Making Do With What You Have

I planted some lettuce and spinach a couple of weeks ago. I used a charcoal bowl from a smoker that no longer is usuable. It is a nice size to plant the greens in as it's just big enough.

The greens at one week.



Lettuce and spinach today:



The plants are still small but they're growing. In another couple of weeks I will thin them and have a salad of tiny leaves. Good and tender. :)

William found an old plastic flower pot that we had stuck away in storage, I planted radishes in it. They are beginning to come up.



Enough about salads...Well, I guess the seeds I planted in pots today will be the topping to the salad. I planted seven different tomatoes: They are Dinner Plate (don't this name just make your mouth water?), Dorothy's Mennonite Big Heart, Marianna's Conflict (a delicious tomato), Red Pear, Yellow Pear, Paqubot's Roma, Jelly Bean Grape Tomato and Red Tommy Toe (the last two are good eaten straight from the plants...yum).

I love trying different variety of tomatoes. We eat tomato sandwiches for lunch a lot in the summer. The Marianna's Conflict makes a delicious sandwich even though the tomato is not very large.

Red Pear and Yellow Pear are great for dehydrating. The Roma will make good sauces and the Tommy Toe and Jelly Bean Grape will top our salads this summer.

I've never grown the Dinner Plate nor Dorothy's Mennonite Big Heart. This is a test run on these two to see if they grow here. I have run across a few that don't do well in our area. One being the Brandwine and another one Abraham Lincoln.

While I was in the planting mood today, I planted some California Wonder Sweet Pepper, Jalapeno (gotta have the jalapeno...it's not summer without it) and Long Red Cayenne.

We had a small three-tiered greenhouse but the cover was worn to the point it wasn't usuable. I searched the internet to find another cover....Prices have certainly gone through the roof. A replacement for the wornout cover was almost as much as the greenhouse cost when I bought it about six or seven years ago. I'm sorry but I'm a cheapskate and I'm not paying that much for a piece of plastic.

So William went to Lowe's and got some plastic drop cloths. We made a cover for the greenhouse frame. Another make do with what you have. We covered the frame, tucked the extra under the bottom of the frame and the front I closed with clothes pins. It's not pretty but so what...If it works we got a cover for mere pennies. There were three drop cloths in the bag so if this one gets a hole in it we can easily replace it. All three of them cost around three dollars. Frugal me. Frugal William. heehee or call us cheap. We don't care.

In another week or so we shouldn't need a cover for the frame anyway. We usually have the real spring right after Easter.

Here's the lovely greenhouse. It get's the job done no matter how tacky it looks.



William worked on some of the raised beds this afternoon. He has one pretty much ready to be planted and has the areas for a couple of more to be set up. I've tried to get him to rent a tiller and till up the dirt but he is doing the tilling with a shovel. Maybe I can get him to rent one next weekend since he will have three days off then.

That's the muddling around going on here at Honey Bunny Haven. I feel good about our little start on the garden but the sunburn is smarting a little.