Put away your purse & become debt-averse 27 February 2018 at 4:06PM edited 27 February 2018 at 4:13PM in Debt Free Diaries 4.2K replies 330.4K views

Toni'sfriend

And the false eyelashes that were so long I couldn't see through them!!!!!

foxgloves

Lol, Toni'sfriend, I never succumbed to false eyelashes, but I reckon I must have had one of the biggest collections of earrings in the Midlands! I do have multiple ear piercings, but even so, many of them were worn just 2 or 3 times because I tended to buy loads of them, then just stick with wearing my favourites.

foxgloves

Well I've just seen the weather forecast & it looks like a sunny morning, but plenty of rain moving in late afternoon. Think I will swap my plans around & get my garden jobs done this morning. I grew lots of summer bedding this year, as I found a box of out of date seed packets when we were clearing Mum's house. Mum lived growing things & taught me most of what I know about being green-fingered & I didn't want to throw them away, so a consequence of rescuing them means I have many free home grown plants more than ready to be planted out.
I'm going to prioritise the front courtyard today. Our back garden looks lovely, but the front is much more difficult to transform without spending money. We inherited that block paving, which is a weed-incubator, & more difficult to clear now that I need to be mindful of my hands getting sore (arthritis). There is a large buddleja which is quite nice in the summer both for privacy & butterflies, a small border which is planted with perennials I've divided from my back garden borders & a few containers. The strip going up the side of the house to the front door is nicely green in the summer but comes into its own in the colder months as I have a firethorn for its red berries & a huge winter jasmine. Today I'm planning to plant up the big pots next to the front door (using ONLY plants I already have) & to add some annuals to the small border. I will try to pull out more weeds from the paving as I go. I refuse to use weedkiller because our cat lolls around out there & as we garden for wildlife, we are pretty much organic. Kettles of boiling water over weeds makes good inroads, but no use doing when rain expected in case it revives the roots.
So I'd better go & water the greenhouse veg, stand the courgettes & beans out to harden them up, then get cracking on brightening up the front.
Have a good day, everyone,
F x

kayannie

foxgloves wrote: »

Well I've just seen the weather forecast & it looks like a sunny morning, but plenty of rain moving in late afternoon. Think I will swap my plans around & get my garden jobs done this morning. I grew lots of summer bedding this year, as I found a box of out of date seed packets when we were clearing Mum's house. Mum lived growing things & taught me most of what I know about being green-fingered & I didn't want to throw them away, so a consequence of rescuing them means I have many free home grown plants more than ready to be planted out.
I'm going to prioritise the front courtyard today. Our back garden looks lovely, but the front is much more difficult to transform without spending money. We inherited that block paving, which is a weed-incubator, & more difficult to clear now that I need to be mindful of my hands getting sore (arthritis). There is a large buddleja which is quite nice in the summer both for privacy & butterflies, a small border which is planted with perennials I've divided from my back garden borders & a few containers. The strip going up the side of the house to the front door is nicely green in the summer but comes into its own in the colder months as I have a firethorn for its red berries & a huge winter jasmine. Today I'm planning to plant up the big pots next to the front door (using ONLY plants I already have) & to add some annuals to the small border. I will try to pull out more weeds from the paving as I go. I refuse to use weedkiller because our cat lolls around out there & as we garden for wildlife, we are pretty much organic. Kettles of boiling water over weeds makes good inroads, but no use doing when rain expected in case it revives the roots.
So I'd better go & water the greenhouse veg, stand the courgettes & beans out to harden them up, then get cracking on brightening up the front.
Have a good day, everyone,
F x

Foxgloves - Do you know that vinegar is a cheap efficient weedkiller? The only drawback is a garden that smells like a chippie for the rest of the day, but I can think of far worse!
KA

foxgloves

Kayannie - Thanks. Actually, I had heard of people using vinegar to kill weeds, but I've never tried it. I've used salt on tough weeds occasionally, but I've found that if I pour on plenty of boiling water, I can usually pull out the roots a day of two later. I'm going to try vinegar on a particularly annoying weed clump which has so far defied all my efforts to annihilate it.
F x

foxgloves

A successful gardening session today - so good for fresh air, free vitamin D & fitness. I did get my big containers on the front courtyard planted up for summer.... no new stuff bought (unlike my shocking garden centre splurged of the Spendy Years). I used an overwintered geranium in each, with recycled ivy & scented stocks & snapdragons I grew from free seed. I used mostly our own garden compost with just a bit of bagged mixed in & to top it off. I've weeded the little flower border & added homegrown dwarf sunflowers & rudbeckias. Then as I still had some energy, I weeded two bits of my big back garden borders & planted out more rudbeckias & some cleome, which my friend gave me. I can't grow those for love nor money, but they are very pretty & will hopefully look nice in my informal cottage garden style borders. It was good to straighten my back for a bit while I watered everything in..... then just a bunch each of coriander & radishes to pick, & that was me done outside for the day. This afternoon's fun task (no, really, it was!!) was sorting out a dozen tracks from our ample CD collection to use for my own brand of dancerobics. As I needed to test them all out to make sure they would be suitable for a work-out, I've done over 11,000 steps today!
Am proper knackered though...... Mr F has just announced his intention to bring me a cup of coffee & a biscuit :-)
F xx

HairyHandofDartmoor

Well done on all the planting, your garden will look stunning. I'm looking forward to doing mine one of these days. Well done on your dancerobics too .

Onebrokelady

Hi Foxgloves, I need to pick your brains about tomatoes and peppers
I bought two cherry tomato plants from The Range several weeks ago,I've planted them up into a very large pot and they are growing nicely, should I pinch out the side shoots or not, these plants dont have a name so I don't know what they are,they must be foreign though because on the label it says to cut off the basxxterd branch:rotfl:( Im presuming this is just bad translation) I don't know what that means though :eek:
They don't even have any flowers yet,I was going to start feeding them tomorrow

The peppers are in large pot together ( 2 plants ) and are looking good but they don't have a type on the label either, it just says yellow pepper and green pepper, do I need to do anything to them apart from feed them, they look like they might be getting flowers now

takingcontrolatlast

Hi Foxgloves :hello:

I have just finished reading your diary (not sure how I found it - think it was in relation to shopping at home I'd read and was intrigued).. anyway I just wanted to say that apart from being a highly entertaining and informative read - the personal message for me and one which I'm really taking from your diary is that I'm regularly reminded that I can change... it's never too late to put those spendy habits to bed so to speak!

I do try, fail, try again, fail and your reference to your flickering LBM made me want to shout YES .. that's me... you too?

I'm also of a certain age and feel inspired that its not too late and my goal is I want to be debt free before I can think of retiring.

I think you have a wonderful life and one that I aspire too... as I have no knowledge of gardening and want to learn and my cooking is hit and miss but when I'm in the mood and have the time I enjoy it

I look forward to my fix of your diary to keep me going / motivated

Thank you

x

foxgloves

Hi OBL - Re your veggie gardening questions:
Without knowing what variety of tomatoes you've got, I can't say whether you should be removing side shoots. This is because some cherry tomato varieties are tumbler types.....i.e you grow them in a container & they are like a small bush, with lots of stems which trail over the sides. If they are tumblers, then there is no need to remove sideshoots. Some cherry varieties are cordon types.....i.e Gardener's delight, so you tie them into a cane regularly & take out the side shoots to concentrate as much action as possible into the fruiting branches. I've sometimes grown 'gartenperle' in the past, & I grew those as a tumbler kind in pots.
Re peppers - The same growing instructions tend to apply for all types of peppers. I grow mine in large pots & put two in each pot. They are quite upright but it's still worth staking them up as this prevents the plants being broken off by windy weather or by the fruits getting heavy as they grow. I go out & pick up all the wooden sticks from rockets on Nov 6th, lol, as they are just the right length/type for staking peppers & chillies.
Re feeding any fruiting vegetable.........try to hold off doing this until you can see that the first tiny fruit has set. I'm just at that point now with my tomatoes & cukes, but not with my peppers. The reason for this is not me being a tightwad with tomato food, but because if you start the feeding before any fruits have set, the plant gobbles up the extra nutrients & puts them into making extra leafy growth, which can later be at the expense of producing fruits. The only exception I make to this is for if there are any plants which seem to have stalled or are looking otherwise desperately feeble - my aubergine plants all look great, but have not put any growth on for weeks (they like it really hot), so they are going to get a shot of seaweed solution later on today to kick them back into action.
Once tomatoes peppers, etc, are established & have fruits on them, then I feed them twice a week.
Hope this helps,
F x