Seedlings, Salad Stuff, Fluffy Chicks and Driftwood Sculptures

Seedlings, Salad Stuff, Fluffy Chicks and Driftwood Sculptures

What a mixed bag of good old Scottish weather we have had recently! But Spring has well and truly arrived because we had our first rhubarb crumble tonight, made from freshly picked garden rhubarb. We also had garden grown salad stuff at lunchtime!

In the little greenhouse, the seeds are coming along well, with three varieties of sunflowers pushing ahead in the growing stakes. I have sown a fourth variety today and am planning a sunflower 'fence' halfway down the garden, if I can protect all of these from the slugs and snails. The cucumbers and courgettes are now beginning to germinate, too, so they'll be transferred into the polytunnel soon… read more here

Spending on Plastic of a More Frugal Type.

Putting up the Poly Tunnel.

Creating the Frugaldom microholding is incurring some basic 'getting started' costs but we are doing our best not to go over the top whenever we have a small windfall. I mean, the compensation payment from Scottish Power after surviving for almost 4 days with no electricity should probably have been ploughed straight back into winter emergency supplies, but it didn't - it got spent on plastic, but not of the 'flexible friend' type. This was more of the physical, literal sense of spending on plastic - or polythene.

 

In order to be able to even start contemplating growing enough vegetables to last the household all year round, it takes time, preparation and, of course, some cash to get it all started. Some people are fortunate in that they have a huge bank balance, no debts and simply downsize to live the good life, but we didn't have that option. Ours was scrape by on the minimum while saving every other penny, then buy a fixy-up. Taming nearly quarter of an acre of wilderness before transforming it into a microholding without a proper budget is time consuming. Living in the fixy-up has been an experience, to say the least, but progress is slowly being made whilst we pursue all manner of frugal living routes.

 

In the garden, I am trying to be organic and follow the basic principles of permaculture, but it also takes time. The good old Scottish weather is usually against us when attempting to grow anything posher than a potato and the slugs, snails, birds and beasties do a fine job of demolishing everything in their path. The plants need protecting and the homemade plastic greenhouse is full to overflowing. This is the review of the putting together of the  recently acquired 'Palm Springs' poly tunnel, one of my frugal bargains that I decided to buy now rather than wait any longer. Make hay when the sun shines! It's also done in memory of our recently departed, frugal friend, Sandi, whose sudden death was another sharp reminder to us all that we need to live it while we can, even if it's on a frugal budget.

Here goes with the plastic age of Frugaldom...

Instructions
Why are these things always so sparse? They list the parts with a few numbers and then have a semi-accurate diagram showing you the structure without any indications of where to start. It was fairly straight forward, other than finding it impossible to line up the holes accurately to drop the bolt through the top of the arch, so we cheated - the neighbour came round and drilled them a millimetre wider. Then went home and ordered himself the exact same poly tunnel - that's a good recommendation for it right away, wouldn't you say?

Process of Construction






 I thought this would be the easiest way of explaining it and showing just how daft I was to think we could start at 9pm and be done in an hour. Oops! :) It now needs to be well secured so any high winds don't lift the full thing - it'll be rocks around the edges for now. The builders' bags were an ideal size for lining the ground, it took three of them opened out into strip to do this and there's still some left over for laying elsewhere. That's us gained nearly 15' of lovely undercover space, but it is extremely warm in there at the moment.

Likewise, the heat inside the little plastic tunnels is amazing. These were the ones costing £9.99 - not all that substantial but worth the money, I would say, as they are really easy to build and take apart, so can packed away for winter. They're none too small for the price, either, as each one measures a full 2 metres long and a metre wide. I haven't even thought about what will go in these but I suspect they'll be filled pretty quickly, none the less. The space where these will be used in future years is currently filled with potatoes, so they may end p being moved about the place until later in the year.

The mini potting greenhouses are great! I've already turned one of them into a cucumber house by
fitting it over the top of two fish crates containing 4 cucumber plants. Another two crates will be fitted alongside and these will be covered by the second little greenhouse. £12.99 bargains, in my opinion and again, these can easily be dismantled and stored during winter.

I realise that this may all sound a little bit extravagant and expensive, some may even say it doesn't sound frugal, but I have been saving for 10 years to get to the point of being mortgage free with a garden big enough to create my microholding. My entire life was spent wishing I could afford to buy a smallholding but it's just not going to happen and I don't see the point of wishing any more of my life away - this is it and we need to make the most of what we have and create a lifestyle we love. Being completely debt free is the reward for years of scrimping and saving and doing without any luxuries. It will be some time before the house is completed, so still years of frugaling and on top of that, no regular, guaranteed income other than what we can earn from home while developing the microholding. It has to become self-sustainable, especially as I'm going to be working at it fulltime! The spends are investments in my frugal micro-business in the hope that they will reap rewards in the future.

Frugaldom.

Back on the Trail of the Frugal Microholding (Part 3)

Making Decisions Affecting the Creation of our Microholding

Part 3 of 3

FILLING IN THE GAPS! This is the concluding part of my 3-part blog for the weekend, bringing you up to date with progress (or lack of) and arriving at a decision that wouldn't have been made but for the events over the past few days. I'll start with our patio area, as I was hoping to make it very productive by way of the fact that it gets plenty of sunshine and is particularly well sheltered on three sides.

On the left, you can see the vacant gap in the top half of our developing garden. It is fairly flat, stony and has very little soil. It also sits in line with the pipework for the septic tank, so any digging and backfilling would need to accommodate that.


Looking from my kitchen window, I can see all of what we refer to as the patio. It's basically a concreted area where the old outbuildings once stood, along with what we were told was some sort of lean to greenhouse or old-style tomato house. The main outbuilding has been renovated - this will, one day, become the eco arts studio - and the big hole in the centre filled in to create another garden feature. The colourful flexi-trugs along the wall contain a variety of plants, from fuchsias to beetroot, cabbage and courgettes. So far, the slugs have left these alone!

On the opposite side of this concrete square, I have a row of all my
plastic tubs that have been accrued over the years, each planted up with seeds of one description or another. Next to these are the strawberry tubs that haven't really produced as well as they could have.

They need thinning out and feeding up to ensure they continue to crop in years to come. It is from these tubs that all the runners get potted, so I do tend to have strawberry plants popping up all over the place and am constantly trying to think of where best they can go to ensure they grow, get sunshine and don't get attacked by birds or beasties.

This year, I am clearing out the raised bed where I planted all my Saffron crocus bulbs - the bulbs are still looking OK and the plants do grow, but I have never had a single flower from them. This leads me to believe that they don't like where they are at all! The raised bed can just be seen at right hand side of this photo.

This is how the hole in the concrete 'patio' area is looking now. Last year I
scraped it all out and made a mini-pond, lining it with bubble wrap and feed sacks, surrounding it with rocks and planting it up with cuttings taken from the bottom of the garden by the edge of the stream. I call it the critter garden, as it seems to attract visitors of all description, from toads to lizards and frogs. This is who was in it yesterday.

I added the bird table at the narrowest part and then turned the other half of the crumbling mess into a circular bed, where I planted many of the strawberry runners and then surrounded them with spinach beet to use for feeding the rabbit. Sadly, the rabbit is no more.

Beyond this, off the end of the concreted area, is where I made my blueberry bed for the three little bushes I got last year. This was constructed from the logs cut from a neighbour's conifer and I employed a little bit of eco-artistic licence to the final piece, which I call my log man bird table.

Blueberries like an ericaceous or acidic environment, as do heathers, so I add whatever tea leaves, pine needles and bark chippings I have to help these along. So far, so good - the only thing the slugs and snails have got are the sunflowers, which grew from falling bird seed that must have been there from winter. Behind this lies two old fish crates covered with my half price sun-tunnels. Each crate contains two cucumber plants.

So what is all this really about? We are doing our best to cultivate the wild garden, making the most of whatever can be salvaged and recycled, trying to grow plants from other plants and fighting what often feels like a losing battle against the elements, the insects, the slugs and the snails. What more can we do?

ANSWER - SPOT A BARGAIN AND JUST GO FOR IT!
This is my fantastic bargain that I have been spurred into buying now rather than putting off any longer. It is approximately 15' long (4.5m) and just over 6' with and high (2m), comes complete with a fixing kit and delivery is FREE. Yes, folks, I have finally taken the plunge and bought myself the long awaited frugal poly tunnel! The vacant space in the middle of the garden is ABOUT 8' x 18' once fully cleared and this is what is going to fill that space. Now I know that some folks who may happen to read this post will wonder what the great excitement is all about but, for those of you who know me, you know how much I try to prioritise my spends while living in the middle of a renovation project but this purchase, which was on offer with £100 OFF the price, is something that I will put to great use during my battle with the elements and the critturs that foil my growing plans at every opportunity.

In memory of Jayjay - this will become the hub of my future growing enterprise of microholding and fundraising.

Frugaldom.

Autumnal Updates

Autumn Update from Frugaldom

It may be late October but the garden isn't 'done' for the year, not yet. IN fact, it's far from it - I still have a profusion of flowers - nasturtiums, begonias, heather and alliums, to name but a few. The days are shortening, night's are lengthening, temperature's dropping and leaves are falling, but there's still some sunshine about the place. I've been amazed at how warm it still gets in the little plastic greenhouse, so rather enjoyed doing the bit of tidying and weeding when I went to clear out all the tomatoes last weekend. But then I changed my mind! They simply weren't ready for clearing.

We all know what we're meant to do with tomato plants - keep the side and top shoots nipped out to promote growth into the half dozen (maximum) vines of flowers/fruits while keeping them fed and watered. I set out to nip buds faithfully as soon as I spotted them on my plants, but then things went awry again, with family crises that took me away from home. The plants went a bit wild and have received no extra feeding at all. But guess what? This year has produced the best crop of tomatoes I have ever grown!

Kilos and kilos of the things have been picked over the past couple of months and I am still picking them. There are side shoots and new vines replacing the old ones as I strip them of tomatoes. Even my fancy 'black' tomatoes are doing exceptionally well.

All of these photographs were taken today, 25th October 2012, and show the condition my tomato vines are in after stripping them of all their dead or dying leaves at the weekend. Each time I pick the tomatoes, another shoot appears, more flowers grow and that, of course, is followed by more tomatoes! It's amazing. One plant in particular - a cherry tomato - ended up looking like a weeping willow decorated in little red baubles. I have picked dozens and dozens of small tomatoes from this 'tree' and still it continues to grow and produce.

 

The 'black' tomatoes are also still doing well, although the revived grape vine managed to climb up through and it is now needing some attention. These dark , cherry tomatoes are a sweet variety, so very nice, although a little strange looking, with salad. Regardless of how late it is in the year, the vines are still producing more flowers and we still have some bees buzzing about the place. It's all very unusual, but not as unusual as the tadpoles that were spotted recently, swimming about in the pond at the nearby Logan Botanic Gardens!

 

Elsewhere in the Frugaldom garden, the herbs are still doing amazingly well, with bundles of mint being picked for pots indoors and all the begonias adding an extra splash of colour outdoors. In the ericaceous bed, where I planted the new blueberry bushes, heather is still in full bloom, adding a good dash of purple to the reds and oranges of autumn. I also have lavender still flowering in pots along the top of the 'bug hotel'.

 

It's been a strange year for gardening, what with the early months of hot sunshine followed by prolonged damp periods, to sudden deluges that have seen our little stream erupt in torrents, rising higher than the foot bridge and completely cutting off the hen run from the main garden. Thankfully, we opted to incorporate drainage from the duck pond, so there have been no flood problems there, so far. 

Spots of colour are still visible around the entire garden. The temperature reached an astounding 21C through the week in the direct sunshine, so the hanging baskets are holding out a little longer. I'm not giving up hope of growing something through the winter, even if it's just salad leaves. On the subject of growing over winter - has anyone else noticed FLOWERS on their strawberry plants? I have runners sprouting out all ways, waiting to be potted, but I've also spotted flowers on some of the plants. Most peculiar!

 

Indoors is progressing slowly but surely and I'm hopeful of having a frugal kitchen (of sorts) within the next week or two. No preserves got made this year at all, but I do have a lovely stock of raspberries, blackcurrants, rhubarb and gooseberries in the freezer and should be OK for lemon curd making, if I continue freezing any surplus eggs. (Egg-laying has diminished to no more than a couple of eggs every other day.) Sadly, there has been no fruit from the mini orchard, but we weren't expecting much after transplanting all the young trees during the move here last year. I may take a trip to a friend's orchard this weekend and see if they have any to spare.

I hope you are all doing well with whatever frugal challenges you opted for this year and I sincerely hope that some of you will continue by joining for 2013. Otherwise, thank you for reading the sporadic witterings that I manage to type from this almost forgotten corner of Scotland. If you have access to Facebook, I have loaded photo albums of the area, all of which can be accessed from www.elrig.info

 

As always, you are welcome to join us in the frugaldom forum at http://frugaldom.myfreeforum.org or else follow @frugaldom on Twitter www.twitter.com/frugaldom

 

If you are self-employed, living and working in Scotland, or simply interested in what else is going on here, you can also join us at www.facebook.com/NYKMedia and become part of our free Scottish Web Directory. The directory, which is still in early stages, can now be found at www.scottishwebdirectory.com

 

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