Awesome idea that just might be dinner tonight.

I can't seem to find an original credit on this idea. If anyone knows it and wants to let me know I will be more than happy to give proper credit.

This is NOT my photo. Again. I have looked for proper credit and can't find it.

Okay, so here are the directions that I found to make these. Not my original idea but I definitely will be trying it and I will post photos of my attempt when they are made.

1 can Pillsbury golden layers biscuits - each pulled into 2 layers.
10 frozen fully cooked italian style meatballs - thawed and cut in half.
2 sticks string cheese - cut each into 10 pieces.
1 tbs. Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp Garlic powder
1 cup Marinara sauce
DIRECTIONS

1
Heat oven to 375.
2
Separate biscuits into 2 layers.
3
Place 1 meatball half and one piece of cheese into each biscuit, wrap dough around it and seal edges.
4
Place seam side down into 9 inch round cake pan.
5
Sprinkle with parm cheese, garlic pwd. and italian seasoning.
6
Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.
7
Serve warm with warm sauce.


I will be making these and providing my own photos as well as some modifications I plan to make. Be sure and check for updates!

Garden Supports...Not so Expensive After All

Gardening is great fun and can be a good source of additional food for the family as well. Well, it can be. If, that is, you don't spend ridiculous amounts of money on it, which of course most companies want you to. There are plenty of places vying for your money selling a multitude of items, most of which aren't really needed. Garden centers count on ill-prepared gardeners, who buy loads of plants, that through some misadventure or other eventually end up back at the garden center for another set of plants with the hope that eventually they will successfully grow SOMETHING!

I am not really one to talk. I just got a greenhouse, a massive expenditure that will potentially take me years to make pay off. Still, I am also planning to use said greenhouse to grow year round salad greens, and potentially increase my growing season enough to grow borderline crops for my area including luffa sponges and specialty cucumbers.

Anyway, back on topic. There are a LOT of ways to reduce cost in gardening, making your own compost, setting up your own vermiculture, starting your own plants, and perhaps most simply, not buying fancy (and expensive!) garden supports for your plants. You can build a decent garden support out of just about anything and by taking your garden vertical you can maximize a minimum of space. Here are my basic instructions for making an A-frame style garden support on which you can grow just about anything from beans, peas, and cucumbers to melons, pumpkins, and squash.

Material List:
3 8-foot long 1x3, sold as furring strips at my local hardware store
chicken wire or woven wire fence, 24 inches wide (buy this in large rolls for the best deals, especially if you plan on making a number of these)
A staple gun and staples
A drill/screw gun (optional but makes things a lot quicker and easier)
A circular saw or small reciprocating saw to cut down boards (or for a small fee you can have them cut at most hardware stores that sell lumber)
2-2 inch light strap hinges
Screws (I used 1 1/2 inch drywall screws I had on hand, but you can use just about anything that is long enough)

Cut two of the eight foot long boards into two 4 foot sections. Cut the remaining board into four 2 foot sections for a total of 4-4 foot boards and 4-2 foot boards. Use two short boards and two long boards to make a rectangle. Make sure the short boards are attached on the same side of the long boards (don't have one attached on the 'inside' and one on the 'outside'). See picture below for a better description.

This picture is showing what will be the inside of the frame facing up. Notice the short boards are attached on top of the longer boards from this direction. The hinges will also be attached to the inside of the frame. Assemble the second side of the frame and lay the two sections out on the ground, top to top. Attach the hinges to the short board at the top of each side of the frame. Again, see pictures for clarification.

Cut the fence in length so that it will fit along the length of the long boards between the two shorter boards. Lay the fencing out and staple into place as you go so you don't end up with any bunching or kinking that may create slouches when the support is in use and has weight on it. Staple at least twice at top and bottom and in the middle for a total of 6 staples per side. You can use more than this but that is bare minimum.

Now, set the frame up wherever you want to use it! You are done. These are easy to make and cheap to make. They are also surprisingly durable. I have some I made three years ago that have never come inside. They have stayed outside through the winter in all sorts of weather, snow, ice, etc. and they are still usable. The wood at the bottom edge of one is starting to show some signs of wear but still completely functionable. They probably would be in even better shape if I had bothered to take them in to the garage for the winter or at least brought them up by the house (they stayed out in the garden beds!). They also have weathered to a nice grey weathered wood that is quite attractive in the garden. You can do all kinds of variations on these with different types of wire fencing and whatever scrap lumber you happen to have around. Have fun and happy gardening!

 

A Dream Come True

I finally have a greenhouse. I have wanted a greenhouse since I was about 10 years old and first knew what one was. It's not too surprising since I loved gardening and lived in a state with a growing season a whole whopping three months long. I'm 38 now. So I've wanted a greenhouse for close to 30 years. Wow....that makes me feel really, really....old. But anyway, I finally have a greenhouse. It's not a glasshouse or anything, just a purchased metal frame and plastic cover, but it is mine and well....I FINALLY HAVE A GREENHOUSE!!!!

The greenhouse is actually set down into an existing garden bed. An additional frame section was added to the garden bed to have a frame all the way around the base of the greenhouse to secure it. We are very windy here and properly securing the greenhouse was a major concern. It is also going to give me my first all flower garden bed. All of my garden beds to now have been vegetable or perennial. I have not had any place for just annual flowers. I plan to put sunflowers and zinnias this year. It is a small area but it should look really nice up against the greenhouse. The inside of the greenhouse is bare dirt and will stay that way. I plan to possibly plant some things directly in the ground inside the greenhouse. I could potentially even grow artichokes successfully now!

My hubby also built me my first shelf to go into the greenhouse.

As you can see there is already a tray of seedlings on the new shelf. The shelf is made out of furring strips (1x3 lumber) and the sides of our son's old crib. Cost? Nothing, since we had all the materials on hand. The furring strips were left over from putting baseboards in around the house, same with all of the screws used to put it together and our son long ago outgrew his crib. 


The greenhouse was enough motivation to lift me out of a garden-related slump of more than a year. All last year through the gardening season I felt discouraged and felt a distinctive lack of motivation. The start of the gardening season this year shows that clearly. The yard and garden beds were a mess. Over the last week I cleaned out 8 large lawn and leaf bags of leaves, garden debris, and trash that has drifted into our yard over the winter. Normally I would be composting most of this material but there was too much trash interspersed with the compostables. That and I just didn't have the space. I would have needed about four times as much space for composting as I currently have if I was to compost all of what I raked up out of the yard and cleaned out of garden beds. Yeah, last year was a bad year. I also weeded a (supposed to be) herb garden in which the weeds long ago overpowered the herbs. In an earlier post I published a picture of my plan for that area. The weeding and cleaning out was a first step towards realizing that goal.

Today I got my first seedlings started. It's about a month late but I really am going on the idea of better late than never. Especially with the greenhouse I can always extend the season for a few plants if needed. Plus, anything I start now is potentially something I don't need to be buying a plant for later. Currently in the greenhouse I have:

Beefsteak Tomato (4)
Super Sioux Tomato (4)
Rutgers Tomato (4)
Luffa Gourd (6)
Marketmore Cucumber (4)

These are all from new seeds and should have decent germination so I expect to have plant numbers similar to the above. I planted plenty of Luffa seeds and plan to put some out in the garden and leave some in the greenhouse to grow the entire season, either in the ground inside the greenhouse or possibly in a large nursery style pot.

Directly in ground I planted the following:

Broccoli
Brussel Sprouts
Lettuce: Boston Bibb, Black Seed Simpson, Paris White
Spinach

In the next week I hope to get a garden bed prepped and ready and plant peas. Typical to this area spring took its time coming but now appears to be here with a bang. Transitional type crops, such as spinach and peas can be extremely tricky since often the ground will be too cold or the weather too wet to get them started as early as they ideally need but then when it is possible to plant them it is already too hot. I am still holding out some hope for peas and spinach this year but if they fail again I may very well decide that they are a lost cause in this area. Both are staple crops in Maine where I am from where spring comes slow and cold. A last frost may sneak up as late as mid-May, not common, but not unheard of either. Crops that can handle a little nip from old Jack Frost are handy ones to have, especially if your family is depending on the garden for food!

Free is Fun!

Not too long ago I signed up with a website called Freeflys. I was skeptical at first and expected it to just be another source of endless junk-mail. Surprisingly, I only got the e-mail I was told I was going to get, a daily update with the day's free samples and a weekly recap and 5 weeks or so after signing up samples started showing up in the mail. Now, due to poor economy and people loving free stuff, the samples often disappear in a hurry or may be lottery style with a fixed number of samples. Also, Freeflys does link to other websites with sample offers so sometimes you have to sign up for other services to get said sample. So you are working for your free stuff, it is not completely free at least if you value your time, and I do.

All in all I have been relatively happy with Freeflys and gotten a number of decent samples, some of which have led to changing which product I buy. I don't expect this to last. The number of no strings attached, free samples has been dwindling, with an increasing number of the 'free' samples being for restaurants, often with some form of catch in the form of "buy this to get this free". This is pretty much to be expected. Companies are only going to give out free stuff as long as it is profitable. When the cost of free samples given out starts to exceed the increase in sales the company is going to re-evaluate its practices and probably stop offering free samples, or at least stop offering unlimited free samples. And don't kid yourself, they do analyze these things (I am taking a math course in statistics and there are entire careers built on the analysis of marketing strategies). The wave of the future in samples will be the above-mentioned lottery with a fixed number of samples.

The biggest reason for this? Free IS fun. People like to get stuff for free. There is a certain miniscule thrill each time you open your mailbox and find something sent to you for free, or go through the checkout line and come away having only spent pennies, or better yet, nothing at all! So even if you already use a product and you see that you have a chance for a free sample of that same product you will probably try and get the sample. In fact, you may be more likely to try and get it because you can reason that is less you will have to buy of a product you already use. Take for example a recent sample that was offered at Wal-Mart. Procter & Gamble had samples of its new Cascade Platinum tabs and samples of its Tide Pods attached by a simple rubber band to others of its products. I wanted to try the tabs and purchased a product with a sample. I was happy with the sample and started purchasing that product. Success! They have a new customer for that product. However, later that day I was back in the store for another item and wandering through the detergent aisle noticed that fully half of the samples had disappeared, but the products they were attached to were still on the shelf, the products sitting near the back still sitting with samples intact. Failure, people just wanted free stuff. Whether they usually buy that brand or not is irrelevant, they took the samples to get something for free so they wouldn't have to buy it. Both of the mentioned products are more expensive than alternative products, they are convenient and you pay extra for that convenience. I understand, the temptation is there, I just avoid it. I want free samples to keep coming but that example is exactly why they won't. Online samples are a little better for the manufacturer. They can at least make sure they don't send more than one sample to one address. Still, the issue remains that offering samples is a gamble, one that often doesn't pay off.

So you might ask, what is my point? Am I saying people should stop trying to get free samples? No, definitely not. Times are tough. My family lives on a very low income and when I get a chance to try something free before I buy I jump at it! I can't afford to buy products I can't or won't use. What I am saying is that if you genuinely like something, reward the manufacturer, buy their product. If you reward them, they reward you by in the future continuing to offer free samples. And we all know....free is fun!

I Just Joined Smiley360

I Just Joined Smiley360: I just became a Smiley360 member! Discover and review exciting brands for free, too! Sign-up at http://bit.ly/lTDqVw #smileymember *Please remember the FTC requires you to mention that you received a free sample courtesy of Smiley360 when sharing.

I haven't received any free samples yet...but I hope to! I will keep updated on how this goes, whether it works to get decent samples or is mostly just a bunch of junk mail.