Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Morning @KajiKita,
I don't do anything special. I cut herbs when they are looking lush, tie them in bundles & hang them from kitchen beam to dry. When I can take a small amount & crunch them to little pieces in my hand, I consider them sufficiently dry to crumble into their jars. Thyme just gets stripped off the stalks but same method applies re tying, etc. I don't mind if they are crispy as it shows they are dry & I'm adding them to stews, doughs, dishes anyway.
Re flavour....the only thing I can think of is that if they don't smell of anything they've been left hanging for too long or they were picked when they weren't at their lushest? I usually gather mine in the morning when any dew has dried but before the sun gets too strong.
F

foxgloves

Thanks for sympathies re drowned parcel. Yes, actually @PennysIntoPounds, that was my thought that the damaged ones would be useful additions to the compost, wormery or even a bean trench, but in actual fact, once I'd opened the damaged boxes, there wasn't much damage inside. I was amazed, as more than half the boxes had come open, but whether it was the glazed card, or that despite extreme tardiness of van-man we got to them in time, I don't know, but the majority of the actual papers are still usable. Those which are not will be worm fodder. They already munch through the used coffee grounds-filled ones.
F

EssexHebridean

Another option with herbs is to shove a bunch of various ones you use regularly into a jar of water then use them fresh a sprig at a time. As long as you remember to change the water relatively often they last well like this.

foxgloves

Hello Thursday Money-Wranglers,
Having woken at 5am (normal for me), I went back to sleep (not normal for me!) & had the most ridiculous dream. Not too tricky to spot the underlying theme in this one! I'd gone down the garden when I should have been getting ready for work & spotted that the new large raised bed had fallen apart & all the compost had fallen out. Mr F came down to look & asked me why I'd been knitting hundreds of tiny woolly bees & wiring them to plants. I told him that they would attract pollinators. He started going out of the door for work & I realised I was going to be very late (my old job - 40-mile round trip commute) because I was all togged up in scarf, mittens & bobble hat in summer, so would have to go & change. I'd also got rugged boots on & when I bent down to change them for sandals, they weren't my boots, but some expensive ones I'd seen online (IRL) & considered buying. Thankfully, this crazy dream ended thanks to Soot, who had taken up position outside the bedroom door for a serious yowl-a-thon. I felt so much less stressed when I realised it had been a numpty dream & the raised bed had not collapsed....& neither had I been wasting valuable gardening time knitting oodles of bees!! Well, if this wasn't a sign from my subconscious that I feel behind with the veggie garden this year, I don't know what was! And yes, I did go & check that nothing had befallen the new raised bed overnight!
I had got today marked out for a garden day & I have had a useful 4 hours out there today. 2 before breakfast - am back on TRE breakfast at 10am & then back out 11 to 1pm. At this time of year, it's a case of seeing which are the priority tasks & realising that another 2 or 3 things need doing first to facilitate them or make space. So as I garden in a way which minimises spending, I shall count everything as budget-helping in one way or another:
*Set up a bit of bubblewrap shelter around the wheelbarrow so I can continue hardening off cavolo nero & courgettes despite the brisk wind. Tromboncino & squash will be next but they seem to like it a little warmer than courgettes so no rush & need to weed around the arch for the former anyway.
*Took stock of tomato, chilli & aubergine plants. All my greenhouse veg has struggled this Spring  - will elaborate on this in a separate post if any fellow gardeners are wondering why their veg is doing the same - so while I planted up the best of what I've grown, I also kept some spares in case anything was secretly planning on carking it. It amused Mr F that the tray of these was labelled 'Sick bay' but they were the feebler plants I only kept for an emergency. So today, having decided everything has now pulled its socks up & decided actually to bloody well grow, that the sick bay spares could be composted. This has made some space.
*Picked our first cucumber! Yay to that! And the 2nd one isn't far off by the looks of it. My cucumber plants were the first to get a*sey this year. They all turned their toes up except for one which looked beautifully strong until it too threw in the towel. I was going to buy more seed, but decided to try buying a couple of grafted plants. They were expensive but I was interested to see how they do. You can bet I stood in the garden centre working out how many organic cukes I'd be likely to get from them to make sure I'd at least get my money back! Tied in both plants.
*Potted up an unusual foxglove variety from a free packet of seeds I got on my magazine. Only 4 germinated, but they now look like nice sturdy little plants.
*Deadheaded sweetpeas to keep the flowers coming & also picked a bunch for my favourite vase. Free room fragrance!
*Decent free bending & stretching session as naturally the area I'd earmarked for planting up was being colonised on a subterranean level by damn bindweed, so dug a load of that out, cut a few things back & got a big tray of cosmos planted out. Also found space for a nice lychnis from my sister (from Mum's garden) & a self-seeded foxglove. Tempting to shove all the stuff I cut back into the garden waste wheelie but I know our home compost bins are ready for largescale refilling now because so much of it has been used in the new raised beds, so I did separate out goodies from baddies.
*Planted up 3 ceramic containers on our courtyard with geraniums. All either overwintered or cuttings from my friend.
*Finished the shopping list & pinged it to Mr F who still seems perfectly happy to pick up the shopping on his way home on Thursday nights. It does keep him in touch with the grocery budget & he is good at looking for genuine bargains, comparing package weights for best prices & using as many of the loyalty scheme vouchers as possible. He is also enticed by a free coffee when he's been at work all day!
*Did a few surveys. Good to see my PA total building up again after 2 slack months (mostly down to my lack of effort tbf)
*Low effort use-it-up meal tonight. Have defrosted the last container of the tomato pasta sauce I batch-cooked a while back plus pots of spare chopped peppers & sweetcorn, nobbled half a red onion from the veg baskets & I intend to make tuna pasta bake topped with cheese. Will do a use-it-up roundup of salad stuff too to serve with it.
I think that's about it for today. I do still have some watering to do & need to make sure my courgette-covering shelter is sufficiently sturdy for these quite strong winds. I aim to finish my book & ideally my talking book later, as well as do a little bit of knitting. I shall surpass my minimum steps goal as have been busy this morning. I read another interesting article about step counts earlier (might have been in the Independent?) which also cited 5000 as being the amount of daily steps required to class oneself as 'non-sedentary'. Today will be my 34th day in a row of not falling below that. I think this is why my fitness tracker pinged me this morning to inform me it has knocked a year off my 'fitness age'. I have lost a little weight recently, but not enough to justify this fanfare, so I have to assume it is because my data is showing I have kept to a consistent level of activity. 
Right, I must distribute cat treats now as I am getting an impressive 'side-eye' from Soot,
F x

Makingabobor2

How do you make your own pasta sauce?  Not something I've tried, but trying to get more creative these days. 
Well done on your first cucumber.  I noticed we have a small courgette already. Not sure if its too soon and it will grow, but fingers crossed.  

Its odd how sometimes if you wake up early and then go back to sleep you have odd dreams. Always seems to happen to me. 

Sun_Addict

Knitting bees 🤣 I sometimes have bizarre dreams but like you have can often see the meaning behind them. 

KajiKita

That dream-story made me chuckle. I have those sometimes .... Glad Soot was there to rescue you from it!  

I am also smiling at the 'Sick Bay' and looking forward to reading your thoughts on why greenhouse pkanst are struggling this year ...

KK

PennysIntoPounds

What a result on the filters, and glad you got some serious gardening in. Though I think knitting hundreds of tiny woolly bees would most certainly not be a waste of time 😁

Humdinger1

Knitting bees; a metaphor for so many things.  Bees seem to attract many fascinating legends and sayings.   Was it @Suffolk_lass who came up with the priceless expression 'bees too angry to sell'? I find myself using it a lot.  Love to all Humdinger xx 

Elisheba

Oh @foxgloves the idea of knitting little bees and putting them out in the garden to be pollinators is absolutely delightful 🥰. Also loving the idea of a plant sickbay - I can imagine one in Herbology lessons in Harry Potter 😁.