Hi folks,
This blog is starting in fits and stutters because work has been busy, I’ve been lazy, and I have a real hate relationship with social media and I’m struggling to get the motivation to publicize the blog. Anyway, my latest project has been starting a garden. The climate here in Oklahoma allows for a long growing season and if my green thumb decides to work, I plan to grow quite a bit of healthy food and save $$$ this summer and winter by eating out of my garden. There are some key risks to this plan including late freezes, tornadoes, and my own staggering lack of knowledge about gardening. This year I am hopeful but keeping my expectations very low.
The overall plan is to eat or can as much food as possible from the garden. I will have another post on canning if the garden produces enough food to make this necessary. Another potential offshoot of this project is making wine. I would also like to attempt to grow grapes and ferment them, more on this if I can actually grow grapes. I have worked with the local Extension Office on this particular project. Readers should be able to find the Extension Office in their area and submit a sample of their soil and find out how it stacks up or what nutrients are needed to make it ideal for growing veggies. I found out that my soil needed more acidity. It was suggested I add lime, but this seemed like an unnecessary expense so I began adding all of my coffee grinds and grinds from a local coffee shop (for free) to up the level of acidity. I’m not sure how well this worked, I didn’t want to pay for a 2nd soil test so I plan on trying to grow veggies and see if I was successful. Additionally, my local Extension Office had extensive free pamphlets about growing a wide variety of common vegetables and other plants that are easily grown in the area. I can’t recommend this resource strongly enough!
As I tilled up my soil the other day I was struck with how soft and dark it was, something I’m taking as a good sign. I’ve been adding coffee grounds, food scraps, and the leaves from my yard to help compost the soil. This is a great experiment but at almost no cost, other than 10 bucks for seeds so far, not much spent. I will keep the readers updated as I go along and plan on posting in the cooking section meals made and other things created like spaghetti sauce and ketchup from the tomatoes I hope will grow. More later as it starts to warm up. I’m jumping the gun a little bit as its not quite the middle of February yet. Feel free to leave me your best gardening tips and tricks!
Frugal1
