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One Hundred Dollars a Month

I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.


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Backyard Vegetable Garden Tally 6/8/2018

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In 2012 I was able to grow 2,028 pounds of vegetables in our backyard garden. Not only was it a crazy undertaking, but it was an amazing amount of fun. We’ve moved twice since then {you can read all about the house where this all started, and the HOA house if you’re interested} and now that we have finally settled in to our new life here on the East coast, I thought it might be fun once again to keep a tally of all the glorious fruits and vegetables we are able to harvest in a growing season.

I set my garden budget {seeds, compost, and garden supplies like a new bulbs for my grow lights, an indoor/outdoor thermometer, row covers etc.} at $500 for this year. Ideally, I’d love it if I could sell $500 worth of our extra garden goodness at the end of our driveway at a pop up farm stand {a table really} to recoup the money spent on our vegetable garden. Poundage wise though, I have no expectations for this year. I’m just hoping to grow enough food for our family, and a little extra for the neighbors.

This morning I went out to the garden to harvest chives for a quiche when I noticed there were a few other items ready to gather up as well. And so it begins!

The backyard vegetable garden tally of 2018:

Vegetables

Green Onion 5 ounces

Swiss Chard 12 ounces

Turnips 3 pounds

Herbs

  • Chives 2 ounces
  • Mint 1 ounce
  • Oregano 2 ounces

Total Food Harvested in 2018 4 Pounds 6 Ounces

Total Eggs Collected in 2018 {with 7 hens} 0 {the ladies are just 8 weeks old}

I have absolutely no idea if I’ll be able to achieve my goal of recouping our $500 garden budget, or how much we’ll grow this year, but with any adventure, half the fun is getting there, right?

Keep Calm and Dig on! Enjoy the weekend everyone,

~Mavis

If you are new to gardening or just want to learn more about organic gardening, my #1 favorite garden book is The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food By Tanya L.K. Denckla.

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Daily Deals – Free Rice, 50% off Garden Seeds, Paint by Number and More

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Quote of the Day  A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. ~ Gertrude Jekyll

Hello Friday, I’m so glad you’re here! On the agenda today: Planting remaining seeds in the vegetable garden and then do a HAPPY DANCE because all the land clearing and planting is done for the season. Yee- Haw! Then it’s on to pulling weeds, tidying up garden beds, harvesting and canning/freezing. Winter, it’s six months long here, right? I think I’m going to enjoy the down time. Ha!

Have a great weekend everyone,

♥ Mavis

*This deal post will be updated throughout the morning so be sure and check back for deals. * Amazon prices can change without notice. Please verify price before ordering. Amazon offers Free Shipping with a $49 purchase or Amazon Prime. {Sign up for a free Amazon Prime 30 day trial!}

Available Kindle Books I think look interesting…

The prices on Kindle Books can change quickly, so grab them while you can. Don’t have a Kindle? Download the kindle app on your other devices. It’s easy! 🙂

 Subscribe and Save Deals

Subscribe and Save prices reflect a 15% discount for ordering 5 or more items in 1 month.

Attention Fred Meyer and Kroger Shoppers … Today only you can download an ecoupon for one FREE Knorr Sides. Simply load the ecoupon to you Fred Meyer card and claim your freebie by 6/24/18. It’s that easy!

Home and Kitchen Deals

Botanical Interests is having a 50% off end of season sale. Order your seeds now before they sell out of all the good stuff. – I’m stocking up on seeds for next year!

Add on Items

*These are all Amazon Add-on Items and they will ship with qualifying orders over $25 and are eligible for free shipping on $25 orders with Amazon Prime {or will ship FREE on $35 orders without Prime}. German Chocolate Brownie Bars – I have always loved chocolate and coconut combined.  I think it is divine.  And, when you have brownies at the base, it’s bound to be good.

Kid’s Stuff

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Gardening in New England – Vegetable Garden Update, Mystery Plant of the Week and Blueberries!

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It’s been busy around here the last few days but I’m happy to announce the corn patch has finally been planted! I’m not sure how many ears 9 rows about 40 feet long with yield, but I’m hoping there will be enough sweet corn to freeze and last us until next summer. Only time will tell I guess.

Later today I’ll plant the painted corn {which I plan to use to decorate the house this fall} in another part of the yard so I don’t have to worry about cross-pollination. We also have two small rows of strawberry corn {for popping} growing over by the potting shed so hopefully we’ll be good on corn for this year. 😉

The main vegetable garden and all the onions, lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are doing really well. I planted zucchini seeds a few weeks ago, and only about 75% made it. I’m not sure if they were gobbled up by something or if Lucy maybe just trampled on them {which is highly likely} but I think I’ll plant a few more zucchini seeds this week. Zucchini relish. Have you tried it? It’s AMAZING!

Blueberries! Our 8 bushes are filling out nicely. I think it will be interesting to see how many berries we’re actually able to harvest this year. I’m planning on making a batch or two of blueberry mint jam, and then squirreling the rest of the berries away for the winter to use in make scones, smoothies, muffins and coffee cake. And pies, we can’t forget the berry pies.

Our dogwood tree is in bloom. Ain’t she pretty?

Mystery Plant #1

Anyone know what it is?

Mystery Plant #2

And how about this one? At first I thought maybe it was a miniature iris but now I’m not so sure. We’ve got a few clumps growing in the backyard and I would love to divide these up in the fall to have more of them in the garden.

And last but not least, I harvested a nice bouquet of chives and oregano this morning. I think I’ll make a quiche for dinner tonight and add them in. Summer…. It’s finally here and I couldn’t be happier.

What’s new in YOUR garden these days? What’s in bloom?

~Mavis

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Daily Deals – Real Simple Magazine, Subscribe and Save Deals and More

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Quote of the Day  “Hope is the sunshine and sprinklers of your life. It’s what makes you grow and thrive.” ~ Justin Buzzard

Hello Thursday! An electrician will be here today to do some wiring {because the pop up projects never seem to stop around here} and I’ll be planting beans {for drying this fall} and hopefully I’ll be able to get some hooking time in if I’m lucky. Today, it’s going to be a busy one! How about YOU? Anything exciting on your to-do list today? Curious minds want to know.

Stay awesome,

♥ Mavis

*This deal post will be updated throughout the morning so be sure and check back for deals. * Amazon prices can change without notice. Please verify price before ordering. Amazon offers Free Shipping with a $49 purchase or Amazon Prime. {Sign up for a free Amazon Prime 30 day trial!}

Available Kindle Books I think look interesting…

The prices on Kindle Books can change quickly, so grab them while you can. Don’t have a Kindle? Download the kindle app on your other devices. It’s easy! 🙂

Subscribe and Save Deals

Subscribe and Save prices reflect a 15% discount for ordering 5 or more items in 1 month.

Discount Mags is offering a 1 year subscription to Real Simple Magazine for only 9.95 a year when you use code MAVIS at checkout. This deal will expire 6/8/18 at midnight EST.

Home and Kitchen Deals

Amazon is offering a 30 Free trail for Audible. I LOVE audio-books!

Audible Free Trial benefits:

• Get two free audiobooks to start — after 30 days, get 1 book each month for $14.95/month

• Get 30% off the price of additional audiobook purchases

• Cancel anytime. Your books are yours to keep, even if you cancel.

Add on Items

*These are all Amazon Add-on Items and they will ship with qualifying orders over $25 and are eligible for free shipping on $25 orders with Amazon Prime {or will ship FREE on $35 orders without Prime}. 

dig-for-your-dinner-1

If you’d like to map out your next few months of garden chores, grab a few Dig For Your Dinner eBooks. That way, you can read about gardening, even when the weather is not nice enough to be outside gardening.

Kid’s Stuff

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Mavis Butterfield Etsy