Hungry Times Two

Cleaning out our car last week, I decided we're treating our little hybrid hatchback like a haulin' a&# truck for garden duties. There are scraps of bamboo, scrapes from cement-laden fenceposts, and splinters from wood shims scattered around the car's interior. At first I was a little irked at the mess, but now that the garden is producing, I kinda see these things as little signs that we're using what we've got to do something right. In crunchy Earth-friendly and frugal fashion, Scott and I found ways to avoid buying brand-new tomato cages (which can be surprisingly expensive when you need 10+ of them), fancy trellises, potions for keeping insects at bay, and shiny objects to deter birds from tasting our tomatoes before we get a chance. Reduce, reuse, and recycle these ideas for making spare items function for free in your garden: DIY with Bamboo: For once, the site Nextdoor is good for something other than watching your neighbors out-snark and gripe at ...

I know it's nearly spring because 1) I'm popping antihistamines and guzzling hot tea to soothe my allergies, and 2) we just planted broccoli, beets, carrots and broccoli rabe in the community garden plots this past weekend. At home I planted three containers of bibb lettuce and four containers of Red Russian Kale. The herb seeds we scored at a recent Grow Share Charlotte seed swap are now planted in some old pots I found in our shed and soaking up the daylight in my office windows on folding TV trays. (We are some cheap frugal resourceful types, I tell you.) Hopefully in a week or so we'll have Lemon, Thai and Genovese basils, tarragon, lavender, marjoram and thyme friends sprouting. Here are the herb pots below, transported in the Little Red Wagon Scott found abandoned and slightly paint-splattered on a property in Concord. Again, we're so cheap frugal resourceful. We had a productive workday at the community garden on Saturday. Over 15 garden members mulched...