winter, rather than cutting them back (which gives a neater appearance), we are able to augment and diversify the birds' diet. And perhaps it reduces the cost a tad. The birds return the favor by keeping insect populations in check and helping with pollination later in the year.

Of course there are issues with feeding birds - they are subject to predatory cats and hawks; dirty feeders and bird baths can spread disease and bird droppings can be messy. But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Feeding birds in the backyard is a pretty green activity - especially if you buy locally-grown seed. And it's even more green, as well as frugal, to grow lots of bird-friendly plants that will produce plenty of seed to feed our hungry feathered friends.

Dee Dee on the radio

I'm in New York City today...just finished a live interview on the Martha Stewart Living channel at Sirius XM Radio. This visit, my 4th, focused on gifts from the garden and gifts for gardeners. The show's host Mario Bosquez, who is such a skilled interviewer, and I talked about making herbal gifts, sachets, jams and jellies. And then I suggested some good gifts for serious gardeners. I had a list of some really great things - like the new Cape Cod weeder, a well-crafted tool for weedding in small spaces; and an electronic soil test tool called the Rapitest that I got from cleanairgardening.com. This small meter can tell you the pH of your soil, the moisture level and the levels of NPK (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous in the soil so you will know how much you may need to fertlize. Then there's the cute wood and metal hod from Burpee. The hod is similar to an English trug -- a basket-like carrier that is ideal for holding veggies as you harvest them. It would make a great gift - it could be used for harvesting, displaying and transporting. I also like Burpee's SunCalc - it's a clever tool that will measure how much sun your garden is getting in any given location. It's an important thing to know - most fruiting vegetables need 6 to 8 hours a day; and unless you stand around and watch the sun as it crosses the sky through the course of a day, you may not have a completely accurate picture. Spending money on gardening tools, if it gets you in the garden and keeps you working there, is money well spent. You'll grow more plants; and with a little effort, you'll become a better steward of the land. If you take good care of your tools, they'll last so you won't have to replace them - very frugal.