Gardening in the Rain

So this morning I decided to play in the spring rain and plant all my cool weather crops in my small garden. I planted asparagus, strawberries, 2 kinds of kale, rainbow Swiss chard, several lettuce varieties, spinach, onions and peas. I have decided that this year we are going to try growing as much food in our yard as we can. I also plan to grow tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, beans,  winter squash, basil, lavender, cilantro, and potatoes as well. We also have two apple trees, raspberries, and rhubarb on our property. I would also like to add a pear tree and boysenberries this year. We put some planter boxes in our front yard for our garden last year. My boxes are almost all the way full so we are going to have to add more.. We have very poor sandy soil so planter boxes are our best option. Luckily we have plenty of wood left from our old deck that we tore down last summer that we can reuse to make our boxes.


Planting a garden is a huge money saver for my family. We eat very healthy and eat lots of produce. My kids, almost 2 and 4, beg and whine for fruit :-) We very rarely buy prepackaged foods. I cook everything from scratch. I buy things in bulk and use it up before it spoils. What small amount of things that do spoil make their way into our compost bin, or our worm bin.  We try to waste nothing. Plus knowing where my food is coming from is comforting. 


I recently found a buying club in my town that gets things from Azure Standard. I just placed my second order yesterday but I am able to buy grains and produce in bulk that are far cheaper than most of the stores where I live. Most of it is organic and it is cheaper than the conventional products in stores. So needless to say I am in love with them. The only problem is you need to be able to find places to store 50 pounds of detergent or 50 pounds of flour. I am lucky to have a huge laundry room with open shelves.   


We try our best to use what we have before purchasing something new. I am trying to live by the motto "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without." For the month of March we have limited our purchases to needs. Not wants. It is helping us to get back on track financially and helping to simplify our lives. I think we will continue only buying needs in the month of April and see where it takes us.