Dig for Your Dinner

digging up my backyard, one vegetable at a time

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Garden Goals for the Week of July 13th, 2015

By Mavis Butterfield on July 13, 2015 · 1 Comment
The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure

bean seeds plantingGarden Vegetables:

This week I’m hoping to get another round of green beans in the ground and maybe some cucumbers too. We’ll see.

Plants and Perennials:

By some miracle I some how managed to stay away from The Home Depot and didn’t buy any additional plants for the garden this week. I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m sure my checking account thanks me.

edible landscape lettuce and shrubs

What I plan to Harvest this Week:
Lettuce, zucchini, patty pan squash  a few herbs.

striped zucchini summer squash

If only I could grow zucchini year round.

ugly pine tree

General Garden Maintenance:

In our neighborhood, if you want to cut a tree down on your property, you have to get approval. Lame I know. Luckily the HOA said we could chop down the hideous leaning pine tree in the front yard that blocks the front of the house. I put it on the HH’s honey do list.

cabbage head going to seed

I also need to pull all the cabbage that has gone to seed on the side yard as only a few heads of cabbage have survived the crazy heat wave we are having this summer. I’m kind of bummed about this because I was hoping to make a boatload of sauerkraut with the 25+ heads I planted earlier this spring. Oh well. Maybe I’ll have better luck this fall. raised garden beds in grass

Pest Control:

Keep my eye out for slugs. That’s pretty much it.

Those are my garden chores for this week.

Keep Calm and Garden On.
~Mavis

My Kitchen Garden – Today’s Harvest: Lettuce, Cauliflower and Squash

By Mavis Butterfield on July 2, 2015 · Leave a Comment
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romaine lettuce

We built our garden boxes just over 6 weeks ago and planted our little kitchen garden a week later. Well today I had my first major harvest {if you can call it that}. 6 heads of romaine lettuce, 2 teeny tiny cauliflower and a handful of patty pan squash.

cauliflower

The weather has been crazy hot here in the Pacific Northwest region this summer with temps in the 80-90’s the last few weeks. The cauliflower I planted 5 weeks ago has had it rough… lot’s of greens, but not much in the cauliflower department. cauliflower plant

I finally gave in this morning and pulled our 10 cauliflower plants. The giant cauliflower leaves were taking up space in the garden with hardly anything to show for it but 2 teeny tiny heads. raised garden boxes

Oh well. Some years you win, and other years you lose.

I’m thinking about planting some seed potatoes in the open space. I know the spuds will grow well alongside the cucumber plants, but according planting potatoes next to tomatoes is sort of a no-no as they can be susceptible to the same verticillium fungus infections.

But I’m a risk taker so I think I’m going to go for it and see what happens. Live and learn, right?

patty pan squash

I also harvested a few patty pan squash as well. I like to chop the up the squash and saute them in a little olive oil and garlic and serve the patty pan squash as a side dish. kitchen garden harvest lettuce

It’s not a big harvest, but considering this is our first kitchen garden at this house, I’m pretty excited about it. You have to start somewhere, right?
raised garden boxes douglass firKeep Calm and Garden On,

~Mavis

Garden Goals for the Week of June 29nd, 2015

By Mavis Butterfield on June 29, 2015 · Leave a Comment
The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure

the home depot discount perennials

Plants and Perennials:

Oops, I did it again. I cannot seem to stay away from the clearance plant rack at The Home Depot to save my life. I drive {or walk} by daily like a stalker to see if any new plants have been discounted. It’s creepy really. I mean, who does that? This week I snagged shasta daisies and candy tuft. Ironically just last week I planted out the shasta daisy starts I grew from seed. I know it’s cheaper to start perennials from seed, but I just couldn’t resist a few full sized plants for the garden.

botanical interests seed packets

Garden Vegetables:

Have you started your fall vegetable seeds yet? I need pull out the grow lights from the garage and get them set up so I can get the cabbage, broccoli raab and cauliflower started. I plan on sowing the fennel seeds directly in the garden.

arborvitae hedge

General Garden Maintenance:

Stain the fence. My goal is to have the entire fence {front and back} stained by the end of July.

new garden bed border

Edging. It’s going to take some time, but I think it will be worth it in the end.new garden border

Ideally I’d would like to fill the space behind the garden boxes with a grass walking path and a small berry patch behind it. The raspberry were transplanted in early June and I’ll transplant our 9 blueberry bushes and 30+ strawberry plants in the fall after they go dormant for the season.

Over the winter I’d like to install some sort or raspberry trellis/support so when next spring rolls around all I will need to do is keep the berry patch weeded and wait for fruit. using a hose to create a garden border

The grass on the upper lawn is riddled with moss and weeds so my plan is to dig up a portion of the grass this summer so I can plant a few trees in the spring. I would also like to install a new perennial flower bed up there as well. sluggo

Pest Control:

I’ve noticed more and more slugs in the garden lately so I need to stay vigilant and sprinkle Sluggo every few weeks in the vegetable patch to keep those slimy suckers away.

Those are my garden chores for this week.

Keep Calm and Garden On.

~Mavis

Garden Goals for the Week of June 22nd, 2015

By Mavis Butterfield on June 22, 2015 · Leave a Comment
The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure

garden bench

Plants and Perennials:

I picked up 4 lupine plants from the clearance rack at The Home Depot yesterday for $3.50 each {reg,$7.99}. I think I’ll plant both of the white lupines in the front side yard and the purple and pink lupines in the back.

shasta daisy

I’d also like to get the Shasta daisies I started from seed transplanted to the garden this week as well. Shasta daisies spread like crazy {which is what I’m counting on} and I am hoping that by the time we put our house on the market there will be a nice row of them along the fence near the vegetable garden area.

botanical interests seed packets

Garden Vegetables:

A few of the pumpkin and winter squash seedlings I set out in the garden a few weeks ago were gobbled up by slugs. Both the varieties I’ll be planting are 100 days seed to harvest so I know I’m taking my chances… but I just can’t resist. Because really, who doesn’t want a bunch of pumpkin puree in the freezer and winter squash stored in the garage for during the colder months? I’m going for it.

potato seeds

Potatoes. I scored 2 bags of seed potatoes at Wilco the other day for $3.00 a bag! I’ll have to create a new potato bed for them as our current potato patch is full of potatoes I planted earlier this year and I am not ready to dig them up yet.

raised cedar garden boxes

General Garden Maintenance:

We used Tagro in the garden this year and as a result our tomato plants have gone bonkers. I need to tie them to the stakes again so they’ll stop falling over.

staining fence natural fence stain

Stain at least 2 fence sections. {I’ve got a long ways to go.}

Those are my garden chores for this week.

Keep Calm and Garden On.

~Mavis

Because You Have to Start Somewhere

By Mavis Butterfield on June 1, 2015 · 1 Comment
The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure

mavis pilgrimBack in 2009 when I started my first blog OneHundredDollarsAMonth.com, it was a simple diary. For myself. A personal chronicle of my garden experiences in my own backyard. A few months earlier we had moved from a .25 acre lot in downtown Puyallup, Washington to a 1.25 acre lot in Gig Harbor, Washington. The second Tacoma Narrows bridge was still under construction and Gig Harbor seemed like a waterfront utopia with properties hidden along the waterfront and winding country roads.

2009 was also the year I discovered the internet could be used for things besides answering emails and selling the my occasional hooked rug on eBay. Up until that point, I really didn’t use our home computer that much.

I happened upon the blogging world for the first time and thought it was incredibly weird that people were writing about their lives AND sharing pictures of themselves and their families online. I mean, ANYONE with computer access could see this right? What a bunch of weirdos.

Eventually I found some blogs I was interested in and starting leaving comments. I was SHOCKED when they replied. Over the course of a few months I met some really cool people with interests similar to my own, and thought what the heck… I might as well start a blog of my own. Which, in hindsight was totally weird thing to do for someone who is a MAJOR introvert.

mavis-albertsons-double-coupon-shopping-tripFast forward to late 2010. I discovered extreme couponing and went a little off the deep end snatching up every possible box of preservatives I could get my hands on for free. The focus of my blogging stories started to switch from growing food to the insane deals I was scoring for next to nothing at the supermarkets. And it was fun… for a while. Until I realized I missed eating fresh vegetables from my garden every single day. Yes, I was saving boatloads of money, but I was also feeding my family boatloads of garbage. So while I liked saving my family money, after about 2 years of playing the extreme couponing game, I pretty much stopped cold turkey.

I switched gears again. Instead of sharing epic couponing hauls on my blog One Hundred Dollars a Month, I started to write about other things. And well, one thing let to another and over the course of a few years I went from having about 2,500 blog visitors a month to having well over a half million people stop by One Hundred Dollars a Month on a monthly basis. It was nuts.

But it was also awesome. As I interacted with these new readers {that’s you!}, I got requests to do all sorts of different DIY, recipe and tutorial posts. With the increased interest came increased content variety. Suddenly, my simple little diary grew up into a full-blown blog {they grow up so fast, don’t they?!}. I was blogging about everything from foods waste to chickens to money saving tips; Christmas crafts to DIY remodeling projects to bento boxes. And everything in between. And I was loving every second of it.

But, I wanted to get back to basics. I wanted my garden journal back. But I didn’t want to abandon One Hundred Dollars a Month, not in the slightest so….

stupice tomatoesIn 2013, an idea was hatched and Dig for Your Dinner was born. But then senior year came along. And we were considering selling our big house {and obviously the 1.25 acre garden as well} so I put Dig For Your Dinner on hold.

2014 was a year of major change in our household. Our daughter went off to college, we bought a vacation home on the East Coast, we sold our McMansion in the suburbs and downsized by about a third. I wanted to go smaller… way smaller, but with only 28 days to find a house, and a husband who didn’t want to rent while we I found just what we were looking for, we bought the house we currently live in now. Which is fine. I don’t love it by any stretch of the imagination but in the whole scheme of things, it’s probably a perfect fit for this period in our lives.

Our son, who I refer to as Monkey Boy, still lives at home with us {he graduated from high school last summer and now works full-time doing something he LOVES}. Our daughter, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird attends college on the east coast full time. And so here we are, in that awkward in-between stage. The not quite empty nesters, not quite ready to retire part of lives.

So I’m making the most of.

I LOVE gardening. And I want to get back to the day to day garden writing I used to do before blogging became a full time job {which I LOVE by the way}.

mavis butterfield eBooks

I wanted a sort of second home for all the little things that don’t really fit into what One Hundred Dollars a Month has become. But mostly gardening. I was really missing that gardening aspect, so much so that I gathered all of the gardening knowledge I’ve acquired through the years and packed it into 11 monthly {and awesome I might add} gardening eBooks. An eBook for every month of the year, with month-specific planting guides, gardening projects and chores and of course, seasonal recipes.

If you’re looking for all of my very best gardening content in one convenient spot, those monthly gardening eBooks are a must.

Once you’ve read them, stop back here for daily gardening content. I’d love to have you join me on this journey. And I hope you’ll stick around until Dig For Your Dinner becomes a blog about the garden in our forever home. Which, if I have any say {AND I DO} will be a small little cottage on the east coast. Stick with me as I navigate my garden until that cottage garden becomes reality. As it always is, I can promise it will be a sometimes hilarious, sometimes educational, but always awesome adventure as we get our hands dirty, watch those gardens grow and then dig for our dinner.

~Mavis

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