Home Composting: Preparing for an eco-frugal spring

This year we maintained a relatively small garden. We were quite busy throughout the later spring and summer, but we managed to muddle through with it. The results weren't as nice as I was expecting, but we pulled a fairly decent crop of cucumbers, strawberries, butter crunch lettuce, hot peppers, green onions and various types of tomatoes. Our mini water melons and radishes were a complete bust, however.

In the end I'd say it wasn't cost effective. The produce was completely organic and home grown, but we would have spent less if we had simply gone to the grocery store. So in the end I had trouble justifying the experience. I'm not a big fan of mucking about out doors getting my hands dirty.

The biggest deal breaker was the cost of soil. We went through a surprising amount considering our total harvest this year. I'd say this expense surpassed even seedlings. We used a variety of store bought soil, limestone, manure (bagged, not home produced) and local soil mixed thoroughly. This gave us pretty good results. But costs dictate that next year we'll have to be a bit more frugal when it comes to our gardening expenses, if only to justify the experience in my mind.

As such we've saved all of the soil from this year and started a small compost bin. If our math works out correctly we'll have more than enough to work with in the spring. It turned out to be surprisingly easy.

• Select an area and method: There are two ways you can compost. You can either utilize the container model or an open pit design. We don't exactly need the amount an open pit compost pile would provide and we don't really have the space. So we utilized an old, disused plastic trash can. We perforated the bottom and sides to provide some (but not too much) drainage.
  
  We could have bought a special composting bin, but that would have instantly broken our budget for next year. They get upwards of $100 for a couple of dozen gallons. At that point I might as well buy new soil.
  
  Since even the best kept compost bin will likely start to smell significantly at some point we put it where we put smelly things, next to the trash cans.
  
  
• Get the right mix: Composting is by definition decomposition and is a process by which living organisms break down organic matter. As such some chemistry is required.
  
  
  • Carbon: This should make up most of the material in your compost bin. Some pretty handy sources are leaves, fallen branches (broken up), disused mulch, cardboard and newspaper. All of these are very easy to come by in your average suburban yard, especially in the fall.
    
    
  • Nitrogen: You should have a fair bit of nitrogen producing material in your compost bin, but not too much. Some great sources are manure (bagged and sold at your local supply store, not home made), dead plants (such as your tomato plants after the frost) and yard trimmings (grass, shrub leaves).
    
    
• Layer: Layer your compost material with moist soil but don't pack it down too tightly. This will prevent oxygen flow, which is crucial to the process.
  
  
• Water: Air flow, heat and the composting process will consume water. If the pile becomes too dry the process will slow. On the flip side if the bin is not covered and becomes too wet (and lacks adequate drainage) you'll find yourself with a lovely smelling soup.
  
  So make sure the bin remains moist, but not too moist. Treat it like you would a house plant.
  
  
• Turning: Turning a compost pile helps distribute water and oxygen, ingredients that are crucial to the process. So use a shovel to turn the mixture up every week or so. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you'll help the decomposition process.
  
  
• Mixing: When things begin to fall apart and intermingle significantly with layered soil your compost is ready. For best results mix it with used potting soil from previous seasons. You'll be conserving energy, money and resources.
  
  
• Stay away: There are a couple of things you should shy away from when composting. These materials can ruin all of your hard work or at the very least delay your final results.
  
  
  • Home "grown" manure: Unless you know what you're doing stay away from manure produced in your own home. This includes human and pet feces. In all likelihood this material will contain harmful pathogens. It'll also increase the smell factor by ten.
    
    
  • Some kitchen scraps: Egg shells and potato skins are great for compost piles. Chicken bones, wing tips, fat from your t-bone and fish heads are not so great. Not only will this increase the smell of your compost bin, but you may also find yourself a favorite hot spot for local wild life looking for an easy meal.
    
    
  • Some paper: While it may be tempting to throw that latest political mailer into a trash can full of rotting leaves and produce, steel yourself. Glossy paper and heavily dyed card stock will only poison your efforts. Newspaper is okay in small amounts, though.
    
    
  • Tainted plants: Did your crop of cucumbers die from a mysterious illness or blight? Don't put them into your compost bin or you'll be in for a terrible surprise come time to utilize your compost. Like wise shy away from plants that have been treated with pesticides. You want bugs and bacteria now, introducing pesticides into the mix will only prolong the process.

Is this the final word? Absolutely not. There are a wide array of composting methods available to you. I found that this works best in a suburban environment where space and time are more or less at a premium. You can certainly scale this up to six or seven garbage disused garbage cans or dig yourself a shallow pit in your back yard if you were so inclined. You can even build an elaborate cinder block bin if you had the materials and desire for A LOT of soil.

But so long as you turn it once in awhile and don't accidentally drag it down to the curb on garbage day you'll have a superior source of soil come next planting season.

Top 5 best herbs for the frugal family

Fresh herbs are by far the most expensive piece of produce pound for pound that you'll ever likely buy on a semi-regular basis. With good reason, too. They're capable of turning just about any bland and mediocre meal into one that you're going to remember for quite sometime. Which is a very important, especially when you're on a tight food budget.

A lot of people buy their herbs dried, or worse yet, in the produce aisle at their local mega mart. This is a shame. Sure, dried herbs are great. But a lot of their essential oils have evaporated in the drying process, and even more lost during their journey to the store and a potentially long stay on the grocer's shelf. And fresh herbs are expensive. They should be. A lot of time and energy went into keeping them alive all this time just so you could pluck them up on a Sunday afternoon for your pasta sauce.

So the solution is simple. Grow your own. Seeds are cheap and herbs require very little maintenance once started. The only thing you need to worry about is getting the biggest bang for your buck. These can of course be grown outside should you have that privilege, but most herbs are quite content to sit in a sunny windowsill inside.

So I've compiled a short list as to the top 10 you should be concerned about if you find yourself with a new green thumb and on a tighter budget.

1. Basil
   Description: Basil is a dark leafy green plant. The plant itself is flowering, producing tiny, sweet smelling white flowers. It's seeds are tiny and dark green to black in coloring.
   Dishes: Pasta sauce, pesto, zucchini, salad and pizza
   Tips: Needs a very sunny area to grow properly. Like most herbs, the cultivated product can be a little bigger than bite size. Clip only as needed from the plant and mince the leaves very finely. Add toward the end of the cooking process as basil itself is pretty delicate and may lose its flavor if too much heat is applied. Basil is crammed full of antioxidants!
   
   
2. Chives
   Description: Chives are actually part of the onion family. They appear when fully mature as hardy and tall grass with a light to medium green color. They are a flowering plant and produce small purple flowers.
   Dishes: Roasted, mashed and baked potatoes, salad, dip, salsa and pasta sauce
   Tips: Needs a very sunny area to grow properly. When using, snip one stalk off as close to the base as you can and mince it. If you need more, repeat the process with a second stalk. You'll get a surprising amount for very little of the plant, so don't be over zealous when it comes to using.
   
   
3. Bay
   Description: Bay is grown from woody stalks. The actual leaves themselves are large and pale green, with a lighter underside.
   Dishes: Soups, stews, stock, and sauces
   Tips: The bay plant doesn't need so much sun as it needs air. Make sure it's in a well ventilated area. When cooking, bruise the leaf and add it in the beginning of the cooking process whole. Fish it out before serving, as biting into a mouthful of foliage may not be the best experience. Bay itself is aromatic and slightly bitter.
   
   
4. Rosemary
   Description: A small, woody plant that produces small evergreen like needles when fully mature. The plant itself produces tiny periwinkle colored flowers.
   Dishes: Cornish hens, steak, fresh water fish, brisket, lamb, soups, stews and stocks.
   Tips: The essential oils in rosemary can irritate the skin. So be ginger when you clip what you need from the plant. The plant itself needs a moderate amount of sun. Before cooking, bruise the clipping and add at the start. Like basil it should be fished out before serving.
   
   
5. Sage
   Description: Pale to medium green, long and wide leaves. Flowers with large, bell shaped purple flowers. The plant itself is woody.
   Dishes: Pork, chicken, goose, turkey, stuffing
   Tips: This plant's name literally means "to heal" and has been known to treat a large variety of ailments such as digestion and depression. The plant itself tolerates dry air very well, but needs plenty of sunlight to thrive. Like rosemary and bay, sage leaves should be bruised, added during the start of cooking and fished out prior to serving.
   

Of course there are plenty of other herbs and varieties out there that you can try yourself. But whether it's thyme, tarragon or flat leaf parsley they'll go a long way to stretching your food budget just a little bit more.

Spring is coming: Top 5 easiest plants for the frugal family

So you plan on starting a little garden to help reduce your grocery bill. Or maybe you're just looking for a fun way to spend a couple of hours in the sun with your family. Or maybe you're overly concerned with exactly how organic is organic these days. Or maybe you're just a little nutsy and you're incredibly worried about unlabeled GE food stuffs creeping up onto your grocers food shelves without you knowing about it full well in advance.

Great! But there are some guidelines you should follow. If you're an experienced gardener, you know what you're doing. You'll be growing corn, apples, lettuce, carrots and watermelons and feeding the whole block with friendly donations. But a lot of us, either through the ignorance of inexperience or being strapped for time need to keep it simple and easy. We need to do some easy things on our fire escape, deck or patio.

Far too often I've seen inexperienced neighbors go for a project that ultimately fails because they lack the time, energy and knowledge to go after it with the right tools and mindset. The project likely yields little to no bounty and they end up with a lot of wasted time and energy. Maybe a sunburn, too. You'd be pasty white after six months huddled next to a furnace, too.

So I've drawn up a short list. All of these plants require little maintenance, cost and knowledge to produce impressive harvests. I've also taken nutrition and quantity of harvest into account. While eggplant and mushrooms are great tasting and really simple to grow, they don't exactly give up a whole lot of vitamins, minerals and calories.

Get these as seeds and start them yourself or get them from a garden supply store as seedlings in a months time. But either way keep a budget in mind, both money and time wise. Never bite off more than you can chew or you'll just end up wasting your hard earned money and time off!

1. Strawberry
   Description: There are a boatload of varieties available in both seed and seedling form, but the type you should probably be looking for as a frugal gardener should be the "surecrop", "garden" and "wild" variants. They'll produce berries that are much smaller to the ones you're used to seeing at the mega-mart, but chances are you'll find them a hundred fold better tasting. They're relatively hardy, small plants. They produce tiny white flowers and self pollinate. But there's nothing wrong with a healthy bee population.
   Planting time: Early to mid spring
   Harvest time: Mid summer
   Tips: Don't go crazy on the soil. Strawberries like light, loose soil with plenty of room. So before transplanting to an outdoor garden make sure to loosen up the surrounding soil with a spade. Strawberries like frequent watering, so if you live somewhere besides Florida or Washington, you'll need to keep an eye on them as the spring rains dry up.
   
   Birds and squirrels love strawberries too. While I don't mind sharing, you may. To help preserve your harvest once you begin to see tiny green berries, run some chicken wire above the plants with at least an inch or two of breathing room. That'll prevent beaks and little hands from grabbing your hard work.
   
   
2. Tomato
   Description: Undoubtedly one of the most favorite patio foodstuff plants in North America. Tomatoes come in a whole boatload of varities. Plum, beefsteak, antique, cherry, heirloom, big boy, golden rave, rossa, et cetera. All are excellent and easy to grow. But if you're a first timer, you probably should stick to the smaller, more well known types. Good starters include cherry and grape tomatoes.
   Planting time: Mid spring to mid summer, mid spring being the best.
   Harvest time: Mid to late summer, late summer being the best.
   Tips: Give young tomato plants lots of support with tomato cages (bought from gardening stores) and trellises. Tomatoes like lots of sun, so make sure to put them in the sunniest spot of your garden where they can receive 7 or more hours daily. Plant them into very moist, warm soil with lots of organic matter. For more tips see wikihow.
   
   
3. Radish
   Description: I used to hate these little roots as a kid, but now I absolutely adore them. They're sweet, they're spicy. They're crunch, but they're crisp and moist. There are only a few mainstream types of radishes, but they're all more or less the same difficulty level.
   Planting time: Early spring or mid fall
   Harvest time: 25 - 35 days after planting
   Tips: Radishes like cool, but not cold weather. So spring in New England is the perfect time to start these bad boys. They like to be planted in very loose soil with a good amount of organic matter like leaves or compost. Plant as many of these as you can, their fast turn around rate will likely give you the best return on your investment. For more tips see eHow.
   
   
4. Carrots
   Description: Like the radish, carrots are roots and prefer to grow in cooler climates. While all types are very hardy, weather resistant and taste great the "Red Core Chantenay."
   Planting time: Early to mid spring
   Harvest time: 50 - 60 days after planting.
   Tips: Carrots may be very hardy buggers, but keep them wet as fluctuating water levels will cause the carrots to crack. To harvest, simply grab the plant and pull it out of the ground. If washed and trimmed of leafy greens carrots keep for months in the vegetable drawer. They are also excellent freezer fare, if kept in air tight freezer bags in the very back. For more tips see eHow.
   
   
5. Herbs
   Description: Will of course vary greatly!
   Planting time: Indoors, anytime. Outdoors? Mid spring for most.
   Harvest time: As needed!
   Tips: Herbs are by far the easiest plants you can grow and they can be kept year around if you have a sunny windowsill. Since they're not going to produce any vegetables, fruits or berries you only have to worry about watering them and making sure they don't go to waste. By far, if you're looking for a return on your investment, these are your best bet. Fresh herbs at the mega mart can get up to 5 bucks a bouquet.
   
   Good types to start with include rosemary, sage and thyme. They also typically tend to be the most expensive if bought at the grocery store. All are excellent with meats and fish. If grilling, throw some sprigs or leaves on the coals and close the lid.
   
   

So long as you keep a realistic attitude and a watchful eye you can get some great results with a little bit of hard work and diligence. Just go into the venture with expectations kept and check and you'll likely come out with a freezer full of food to get you through next winter!

Spring is coming: DIY Countertop Greenhouse

March is right around the corner and the days are getting warmer and warmer. And while even as I speak snow is falling outside my home office window, I know that soon all of this dreary white weather is going the way of falling leaves and foliage. People who are serious about gardening in my neighborhood typically gear up this time of year, starting their seedlings in front of sunny windowsills and cleaning out the potting sheds.

I've had some conversations with my neighbors. We're all more or less in the same boat of being financially strapped. I've heard time and time again that they're planning on really getting serious with a garden this year to reduce their bills.

A lot of frugal folk like to promote the idea that growing a lot of your own food can help reduce your over all grocery bill at the end of the month. I don't exactly subscribe to this ideal quite yet, but I think it's an interesting premise. The main problem I see with it is I believe a lot of people see the costs of seeds, the cost of produce at the mega-mart and draw the obvious cost connections in their heads. A single seed packet may cost $1.00 and contain enough for 50 tomato plants!

But I think far too many people neglect to take into consideration the other costs of growing your own produce. A short list includes:

• Tools (spades, hoes, rakes, watering cans, et cetera)
  
• Water (especially if you live in a drought prone region)
• Soil and nutrients (especially if you live in less than ideal growing conditions such as the middle of Arizona or northern New England)
• Pestic
  
• Potting accessories (Pots, seedling pots, trellises, et cetera)
  
• Time (time is money, after all)
• Seeds / Seedlings
  

At this moment in time I think that growing your own produce costs pound for pound the equivalent of buying it at your local produce stand or mega-mart. Which is not to say that I'm against home gardening to shore up one's food budget. I'm just saying that one has to enter the situation realistically without expectations of a greatly reduced grocery bill.

If you're planning on gardening this coming spring, I don't think frugality should be at the front of your mind. I think the gardener should be more concerned with the experience and the ability to control the quality of the food than anything. Not to mention that you're decreasing your carbon footprint a considerable amount if you're not buying as many food stuffs that come in via gas guzzling tractor trailers.

Plus, if you're one of those organic nuts you can assure yourself that your tomato, even if it might not look terribly pretty, was grown with as little impact on your garden space as possible.

The growing season is tricky, however. Especially in the northern United States, the time when you should have seedlings ready to go into the ground, there's still a couple of inches of snow covering the ground. So what I've found it that a lot of people set their future meals in front of drafty window sills and hope for the best. Which gives them a head start on the season, sure. But not nearly as much as they should be given.

Which is why I began to research small, compact greenhouses. I'm not talking about the variety that I'll construct in the backyard with lumber and sheets of very expensive glass, but small, self contained units that would only hold one or two plants. Something that I can easily carry out onto my deck on sunny, warmer days and take in at night. Or put in front of a sunny windowsill on especially cold days. And since a greenhouse is by definition an enclosed space, I won't have to worry about my cats getting a little hungry.

My logic is it'll be far more economical to construct several of these versus one large unit. And since it won't be exposed to the elements, I won't have to worry about weather proofing it. Which would add a hefty price tag to just about anything. Sealant is expensive. Once the fear of frost has completely left the picture, a small unit can be easily stored for next year and the plants transplanted to a proper garden.

In my travels I found this lovely little creation. Made out of a small amount of lumber, some Plexiglas and a couple of screws it hardly disrupts a tight budget at all, costing less than $20 to construct from start to finish. And if you're the type of household who typically has stuff from excessive years laying around, you might not need anything at all. Off the top of my head I can confirm that the only thing I likely need to construct one of these beauties this instant is a couple of sheets of Plexiglas and maybe a couple of hours to myself to get started.

Maybe some heavy duty band aids for when I invariably injure myself. And apology flowers to the neighbors, for the loud swearing that would likely ensue immediately afterward. Which can be grown in the thing that caused the swearing in the first place. See? It's a lovely cycle.

So will I be growing things this year? Yes. Our garden already has a large number of bulbs, chives, strawberries and flat leaf parsley ready to resprout. And I will be growing some one shot stuff like tomatoes and peppers. But I'm not expecting miracle yields to put me on the fast track to easy street. I'd be happy if I break even. I think that's good enough.