2013 Totals

2013 Coupon Savings

For the past few years I've been keeping track of how much money we save by shopping sales and using coupons.  In 2012 I saved $1855.19 and so my goal for 2013 was to break $2000.  In 2013 I saved $2271.28 - $416.09 MORE than 2012!  I can only hope that I increase my savings by that much again in 2014!

2013 Garden Totals

Since this was our first year in our new house we didn't really know what to expect with our garden.  We were also hurrying to try to get it ready in time to plant and did a few things that we wouldn't do again.  Even though we almost quadrupled our garden space (from the equivalent of 2 raised beds to 8 raised beds), we didn't get great production this year.  We tried to start seeds inside and they didn't take, so we planted again directly into the beds and all of the plants got a REALLY slow start.  So, here are our garden totals for 2013:

Cucumbers - 2 plants = 3 cucumbers

Pickling cucmbers - 2 plants = 10 pickling cucumbers (enough to make almost 3 pints of pickles)

Cherry tomatoes - 2 plants = 10 cherry tomatoes

Tomatoes - 2 plants = 2 tomatoes

(these were the biggest tomato plants I have EVER seen, they were easily 8 feet tall, but because they started so late they were covered with green tomatoes when the first frost hit and they all died.  If they had started earlier we would have had a HUGE crop I think)

Kidney beans - 4 plants = 62 pods

Lima beans - 4 plants = 97 pods

Pinto beans - 4 plants = 46 pods

Yellow squash - 4 plants = 1 squash (some bug kept eating them before they were fully grown)

Zucchini - 4 plants = 3 zucchini

Pie pumpkin - 2 plants = 1 pumpkin (a second one developed but a bug got into it before it ripened)

Okra - 2 beds of plants = 173 okra pods 

Some things we're planning to do differently next year:

• Start seeds earlier - Chad is planning to build a cold frame so we can get our seeds going earlier
• Get better fill dirt to top off our garden beds
• Create a better compost system to actually create compost from all the leaves in our yard and vegetable scraps
• Investigate organic/natural pesticides
• Set up our rain barrels to collect rain for watering the garden