Potato Planting on the Frugaldom Microholding

Scottish Multimedia | Potato Planting

Absolutely no reason for the photo of the ducks other than that they looked funny waddling up and down while quacking at us in the hope of escaping out of the orchard and into the garden while we were potato planting.

Potatoes are quite important in Frugaldom as they bulk out meals, are fairly cheap to plant and the return on investment can be high IF you can grow them successfully. My favourite of all time are the heritage variety known as Salad Blue, which have already been planted, but I also invested in some Shetland Blacks, another heritage variety, plus my Charlottes. These have just gone into the ground today.

Read more of this photo blog here

5 Ways to Improve Your Credit Card Application

Scottish Multimedia | 5 Ways to Improve Your Credit Card Application

In order to get the lines of credit that you are looking for, you must present your financial picture in a way that bankers like to see it. Below are five tips for giving yourself the best chance of getting that new line of credit by improving your application.

1 - Get all mistakes corrected with the credit reporting agencies.

The agencies who report credit to banks are well known to make plenty of mistakes. Before you ever set foot in the office of your banker, you should take a look at your credit report to make sure that there are no items that seem out of place to you. Make a … read more

Foraging for Free Food from the Garden

Frugal Blog - Foraging for Free Food from the Garden

Frugal living, as a lifestyle, comes as second nature to those of us who have followed the path for some time. The debt free good life was one I aspired to for many years and it took many more to achieve it, but we still are nowhere near self-sufficient. So this got me thinking seriously about 'what if we had absolutely no money?’

Could we rustle up a meal from the Frugaldom garden?

Don't panic! We don't eat any of our own livestock, they are kept more like pets! But we still need to feed them and they still need to contribute to the overall 'welfare' of the microholding project.

Octavius and Septimus help manure the fruit beds, dig holes and eat grass. They also love raspberry leaves! But that doesn't feed us!

Read more here

Frugaldom - Creating a self-sustainable microholding

Creating a self-sustainable microholding

A photo blog of the day's progress. Unpredictable weather should no longer be a problem now that the poly tunnel is reinstated but the sun shone this afternoon, so we were able to get outdoor jobs done. For me, that included sowing the new beds, transplanting the lavender cuttings and digging up more rooted strawberry runners from around the herb spirals to transplant into their recycled milk carton 'pods'.

See photos here

Tomorrow will be about the pets and livestock of our ever evolving, frugal microholding project.

Frugal Blog - Repairing the Poly Tunnel and Recycling Milk Cartons

Scottish Multimedia | Repairing the Polytunnel and Recycling Milk Cartons

Today proved to be quite a productive one for achieving major tasks, like getting repairing the storm battered polytunnel and making a start on my 'Mishy Challenge' vertical pod garden.

Living where we do, access to large, plastic milk cartons isn't something that happens regularly, so I have only managed to accrue 8 in total, but one of those is being used to hold my homemade laundry liquid for now. I still hadn't a clue where I was going to build my vertical garden, as we don't have any fences from which to hang anything, so we concentrated on putting the polytunnel back together. First up, sorting out the base - there is none. For the moment, we have cardboard, builders' bags, fish crates and compost bags… continue