Ghetto Garden Update week 3 April

Well, we (okay Mr. Man) finally got the booty raised beds up lol. He did all of it by himself with the exception of Home Depot cutting the wood for him. He also picked up some tires that said "FREE" on the side of the road to put our tobacco plants in. I don't know what to say...this gardening thing has been pretty come and go and we are both so horribly busy we are doing our best to keep it going.
















FACES OF DEATH. This is our lab mix - she looks so cute huh - she AIN'T. She has eaten many of our seedlings that had positive growth and signs of life. It's annoying - but a word to the fledgling watch your pets - i've heard horror stories about people waiting to harvest their stuff and then they came home and the dogs had eaten it all LOL.
















She only acts like she doesn't want it - her head may be turned away but her body is pointed towards the plants. This is some bullshit - it's like playing basketball look where their feet are pointed. HAHA.

BAD GIRL!!!!!!!!






Below are the honeydew plants. A few months ago the wind had blown some seeds to the side of the house that I was getting ready to send overseas from some very good honeydew plants I had eaten. I didn't really pay attention to them and just left them in the rocks - last week there were signs of life. Of course the Lab has already eaten more than half of them so who knows if any will make it at all.

















Below are the tobacco plants they seem to like it here but I dunno I'm a bit spooked since I've had a LOT of fatalities. I'm still watering them from the bottom but so far I've only had luck with the HOPI tobacco and none at all with the Louisiana tobacco.













Below are the spinach plants and some other thing I planted and forgot to label.
All I know is those were in there over 3 weeks and seemed to almost come up overnight

















The dog had eaten all of the cucumber plants so I just put more seeds in there and let's hope it works, But now I've also included the carolina cucumbers in addition to the armenian.













This is some kind of sweet red pepper that someone gave me, like the spinach these also sat in the dirt over 3 weeks with no glimmer of life and then overnight they were there.













Everyone says tomatoes and green onions are easy - the transplant killed almost all 50 of those tomato seedlings. I guess I"ll be buying some plants that are just ready to go while I try to grow these for July. Annoying.
















The cucumber and cantaloupe I replanted are starting to come back again but like I said I'm not holding my breath. I'm not being apathetic, but my skill level is just not there.















Now this weird thing has been happening with the green beans and pea sprouts - they sprout in like 3-4 days and then die at about the 10th day. I am definitely not overwatering them and I've moved them to indirect light and all that but they just die off. The crazy thing is that I've heard of this happening to other people in other parts of the country - so I'm just going to keep trying.













I know I know, it's time to move the squash - well we just finished mixing the soil and compost (3:1) and put them in the beds. I have no idea how loose that dirt is supposed to be or if I should just walk on it and really compress the dirt. But I will be putting the squash in tomorrow.



























Freaky green beans just grow already.

Week Haul, April 28th, 2011

The prepping budget got hustled around a bit and we had some household necessities so I did what I could with what I had. I also made more salt and cornmeal purchases but didn't bother to take a pic of it coz I'm sure you've all been there and done that Haha.

Dried potatoes were $1 buck a piece. Pretty good deal. I'm going to try 1 pkg first and then go back for a case - this 1 pint container reconstitutes to about 1lb of hash browns.








The last day of the sale I picked up more pink salmon @ $1.79. It will be on sale again in about a month anyway. I also picked up a lb of plain almonds and another lb of cocoa powder.








Strawberries were pretty good so I picked up 10lbs and a few lbs were eaten...










...the rest were canned. 7 lbs made 8 1/4 pints of preserves. Fair enough











There was even a little extra to make preserves for the evil moms ice cream.











The girl stuff was 2.99 but it gave a 3 dollar in store rebate so I purchased the Jergens bar soap for 1.50 (for 8 bars) - we received about a dozen nepro samples free which is enfamil for diabetics and we threw them in the bob for extra vitamins and calories. i also picked up an extra can opener just to have it around for a buck.





We must just be lucky here because a lot of these discount stores carry a LOT of good stuff that is neither expired nor destroyed. We really like the 99 cent only because ours also carry produce, tea, Texas toast and first aid type things.

This is my first dirt purchase of 34 bags $34.66. That's a half cubic foot per bag @ .99 cents.



Found more of the chocolate chips for 95cents each and grabbed the 16 they had on the shelf. I also picked up some very large ghirardelli choco bars on final clearance for 1.19 ea.








I took the Swedish aunties to Ross to look for some gym clothes (they like adidas and puma) and they swore everything in there was cheap - well yeah it's cheap if you are a size 4 and a size 6 and everything on clearance has your name on it - haha. However I found these 1.5 loaf pans for 5.49 ea and a norpro pasta machine for 20 bucks. BUT on top of that they had the "senior" discount on a Tuesday so I got 10% off everything.


The most awesome part of the loafpans wasn't just the quality of them but they are made in the USA. Yeah unbelievable right. Someone told me they paid 12 bucks for theirs and they were made in China (bleh). Seems to me that a lot of prepping related things are often made in the US. If that ain't telling you something I dunno what is.




I stopped at Walgreens again to take advantage of the full rebate on the girly stuff and even used my rebate on some pretty cool stuff. Funny how 2 little 99cent bottles of nail polish seem like a treat, the rubber palmed gloves were only 1.49 and the gardening stuff was only 75 cents, I still had quite a bit left on the rebate so I picked up 4 bottles of 91% alcohol.



The tomato sauce was 5/$1 so I picked up 20 cans and called it a day.











We used more than half the 1st batch I bought to fill the small bed, so after my eye appt I stopped and picked up another 40 bags. yeah you heard me 40 bags.









Mom 2 was wandering the store and found this oyster sauce for only 99 cents. This exact same brand was selling at the asian store for $2.99. Unbelievable how much people lift that price on you if you don't know where you are buying stuff.







Afro picked up 4 more bags of compost, 10 bags of 'dirts' and found 4 tires "free take them" a few blocks down lol. We are going to use the tires for the tobacco plants to keep them high enough and away from the dogs since they seem fascinated with the gardening crap.

on Mr Mans Youtube someone posted that we should watch out for compost having hidden herbicides and roundup and such because it might impact the growth or non growth of our plants. Fair enough. He then went on to talk about he's been composting since 2009. LOL ok. we learned this crap 2 months ago. *shakes head* I find that most advice is too late, irrelevant to the desert, assumptive that we aren't already doing it or simply an attempt of tooting ones own horn. It is what it is --- but I find that good intentions are rarely good there is a bit of egocentricity in there. But when advice is good and it's people you know it's REALLY good. That potting mix comes from long beach shavings. They don't have much detail about their product but I did email them.

It's like this. We are doing as much as we can in the short time we've started prepping (5 months on the 1st). I'd like to think we are holding our own when it comes to this prepping thing. We are just trying to focus on what we can do - all the fine tuning will come later. Also, when it comes to prepping this quickly - we don't have time to do esoteric things like make our own compost on the spot (the leaves and grasses from our plants take a bit longer to compost), make our own toothpaste, buy the best mill, use only heirloom seeds (we're practicing with storeboughts), and don't get me started on every tom dick and harry telling us what kind of weapon to have. Look. We are further along than some people who have been prepping a year - at this point in time it is important to have each base covered rather than just ONE base covered well - that defies logic to focus your energies on one small detail because someone put in a bit of advice. It's called workarounds to prevent holes in your prepping. Prepping involves a wide array of preparations - and seeing as to how anything could hit the fan it's best to just cover yourself long enough to get to the point you can fine tune each area. Jeez.

We also had a lot of hidden expenses this month: optometrist appointments, 2 pairs of glasses each and contacts, gardening and hardware related expenses and of course the all mights ass kicking at the gas pump. Give me a damn break.

Been Busy..

Jeez it's been busy. Ghetto Garden Update and Preps Blog coming soon.

Preppin into Overhaul...the last 2 days

So last Sunday the head of World Bank stated We (the world) are one crisis away from complete shutdown. If that wasn't enough to bunch up your undies on Monday S&P put a toe tag on the US economy by declaring it as Negative. All I've got to say is WOW. If you still don't think we're headed into an obvious depression you are really living in a dream world.

I was going to take a "break this week" and slow down a bit with the prep purchasing but I am thankful that (yet again) something spurred me into action. I was starting to feel like I'm going a bit overboard but what would it really hurt to add preps? The ghetto garden is come and go - when I think it looks good it gets fried and when I think it's dead 8 plants show up- so I'm just watering it and letting it happen. Mr. Man will be building the beds this weekend so we'll see how that goes. Mom 1 insists that I use the old kiddie pool for yams and potatoes lol - I will do it just to amuse her. There will a blog on the ghetto garden this weekend!

I decided that if I couldn't find any hard white wheat this week I would dump the budget into preps related to canning; jars, pickling salt, vinegar, pectin, extra lids and funnels. But I did find some cool stuff along the way.


Yesterday I stopped at Wally world -sugar is still holding at 13.48 for 25 lbs - so I picked up a couple of those. I picked up 1 box of pint jars and 2 boxes of quart jars. Vinegar actually went down in price about .30 cents. Miracle.

Total about $49.40






Mom 1 is pretty spooked by the hyperinflation and is consistently contributing canned meats to my preps. I feel bad but at least she gets it.

Fortunately those were only 1.79 ea. I also picked up 3 extra packs of widemouth lids (about 2.75), 1 pack of regular lids (about 2.30), 10 packets of pectin (9 bucks), 2 backup funnels (1.30 each), 1 box pickling salt (i can't believe they were out), 6 dove bars (.39 cents ea).

Total: $36.99 +tax.
I stopped by the 2nd wally world I go to today and they were completely out of wheat berries. Dang - so I picked up another 2 bags of sugar, 5 pickling sugar, 2 organic plant food (4 bucks each), 1 more case of jars (9.44). The organic miracle grow is regular 10 bucks so i got a BIT of a deal.

Total. $36.52










This is my deal of the day. I stopped by my regular little grocery store but didn't like their Wacky Wednesday produce sale - so I checked out their sale aisles in hopes of finding more of the white corn meal - they were out. But I did find these - corn meal mix 5 lbs for $1...


Haha. Imagine that.








See it's 5 lbs and there's the nutrition info.
The expiration is set for Sept 2012, but it will be bagged and tagged by then so no worries.









On the way home, I passed the dollar store and went back to pick up 4 more packs of cinnamon sticks for 3.96. that's 60 sticks.











I'm not knocking anyone who's got it (money and means) and they don't want to prep. But watch yourselves, hedge your wealth. If you haven't bought anything try to store something at least 3 months of food. If you can learn new things; gardening, canning, sun drying, first aid - learn some kind of basic skill that will serve YOU. Inflation tension is so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife.

On a more positive note: 3 days ago we had a math test and the 3 chatterbox bimbos were cheating: everyone could see it they had formulas in their phone and were copying each others answers. I told them outloud - if you must cheat at least have the courtesy to play it off since the rest of us actually studied. Today 2 test results came back - um why did those HAMHEADS get 55 and 60's bwaa hahaha. I got 2 95% results hahahha. Life is GOOD.