Deep Watering Tomatoes

I'm always looking for good ideas to make my garden thrive. One of the things I'm really looking for are ways to make watering easier. It's one of the most important parts of gardening, of course, and the easier it is, the more likely it will get done as often as necessary.

One of the ideas I've been intrigued about I found through Pinterest.

We won a $100 gift card to Home Depot at The Kiddo's school's Spring Fling event, so I decided to try it out. I picked up a piece of perforated drain pipe, and cut it into 12-inch pieces with The Hubby's miter saw.



I got nine pieces from the length of pipe I got.



I put a pipe next to each of the four tomatoes, two bell peppers, the eggplant, the jalapeno, and the habanero.





They don't hold the water, being that the pipe is perforated, but it allows me to get the water deep to the roots of the plant, and gives me a better idea of how much water I'm giving to each plant. Also, I can water without splashing the dirt up on the leaves of the plants.

So far, so good. I do wish I had been able to bury them a bit deeper, but since I was putting them in after planting, digging wasn't as easy. I think I might get some more next year, and add them to some of the other beds as well.

Best of all, the pipe cost less than $10, and it was the only thing I needed to buy.

Bikes

I am getting so excited for The Kiddo's upcoming birthday. We have a big boy bike waiting for him, and I just know he is going to love it.

We have been trying out bikes when we happen into a store that sells them. Recently we were at "the camping store", and they had a really cool bike for The Kiddo to try out.



They also had something for The Little One to try:



It's a wooden balance bike for young kids. It doesn't have pedals, so the child still holds himself up with his legs, but he gets the practice of using a bike, and he can lift his legs up when scooting along.

This one is a Skuut. I would love to get one for The Little One, but at almost a $100 it seems a bit pricey.

Nonetheless, both had a blast riding and "skuuting" around the store:

Birthday

Did you know that if you have a Google profile, you get your own Google Doodle on your birthday?

Pretty cool:



When I had a zero-ending birthday a couple of years ago, I really didn't do much. During 2012 I made some changes in my life, mostly to do with my attitude. As a result, I decided that this year would be a fun birthday year. I invited friends to come with me to spend an evening of fun.

I started the evening out by getting my nails done. I forgot to take a picture, but trust me, they looked fabulous. From there, we went to dinner, and then to play some pool. I stuffed myself with delicious food, and had a couple of drinks. It was an extremely relaxing and enjoyable evening.

I really do have some wonderful friends!

Garden Progress

A few updates from our garden.

The potatoes are coming along quite well:



The eggplant has been munched on:



The strawberries. While most of the plants looked fine at the end of last season, it seems some didn't come back this spring. We plan to add a few more new plants in the next few weeks.



The peppers and zucchini:



And the tomatoes:



And the jalapeno:



I really want to get some more paper down on the garden as well. It will keep the dirt from splashing onto the leaves, which is how diseases spread. I just have to decide what to do for keeping it from blowing away. I'll probably end up putting down straw again as in years past.

Pine Straw

I've been pulling weeds from the berm between our and the neighbors' yard for the last couple of weeks. A little bit at a time, when I was able to, and the weather allowed for it. Slowly enough that once I got to the end, it was time to start pulling again from the beginning.

We haven't really done anything with the berm since we moved here, and it really shows. I've tried a few things, but haven't been able to get it to a point I want it to be. This year, I decided to actually follow through with a plan.

One of the things I've been seeing on Pinterest is the idea of putting newspaper down to prevent weeds. I tried it with the garden, but it didn't work so well. However, I had hope that the pine straw would provide the weight necessary to keep the paper from blowing away. I mean, the pine straw itself doesn't blow away.

My neighbor said 12 bales should do it, so that's what I picked up, and got to spreading. There was a bit of a learning curve, I had to figure out a good pattern for laying the paper without letting it fly away. I also didn't want the pine straw to be too thick, or too thin. I figured out a good grove, and kept working even though it started raining.













Turns out the neighbor was wrong about the 12 bales. I got about half-way across. Of course, there is a fairly large space at the beginning that doesn't have any plants, and I did also line all of the top edge at the property line. Regardless, I'm going to have to get some more pine straw and finish the job, probably this weekend. And it'll have to be Sunday, because I'll probably need the paper for weed control.

Cost: 12 bales @ $3.50 + tax = $44.52

Budget Update

It's been a while since my budget update. Most of 2012 was pretty rough budget-wise, resulting from a temporary dip in income, and us neglecting to properly adjust.

In November The Hubby got a new job which restored our income back to where it used to be. We still have room for improvement in our budget, but at least we are floating instead of sinking now.

In March I put a few formulas into the spreadsheet I've been using to track our spending. Now it does all the math for me, all I have to do is enter in the activity. I wasn't keeping up as well as I should have before that, because it would take too much time figuring out how much I had spent and where. I also uploaded the file to Dropbox so that I could access and update it where ever I had a moment to do so.

In April I updated the tracker almost every day. This made it a lot easier to gauge where I needed to make adjustments as the month went on.

If you're interested, here is a blank version of the template.

Budget Template

The Transactions tab has data validation so that you can only choose certain categories, which ensures everything gets calculated properly on the Budget tab. These categories can be changed as necessary, but you'll need to remember to add a spot on the Budget tab where it gets added up.

The Budget tab is based on Dave Ramsey's budget sheets. I've added a few categories of my own, and there are some I don't use. There is a column in which to mark how much you plan to spend in any given category. The next column adds up those goals into sub totals. The third column pulls from the Transactions tab, and adds up spending based on what category was chosen.

I also added sections to show variances in discretionary spending categories and the categories where spending varies month to month. It gives a quick heads up if I start going into the red in something (I put in conditional formatting to actually turn it red).

In April, we did quite a bit of overspending in the discretionary areas, but we still ended up in the green at the end of the month. With a Dave Ramsey zero based budget, that means the leftover gets used to pay off debt. I ended up making a pretty big extra payment on our credit card. But I could have doubled it if I had stuck to my budget.

How's your budget?

Cookie Time

Mummo sent a package for Easter. inside, we found some adorable Moomin cookie cutters:



Seems it's time to start baking.

The Angry Birds Easter eggs didn't fare as well:



Oh well, they tasted good anyway!