Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Thanks for all your comments & contributions. Yes, sofa blankets & birthday candle (I've been saving it) all at the ready for cooler evenings. Autumn defo my favourite time of year. Several of us have mentioned September for new starts so I think there's going to be lots of positive activity going on.

All those of you who have have had a disappointing food growing season. Yes, the rain has just caused an onslaught of slugs. We lost 5 whole lettuces at the rate of 1 per night, plus 2 sowings of pak choi, 1 of rocket, 1 of spring onions & a tromboncino. Our worst losses to slugs were the summer bedding I grew from seed. They reached the stage where they had to be planted out & the incessant rain just meant the slugs & snails kept on coming. One rainy night, I walked down to the greenhouse & there must have been about 70 big slugs traversing the lawn. We don't usually have so many as have a local hedgehog & lots of bird life but there has obviously been an explosion of molluscs because of the weather conditions. 
Despite a poor year for bedding plants, we have managed a decent veg year. The worst producers have been the peppers. I have grown this variety before & had posh peppers to rival Waitbl00m but not this year. Small fruits, very delayed & quick to rot whenever they feel like it. 
Anyway, I'd better get today's post on....
F x

foxgloves

Hello Tuesday Money Savers,
Busy day. Need to keep on top of harvest time atm, so there'll be lots of assorted kitchen witchery this week:
*Today's garden pickings: Basket of pears, plenty of blackberries & another 625g french beans.
*Prepped & froze 2 bags of beans.
*Finished making this year's batch of blackberry vinegar as it had been straining through muslin overnight. Now bottled & labelled (bottles were some nice ones my sis was chucking out).
*Put dinner in slow cooker at 10am. Will feed us tonight, tomorrow & also provide a couple of portions to freeze.
*Cooked a big pan of pears & blackberries. Saved some for a mini 2-person crumble tonight (had leftover crumble mix in freezer) & bottled the rest - 4 large jars which will be nice to bring out of the pantry in the next few months to eat as dessert or on porridge.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Did a teensy bit of present stash knitting over my lunch hour.
*Added a few more titles to my library wish list.
*Booked our flu jabs for mid-October. Thought we'd better get on it as I couldn't believe how booked up many of the appointment slots at our usual venue already are (quite rightly) & also discovered that as public sector frontline, Mr F has a code for a free one but it expires if he hasn't booked it by a certain date. 
Well, I was going to go out & pick a bit more but it's now raining so I am going to leave that to tomorrow, which I can see will need to be a Tomato Day. Tbh, I'm ready for an evening of some serious sofa sitting this evening. Another chewed bolus of large dead spider has appeared on the conservatory floor, so Soot has obviously been busy. 
Oh, & I don't want to tempt fate, but I haven't had any vertigo for a couple of days, so I really am hoping my ear has sorted itself out. Fingers crossed.
F x

PennysIntoPounds

Oh I do so hope the vertigo has b*ggered off, not nice for anyone but since your life decisions with Mr F were based on you being able to do all your wonderful garden and home tasks, it must feel particularly psychologically debilitating too.

I must start keeping my ears open for flu jags, and maybe putting some money aside so I can't be tempted to not do it if I'm feeling especially skint- I am still genuinely in shock at how ill I was last Feb. I don't know what sort of virus it was but I can't be having that sort of nonsense again!

scandimore

Glad you're feeling better foxgloves - vertigo is awful.

We've had paperwork through for the little's nasal flu spray vaccinations today. The NHS letter mentions that this winter might be a bad one for flu after a couple of years of lower levels. Might be right, although I know a lot of people who were very ill last year, including my parents. It has scared them into getting their flu jabs this time! 

milann

Hoping the vertigo has spun away from you. Leaving you as balanced as usual.
t thought it was quite interesting that my seedling tomatoes were started by ds. He is usually very successful with them. He kept about 20 plants for himself, .gave me 10 plants and Dd 4 for the gks to grow as it was all they could transport  They were dispatched with Dd when they came at Easter and planted on in tubs when they got back….way down south. Within weeks hers were thriving just at the time we had a very wet and cold spell. Both myself, ds and a couple passed to a friend went virtually black with the cold. They did carry on  growing and this last couple of weeks have provided me with 10 tomatoes….mostly over the last few days. Ds has a few green ones but as of weekend they hadn’t ripened. Dd has had LBS……picked several big, ripe tommies every day throughout the season. All planted at the same time - the difference sunny southern weather versus northern mostly cold wet summer. We even used the same compost

cbsexec

Dreadful veg harvest here too.  No raspberries to speak.  Tomatoes only just turning red.  Beans just appearing.  Ditto courgettes.   Everything else disappeared in the wet. ☹️☹️.  Very disheartening.    

KajiKita

Pretty dreadful veg year here too. I put it down to weeds (ahem!), poor soil and wetness. But there is weird stuff going on too - had two tomato plants side by side in the greenhouse - a baby tomato plant and a medium sized tomato and the baby has grown strongly and is still fruiting and flowering, the medium one has barely grown beyond six inches and then died from the top down after producing one tomato … ?! 🤷‍♀️

KK

foxgloves

It's such a shame about all these poor vegetable harvests. I have been annoyed about our peppers & the salads we have lost, but I'm now thinking I should be very grateful for the crops which have gone well, as we are still picking plenty. I have learned a thing or two about this onslaught of slugs. A couple of big flower borders need a huge overhaul as they have become overtaken by some pernicious weeds since our neighbour removed 2/3 of the adjoining hedge last year & put in a fencing. the extra light & moisture available to all the baddies which were previously lurking under & around the old hedge have gone completely mad, creating a lush green undergrowth which the slugs have obviously colonised like crazy. I have made a start on a huge clearing project as I do feel that if the blackbirds, corvids & our local hedgehog could get to them, they would be able to reduce the population. I saw a blackbird heading out of a border with an enormous slug in her beak the other day, but the problem is that they have been well hidden under this mat of low growing weeds. In the area I have already been working on, I've been finding (so far) between 4 & 9 large slugs under every perennial I have cut down. So my first line of defence getting ready for next season is not to give them the easy hiding places they have had this year. Cultivating these 2 beds particularly, I think, will also expose plenty of mollusc eggs which I shall remove to the bird table as our robin loves them.
The constant dank, wet, cold weather & lack of sunshine didn't help either. Hope everyone has better luck next year. 
F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Oh my days, I just do not know where today has gone! One minute I was eating my breakfast with a day in front of me & then it seemed to be 4pm! I am heading for a nice bubble bath but thought I'd pop on with today's little budget-helping activities:
*Confirmed next week's meal plans still look viable.
*Today's garden pickings: 2.9 kg tomatoes, 4 courgettes & 3 chillies.
*Sorted tomatoes & did some more bottling.
*Labelled the blackberry & pear compote I bottled yesterday & had a re-jig of the pantry shelves to fit them in.
*A very low-effort meal tonight as I am using 2 portions of the bolognese I made yesterday on jacket potatoes with stir-fried garlicky courgettes. I do love 'Cook once, eat twice' even though I enjoy cooking.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Was intending to contact the Cephalopods this afternoon to find out why I am not hearing about the free Electricity hours, when coincidentally, I received an email from them saying that my registration wasn't complete. Whether this was me or a bit of dodgy wi-fi, I don't know, but I have now sorted it out & should hopefully now be informed of future sessions. I liked the fact that I got a 62p credit to our energy account for signing up to the reward points scheme. 
*Did a small amount of knitting for the presents stash. 
*Mr F gave me some free pens he acquired at some or other promotional works thing.
*Carried on decluttering. Isn't it such a satisfying process? I do also enjoy the fact that I come across forgotten or unrecognised resources too, while clearing out. Today I have found a perfectly good freezer bag, some bags which will be repurposed as kitchen rubbish bags & while updating folders, oodles of clean-on-1-side A4 paper which will be added to my stash as I get through heaps of this for lists & working out all my budget stuff. Also cut some old unwanted dividers into colourful shopping lists. I like giving stuff a 2nd life if it can still be useful, but I don't keep things for the sake of it. One thing I did decide to keep in my miscellaneous boxfile......instructions & pattern for how to sew a face mask! I hope I shan't be needing those again anytime soon, but as it was a pattern I was able to make without too much hassle, reasonably comfortable to wear (as much as any of them were) & plastic-free, I decided to keep them. 
Well, I have a lot of stuff to convey downstairs to the wheelie bins, so had better get going if I'm to fit a bath in too this afternoon. 
Love to all,
F x

milann

Certainly hope we never need the face masks again 🥴