One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1593 of 2143 - I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Growing Vegetables in a Greenhouse

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 14, 2013 · 9 Comments

Caution. Lady with the palest legs on the planet ahead.

We are going through a transition in the greenhouse this week. Since most of the seedlings have already been started and are breaking through the soil, I went ahead and removed the folding tables and put the flats on the ground.

I plan on hauling my free potting containers I scored at The Home Depot last year into the greenhouse and setting them up in the center aisle to grow tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse again.

Now that the baby chicks have moved out of the stock tank and into the chicken run, the container will now be filled with 2 green zebra tomato plants, onions and carrots.

This morning I got started, but after loading a batch of my DIY potting soil into the stock tank I discovered I would need to make another wheelbarrow of the mixture. The tank is so huge! I’m out of supplies so now I’ll have to make a run to the garden center.

Over the weekend we harvested over half of the romaine and mesclun lettuce from the gutters. I think after we harvestthe next batch I’ll go ahead and pull the plants {even though they would keep on producing} because once the weather warms up, it will be too hot in there to grow lettuce anymore.

The strawberries are looking awesome.

And Lemon, the Meyer lemon tree is coming back to life again. At first I thought I would put her outside in the summer time but now I’m thinking about keeping her in the greenhouse instead. What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? This is my first lemon tree so I’m not sure.

Oh and one last thing. I couldn’t stand looking at the spent bulb foliage so I pulled up all the bulbs. This is naughty. Don’t do it. You are suppose to leave the bulbs in the same spot until the leaves die back before you transplant them. But I just couldn’t stand it any longer.

I’ll be planting them somewhere near the front of the house and hope they come back again next year {they should be okay, but again, I’m not suggesting you do this}.

It’s not pretty, but it’s getting there. Hopefully by next week the greenhouse will be back to normal.

~Mavis

You can see more pictures of our greenhouse and the progress we are making, in my Growing Vegetables in a Greenhouse Series.

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What Are the Benefits of Drinking Tea?

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 14, 2013 · 4 Comments

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you know, I love tea. At the beginning of the year, I really vowed to reduce my tea intake–but in my attempts to justify my habit, I have found out that tea is actually pretty good for you, provided that you don’t add sugar. {Maybe the English have it all figured out after all.}

So, if you are trying to justify your tea intake, or avoid it altogether because you were worried that it actually did more harm than good, here’s my favorite reasons to add tea time to your day:

It has fantastic antioxidants. Tea is basically an anti-aging serum that is way cheaper than most of the stuff at the cosmetic counter. Plus, antioxidants help reduce the risk of some cancers and diseases.
It has waaay less caffeine than coffee and soda. Coffee has about 130 mg of caffeine per cup, while tea comes in between 30-40 mg.
It has been shown to reduce cholesterol and triglycerides, which can lower your risk for heart attack.
Tea actually increases your immune system. Forget the apple a day keeps the doctor away, throw back a cup of tea instead. {Okay, don’t forget the apple a day, just add a cup of tea to the regimen.}
Tea is naturally calorie free. If you are tired of trying to drink water, tea totally counts and doesn’t add unnecessary calories.
Tea revs up your metabolism. Not only is it calorie free, it also sends your metabolism into hyper-drive.
Green tea has been shown to help with exposure to UV rays. While it’s not an alternative to sunscreen, people who drink green tea regularly seem have an added layer of protection against the suns UV rays.

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough for me to put my tea consumption guilt to rest.

Do you drink tea? How do you take your tea?

~Mavis

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Food Waste in America – What Does it Look Like

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 14, 2013 · 16 Comments

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past year from picking up free chicken scraps at our local grocery store, it’s that you never know what, or how much produce you are going to go home with on any given week.

We picked up 3 boxes of produce that was headed for the dumpster and were thrilled with what we found. Hiding under the heads of organic lettuce and asparagus were quite a few treasures.

Is it me, or does Lucy look like a stuffed dog right here? The dog will eat anything I tell you. Anything. She even ate fennel for Pete’s sake! Lucy is totally nuts.

At the bottom of one of the boxes was a bunch of corn. As I was pulling back the husks to see if any of them were keepers, I started to wonder where the corn came from. What state/country has corn in season right now? Does anyone know?

Clearly, no one was going to buy this mutant ear of corn.

Holy crack. Look at all the goodness. Chard, asparagus, corn, broccoli, melon, pineapple, carrots, lettuce, peppers, radishes, cabbage and beets. I’m not sure what the retail value on all this is, but since it was going to be thrown out, I’m glad we were able to save it.

And the chickens were happy with their boxes of scraps this week too.

Thank you Mr. Produce Guy!

What do YOU think about all this food waste? If your local market gave away their scraps would you take them?

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

DIY Potato Tower Update

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 13, 2013 · 25 Comments

Back in March I put together 3 potato towers {How to Build a Potato Tower}. Now that the towers have begun to sprout, I thought I would post a few pictures so you can see how they are doing.

This is my second year growing potatoes in towers. Last year I tried and it was pretty much a disaster. I think it may have been my fault though, I had placed the potato towers in a spot that was to hard for me to reach with the hose. As a result they were only watered handful of times or when it rained.

So this year I built my towers behind our greenhouse where I know they’ll get watered on more of a regular basis.

Potato Tower #1 – I covered the potatoes with 6 inches of dirt. My plan with tower #1 is to add additional dirt {but no more potatoes} as the potato leaves begin to pop through the soil. So far this tower is coming along nicely. The potatoes are sprouting as they should and I will add about 6 inches of dirt tonight to bring the soil line about 2 inches below the greens.

Potato Tower #2 – I covered the potatoes with 6 inches of dirt, then added 5 more potatoes. I ended up doing this 3 times. Someone had suggested I try this method to see if it would grow more potatoes. I have no idea if it will or not, but I think it will be interesting to see what happens.

Tower #2 looks the best so far. Potato foliage is coming out of the sides of the tower in two places and as well as on top. I’ll add a little more dirt to the top once the foliage gets a little higher. I’m surprised that with the amount of soil that is in the tower, I see any foliage on the top at all.

Potato Tower #3 – This tower was planted with alternating layers of potatoes, dirt, potatoes, straw, potatoes, dirt. Again, someone suggested this growing method because it had worked for them. Nada. Zilch. Nothing going on with this tower so far.

If you are growing your potatoes in towers this year I’d love to hear how they are doing so far. Or, if you’ve tried growing potatoes in towers previously, how they worked out and if you were happy with the results.

Have a great night,

Mavis

To find out how I built my potato towers go here: How to Build a Potato Tower

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.