Many hands make light work

Wendy and I went Dumpster diving today, the annual hunt for garden cardboard. I love to cardboard my garden. Weeds are executed by being buried alive (aren’t I a sinister person!), moisture is preserved and the soil enriched when the cardboard decays. We burn any cardboard remnants in our outdoor fireplace. And I get to feel virtuous because I’ve kept trash out of the landfill. A good deal all the way around. After coming up nearly empty on Main Street, we hit paydirt at the farm and home store. Dumpster was full of very good large pieces of cardboard. We filled up Marilyn’s truck bed.

Here’s Wendy unloading the boxes. Last year, I ended up paving garden with cardboard all by myself. That is out of the question this year. My shoulder is still far from healed.

It’s a rather strenuous process, lots of bending and twisting. All I did was to pull staples and peel off tape. They did all the hard work, for which I am very grateful. Looking at those weeds was driving me mad!

Boo says sitting on cardboard is nicer than sitting on bare ground. Enjoy it now, kitty, because cardboard will be covered with grass soon!

Fill me up, buttercup

I thought I had planted butternut squash in my Three Sisters Garden. I must have misread the seed pack or the packers put the wrong seed in the package. What I have is buttercup squash.

I don’t much like the taste of winter squash and I find the texture to be extraordinarily off-putting. But I do love pumpkin pie and cake and dessert. The only reason I planted the squash was as a substitute for pumpkin filling. We found that butternut squash tastes even better than pumpkin itself in pumpkin recipes.

When I saw roundish green squash in my garden instead of elongated yellowish squash, I knew I had a case of mistaken identity. At first we thought we had acorn squash, which I absolutely detest, but instead we have buttercup.

SeasonalChef.com says that buttercup squash is “one of the most pumpkin-like of winter squashes.” So maybe The Frugal Gardener is all right after all.

So “fill me up (fill me up) Buttercup, baby
Don’t you let me down (let me down) and mess me around …
So build me up, Buttercup; don’t break my heart.”

Tasty Cucumber Relish

Last year I looked for a cucumber relish recipe online. I found the best relish I've ever eaten.

If you’ve never canned or pickled, PaulNoll.com gives excellent step-by-step instructions, complete with photos, of how to make the relish.

Hubby and I have made some changes to the recipe.

Here is our version.

Tasty Cucumber Relish

Vegetables
6 lbs. grated or chopped cucumbers
1 grated white onion
1 grated carrot
10 chopped or grated medium bell peppers (if possible, include some red, yellow and/or orange peppers for better color)

Mix together. Grating will make a coarser relish than chopping will.

Brine
1 T. turmeric
1/2 C. salt
8 C. water

Mix together.

Pour brine over vegetables. Stir well and let sit for 3 hours. Drain. Cover with water and let stand for 1 hour. Drain, refill with water and drain again.

Syrup
1 T. mustard seed
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. ground cloves
2 t. allspice
2 C. brown sugar
4 C. cider vinegar

Mix and bring to boil, then pour over vegetables. Let stand 10-12 hours.

Boil before filling prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space. Make sure liquid covers vegetable mix. Process in water bath for 10 minutes.

Makes about 7 pint jars.

Our cucumbers are bearing prolifically right now, so we tripled the recipe this time. I thought I had enough for four batches, but the 23 lbs. I started with became 19 lbs. by the time I removed the ends and blemishes from the cucumbers and deseeded large the ones.

Unfortunately, our peppers aren’t keeping up with the cukes, so I had to buy 34 peppers at the grocery store. The cashier’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head when she saw how many peppers I had in the cart. (We’ll freeze the unused peppers.)

We mixed the recipe in storage containers because we had no other containers large enough.

The Frugal Gardener always feels so virtuous when she preserves her own food!

Volunteer veggies: a pleasant surprise

I love surprises.

Sometimes my garden produces those surprises by bringing up a volunteer vegetable or flower.

I’m not always that surprised, though. Last year, I did a very poor job of picking green beans. So I have a good crop of volunteers this year. Unfortunately for the beans and their picker, the Three Sisters garden has been moved. No cornstalk poles conveniently await beans to climb them. I’m fated to crawl on hands and knees to harvest most of these. Some of them are climbing the fence I erected for them last year, for which I am grateful.

When the fall holidays were over, we threw our pumpkins and gourds into the garden, hoping that a seed would take root. If memory serves me, we threw the pumpkin on the west side of the garden and the gourds on the east. This plant, on the very eastern edge of the pond garden, is probably a mini white pumpkin. But who knows. I look forward to finding out.

This tomato is a complete surprise. I don’t remember throwing any tomatoes in the garden, but here is a tomato plant. It isn’t very healthy, though, so we’ll see if any fruit appears.

Kenny Point at Veggie Gardening Tips
suggests that gardeners learn what baby leaves look like so we don’t pull out something good. If I hadn't known what baby squash and tomato leaves look like, I would have pulled those gifts from the garde

The pond garden

Pond Garden looking northeast. Coral bells and pepper plants are in foreground.

Pond Garden looking southwest. Blue spruce, pampas grass and volunteer green beans are in foreground.

The Frugal Gardener and her hubby have two main vegetable gardens. The narrow rectangles south of our house are the vegetable garden, currently planted with the Three Sisters on one side of the sidewalk and tomatoes and herbs on the other side of the walk. The other, an irregularly-shaped chunk of our backyard, is “The Pond Garden”.

The only water in that garden fills the bird bath. Hubby named it “The Pond Garden” because it’s shaped like a pond.

Our friend Kevin had shown us how to lay out natural-looking landscaping by using a garden hose. The hose marks sinuous curves for a relaxing, free-flowing appearance.

At that time, we had a large, ugly weed patch in our backyard. I hated it. I tried to avoid looking at it because I didn’t know what to do with it.

Then the mental light bulb turned on. I would turn that nasty patch into a garden, using the outlines of the weed patch to create natural-looking curves.

Instead of using a hose, I bought the cheapest can of orange spray paint I could find. I outlined the awful weed patch with the spray paint. Hubby tilled within the lines. I laid down salvaged red bricks for the border.

Previous owners had planted cedar trees and I had received a blue spruce from my brother and sister-in-love for my 40th birthday. We planted pampas grass in the gap between spruce and cedars for privacy, then scattered flowers in various parts of that garden. Flowers include coral bells and irises from my mother's garden. We have purple bee balm and lilies from Hubby's aunt's garden and coral hollyhocks from his parents' garden.

In the spaces that are left, we plant various vegetables each year. Volunteer buttercrunch lettuce returns every year.

An eyesore became something beautiful and productive for almost no money.

Three Sisters Garden

We planted a Three Sisters Garden this year: corn, beans and squash. Corn consumes a very high quantity of nitrogen and wears out soil quickly. Without corn’s sisters, corn must be rotated every year to give soil a rest. With the sisters, corn supposedly can be planted in the same plot year after year.

We only have one place where we can plant corn. Last year we tried another plot with poor results. The only way we’ll have sweet corn yearly is if the Three Sisters do their job.

Beans pull nitrogen from the air into their roots, providing nutrition for the next year’s crop. Beans climb the cornstalks and stabilize them against wind. This is a big plus in our windy climate.

I wanted to plant purple beans this year because I find green beans on green plants somewhat hard to see. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find purple pole beans. When I typed “purple pole beans” into Google just now, several links appeared. I’ll be buying online next year!

Once my plants came up, I heavily mulched them with newspaper and grass to suppress weeds and fertilize the ground. Grass is very rich with nitrogen.

Once the corn canopies, little further tending is necessary.

Squash runs underneath the corn, providing living mulch. Shade from both corn and squash squelches weeds and preserves soil moisture. Squash vines are covered with spines, discouraging hungry creatures from eating their fruit and their sisters’ fruit. We planted butternut squash this year. I hope to make pie filling from it because I can’t stomach winter squash on its own. But butternut pie tastes better than pumpkin and I adore pumpkin pie.

Three Sisters combination produces lots of leftover plant material at end of season. Just as I do with all garden “trash”, I leave it on the ground until spring. Cornstalks and vines make wonderful snow traps.

Unfortunately, they don’t get along with our tiller. Cornstalks are too thick for it to chop and the vines get entangled in the tines. I burn them in our fire pit come spring.

When our fire pit is filled with ashes, we spread them on our garden, adding potash to the soil. Have I told you that the Frugal Gardener hates waste?

I can hardly wait for that sweet corn. Yum, yum!

Gift from the birds

Every winter, I put trash cans underneath my bird feeders to catch the waste. I’m amazed how many sunflower hulls are in those trash cans and how many little sunflowers come up each spring.

I thin them ruthlessly, but always leave a few of those beautiful yellow flowers to brighten my garden. Yellow is one of my favorite colors. It’s so cheerful and warm. Sunflowers’ shape makes them look like faces. I often feel that my sunflowers are smiling at me and the thought warms my heart.

Raspberries and the city

One day several years ago our city inspector called. He told Hubby that we had to remove the tall weeds in our yard.

The Frugal Gardener and her hubby carefully tend our yard. We knew we had no tall weeds. We were perplexed. What was he talking about?

Then we realized that he had to be thinking of our raspberry bushes.

At this time we were editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper.

Hubby called the inspector.

“My wife loves her raspberry bushes,” he said. “And she doesn't want to cut them down. Do you really want my wife, the editor, to have to cut down her raspberry bushes? You know that you’ll hear about it in print forever.”

We never heard a word more.

Talk about the power of the press!

Growing raspberries

Our raspberries were here when we moved in. I kept thinking those bushes were raspberries. They had raspberry leaves, but they didn’t produce any berries. So I didn’t bother with them. I didn’t have time to do much gardening then, so I just left them alone.

We’d been here one or two years when we had a wet spring. Berries appeared. Oh, so they are raspberries! We were delighted.

I’ve been tending them carefully ever since.

Raspberries want lots of water, especially during blossoming and fruiting seasons. However, I can water all I want and only have fair results. For a good crop, we must have rain, especially during blossoming. This year, we received no rain during blossoming. I watered, but the blossoms were sparse. Last year, we did have rain during blossoming and blossoms were everywhere. Blossoms produce berries, so the more blossoms, the more fruit.

Rains during fruiting time make the berries larger and juicier than they are with only watering.

Raspberries do require some work.

Pruning

If you don’t prune, your raspberry patch will soon be overgrown. After years of neglect, our raspberry thicket was nearly impenetrable. Once I began to prune, we received better yields — and I could get through the canes to reach their fruit.

Pruning is very important for raspberries. Otherwise, they become a tangle and have too much competition for sunlight and nutrients. I leave my canes intact until late February or early March in order to trap as much snow as possible. I then cut off all canes about 18 inches from the ground. I remove all the old, dead canes.

Red raspberry canes should be pruned to the ground.

Make sure to wear plenty of protection when pruning, including safety glasses. My face has been badly scratched when I hauled off the prunings.

Propagation

Black and red raspberries propagate themselves differently. Red raspberries send out suckers. To propagate red raspberries, sever the sucker from the mother plant and plant it in its new location.

Black raspberries start new plants from the canes of the old ones. Canes grow long enough to bend over and touch ground. The tip grows roots and up comes a new raspberry plant. If you wish to propagate the berries, cover the tips with 2-4 inches of soil to encourage rooting. Next spring, sever the new plant from the mother cane and transplant it.

Do not propagate any plants from diseased canes. The new plant will be infected with whatever infected the parent.

Black raspberries

Our black raspberries are one of summer’s greatest joys. All year, we look forward to eating them. We devour them during their short season, mostly in raspberry ice cream.

Last year we had a good crop. Rains fell at the right time to produce lots of plump, juicy berries. I thought I might be able to make preserves. That didn’t happen. We ate every last berry I picked!

The berry thicket is a hot, stuffy place. No air moves. I pick the berries early in the morning. That’s the only time picking is bearable. I object to being scratched, so I wear pants and a jacket. My hands are the only part of me left uncovered below the neck. Unfortunately, I can’t pick while wearing gloves. I tend to crush the berries because my sense of touch is off. Once I did try picking while wearing thin plastic gloves. That didn’t work. The gloves were shredded within minutes.

So I get a few scratches. Big deal. The price of scratches is well worth paying in order to eat delectable berries.

Tara's gone to the kitchen

I've been asked what to do with tarragon. Since I love to find answers for people's questions, I searched Google, that fount of all information. (What did we ever do without search engines?)

Tarragon is most commonly used in bearnaise sauce and in the herb mixes herbes de provence and fines herbes.

About.com's Home Cooking site gives tarragon history, storage information and, most importantly, recipes.

In My Kitchen Garden talks about tarragon, too. Make sure to read the comments.

TheBigOven.com has a recipe for chateaubriand with bearnaise sauce. Reading their recipe brought back good memories. Last year, we won a trip to Vail, Colo. On our trip's first night, we ate at The Ore House. We chose to split chateaubriand. Was it ever delicious. We were stuffed at the end and our stomachs were very happy!

Hubby at The Ore House the morning after we gorged ourselves there.

How to be a frugal gardener

This is Marilyn’s reworking of Hubby’s idea. We replaced our grill, so planted a garden in the old one. She saw what we’d done and did it herself. Hers looks better.

I owe this list to Nature Moms Blog.

1. Grow Your Own Plants from Seed — Seeds are cheaper than nursery-grown seedlings so growing your own will save you some green. Local seed exchange programs and community gardens might also provide you with free seeds.

We overdid on seed starting last year and were overwhelmed with eggplants, something I don’t even like that well! We didn’t get around to starting any tomatoes and peppers this year, but I intend to try again next year, just with a more reasonable amount.

2. Don’t buy peat pots when you can use your leftover toilet paper rolls, eggshells, or newspapers for free.

I don’t use peat pots. We throw our eggshells in the garden for fertilizer. As I’ve written before, newspaper makes wonderful mulch. We generally burn our toilet paper rolls in our fire pit. Toilet paper isn’t romantic, but the fire is.

Marilyn remodeled her kitchen last summer and used the old sink as another container. In her yard, container gardening even includes the kitchen sink!

3. Instead of buying containers for container gardening, why not recycle household stuff like old boots, buckets, baskets, metal tins, old toys, apple barrels, wheelbarrows, broken plastic tubs, etc. A few years back, I took two old wheelbarrows and stacked them on top of each other in my front yard and planted in them. The result was so gorgeous that a picture of it ended up in a small local newspaper.

I’ve never gotten my planter’s picture in the newspaper, but I have used all sorts of objects as planters. Someone in town has put a bike in their garden, lined its basket with moss and planted annuals in it. I love that. However, the work of continually watering containers in our semiarid climate wore me out last year. I’m taking a break from most container gardening this year.

4. Make your own pinwheels. I use pinwheels in my garden to deter critters and while they are not that expensive (usually only $1 a piece at the store) I can save $10 or so and have a nice time crafting with my kids by making my own — and they aren’t plastic, which is a plus. I just love the look of pinwheels blowing around in the garden; it is lovely. Ribbon attached to a stake works well too.

The link above shows how to make paper pinwheels. I wonder how well these would hold up in our lovely High Plains winds. They do look fun.

5. Look for open bags of soil at your local gardening center and seedlings that are past their prime. You can usually get some steep discounts on those items. Ask the cashier if they can cut you a deal.

We recycle our potting soil, dumping it into a metal trash can we salvaged. And we shop end-of-season garden sales.

6. Re-purpose broken watering cans by using them as planters or by cutting off the spout and using them as refill containers for bird feeders.

I never thought of using a watering can to refill bird feeders.

7. Do you or any of your neighbors have fish tanks? When it comes time to clean the tanks use the water to give your plants a tonic they will love.

No fish tanks here, but it’s a great idea for those who have access to one.

8. Use a plastic garbage can to collect rain water by putting it under a drainage pipe. Then just scoop out water as needed instead of reaching for the hose to water plants.

Rain water? What rain water? I keep a dish under the spigot to catch the water that inevitably drips from it. Mr. Kitty loves to drink that water.

9. Use kitchen scraps to make your own compost and put banana peels under your roses to give them a potassium boost.

We also throw our coffee grounds in our rose bushes. Vegetable kitchen scraps go straight into our garden.

10. Cut down on fanciful flowers and plant some drought-tolerant plants instead, like one of my personal favorites, hens-and-chicks.

I could definitely do a better job of this.

11. Grow food and you won’t have to buy as much at the grocery store! You can even grow your beauty products.

Last year we made our own salsa and spaghetti sauce. This year I want to make both of those again, plus our own pesto. I did a poor job of bean picking last year and intend to remedy that this year. I feel virtuous when I look at jars full of our own produce.

12. Put old saucer or plates under your pots to collect water run-off.

Unfortunately, these old saucers catch just enough water to breed mosquitoes. Nasty things.

13. Line your pots or containers with 6-8 sheets of newspaper to help them retain moisture so they won’t need to be watered as much.

I had never thought of this. I do lay down a heavy mulch blanket over my containers. When I started doing that last year, I was amazed how much watering I saved.

14. When it rains, scoop up your indoor plants and set them outside for a little while to get a drink.

Rain has wonderful nutrients that tap water doesn’t have. Definitely give those poor indoor plants a drink.

15. Shop for gardening tools, containers, and lawn and patio furniture at yard sales, garage sales, and barn sales.

Or fish them out of the trash!

De-mint-ed

I should have listened to my mother.

Hubby and I planted mint in our vegetable garden. After we'd done the work, she warned us that mint was very invasive. We didn't want to undo what we'd done and we left that plant in our garden. How foolish was that!

Mint sends out wicked runners. All those runners must be removed from the garden or the plants will grow back. If we had listened and ripped it out, we would have saved ourselves much grief and work. Instead, every spring I "de-mint" the garden. When it's done, I say I am "de-mint-ed." I was demented to plant it in the first place!

The first year we de-mint-ed, we had to get fill dirt from a construction site because our garden had a crater in it. That evil plant had even sent runners under our sidewalk to infiltrate another garden. The crater's contents went into our driveway. The Frugal Gardener hates waste. We're still dumping our precious garden soil into the drive because of mint contamination, although the loads get smaller each year.

Unfortunately for us, we planted the mint right on our property line. It spread into the neighbor's lawn. The neighbor thinks the stuff is great and tends it. Therefore, it spreads right back into our garden. See the mint poking through the fence? I can't dig up the mint that's right on the line because my shovel hits concrete. So I'm stuck with it.

Yes, I definitely should have listened to my mother. Don't plant mint!

Tara's gone

The word "tarragon" reminds The Frugal Gardener of "Gone with the Wind", except that Scarlett saved Tara the plantation.

Eating tarragon is one of spring's delights. Chef Hubby uses it to season steak and fish. The herb is most famous as a bearnaise sauce ingredient. We've also made tarragon vinegar. Tarragon's flavor is best early in its growing season. Its taste becomes stronger in the heat.

The Frugal Gardener was surprised to see tarragon seeds in the local garden center this spring. I had thought tarragon only grew through cuttings. I learned that tarragon comes in two varieties: French and Russian. French tarragon is the better-tasting variety and is only propagated through cuttings. The less-desirable Russian tarragon can be grown from seeds.

Tarragon wants to be divided every few years, so I share ours with friends.

Tarragon has medicinal uses as well. Chewing tarragon leaves apparently eases oral pain. Tarragon leaves also possess infection-fighting properties. Perhaps the Frugal Gardener will use a leaf as a temporary bandage the next time she cuts herself while gardening!

Ironically, tarragon is a member of the same botanical family as dandelion. The herb has some nasty relatives! Oh, well, don't we all!

A perennial gift

My peonies are a perpetual gift from my mother and grandmother. Mother planted some of her mother's peonies in her backyard when I was a girl. After Grandma died, my parents moved to her house. Before they moved, my dad and brother dug the peonies for me.

The Frugal Gardener in me loves divided plants. They are generally free and are wonderful reminders of the people who gave them to us.

We nearly lost our peonies, which would have been a catastrophe. Our roofer nearly killed them when he drove over them. After several years of trying to repair what he'd done to them, I moved them. They are now happy and covered with blossoms each spring.

When we were children, my brother, our cousins and I tried to remove the ants from the peonies. Disgusting bugs! Or so we thought. Somehow, the peonies didn't bloom without ants. Some of the websites I've seen say that peonies don't need the ants, but that's not true in my family's experience.



Apparently, peonies produce various ant attractants. The ants eat a waxy coating, helping the blooms to open. The Heartland Peony Society and GardenWeb's Peony Forum have all kinds of information about the flowers.



If a person wants to use peonies as a cut flower, the ants can be removed by dunking them in water. Personally, I prefer to enjoy the flowers in their natural state, remembering the heritage they represent.

Green Gold

Water is at a premium in our lovely windy, semi-arid climate. Keeping our plants hydrated is a strenuous task. The Frugal Gardener also intensely dislikes weeding. So she has a solution to both. It's called mulch. Merriam-Webster defines "mulch" as "a protective covering (as of sawdust, compost, or paper) spread or left on the ground to reduce evaporation, maintain even soil temperature, prevent erosion, control weeds, enrich the soil, or keep fruit (as strawberries) clean."



Once mulching is done for the year, we start filling our mulch bin. To make the bin, Dad wired together six pallets that were headed for the landfill. (Rescuing items from the landfill always makes me feel virtuous.) Voila! Free mulch bin! Construction took about an hour.



We fill the bin with yard waste, mostly grass clippings. However, we do save leaves as well.



To suppress weeds, we lay down cardboard and newsprint before covering them with grass clippings, leaves or whatever else will degrade. I get the local newspaper's extra papers just for the asking.



I used to lay down just newsprint, but the cardboard stays down much better. That's very important in our high winds. My friend and I Dumpster dive until we get enough cardboard boxes to cover our gardens. We break down the boxes and remove all plastic tape. Plastic tape does not degrade and will just have to be pulled out of the garden later. Then we lay the flattened boxes on the ground. Weeds are smothered and the ground is better insulated than if we just used yard waste.

Do not use any coated paper or boxes. They don't degrade well, so you miss the soil enrichment. Make sure to completely cover the paper/cardboard to keep the wind from getting it.



Once I finish mulching, I water the new mulch to compact it as well as make it heavier.

Happy mulching!

Headed for the Last Roundup

The Frugal Gardener despises bindweed (seen here in my corner garden) and its cousin morning glory. Wicked, wicked weeds! I've battled them ever since my brother and I slaved in my mother's garden.

Our previous homeowner actually planted morning glory where we now have our vegetable garden. What were they thinking? They had even erected a wire trellis for it. Removing that trellis was our first garden project.

Every year I pull, pull, pull that nasty vine. And every year it returns. Disgusting. Morning glory is supposed to be an annual. If "annual" means that it returns annually, the description is right on.

I didn't have a bindweed problem until last year. Then it appeared in my corner garden, probably brought by a passing vehicle or bird droppings. UGH. Some started growing in my sidewalk. I dumped straight bleach on the sidewalk bindweed and killed it.

I've already sprayed the corner garden once this year and I sprayed it again today. Hopefully this spraying does the job. If not, I'm going back out there. That stuff is going to die!

I found quite a discussion about killing bindweed on Garden Web's forum. Some people get hot under the collar about using chemical weed control.

I prefer organic gardening to using chemicals, but if it's a choice between bindweed infestation or using chemicals, I choose chemicals.

Recycling all over again

The Frugal Gardener is always looking for something to rescue from the landfill. Our landfill doesn't allow recycling, so the Frugal Gardener has to grab items before they ever get there. Previously, this garden's boundaries were marked with red bricks taken from an abandoned school building that had been knocked down. The red bricks kept falling into the street. The Frugal Gardener got tired of picking them up.

Last year, Hubby and I were visiting his aunt and uncle when their neighbor began carting off wood. The Frugal Gardener was appalled at this potential waste. We rescued the wood for our purposes, some for firewood and some for landscaping. Most of the rescued landscape timbers had already been put to use. Our stockpile did not have enough landscape timbers to completely frame this flower garden. But we had salvaged fence posts from other places.



Weeds had taken over this garden. I dug the worst so Hubby can till in here. Our tulips have about died down and the hibiscus has yet to leaf out, so it looks pretty bad. Once he tills, we'll plant more flowers in here.

After digging, I picked up all the bricks and placed the boards where I wanted them. Unfortunately, they are just a bit short, so I had to leave a few of them in place. But I'll keep looking for more boards. Buying some just seems like cheating! Turning other people's trash into our treasures is much more rewarding than buying something.



Previous owners planted cedars rather too close to the sidewalk, forcing us to walk on the grass. Not much grows here because we continually walk on it and several trees take up most of the water this patch receives. So instead of patchy grass, I took the replaced bricks and began a red brick walk. We'll truly be Walking the Red Brick Road once it's finished.

"Lawn-gaine"

Our lawn suffers from baldness.

So what does The Frugal Gardener do to cure lawn baldness?

She uses the "Lawn-gaine" Treatment.

First, identify misplaced grass. Grass definitely doesn't belong in my strawberry bed.



Second, dig up misplaced grass and place in wheelbarrow.


Third, overturn soil in bald spot.



Fourth, Place misplaced grass into its new place and step on it.



Fifth, water daily until grass is established.

Presto, the cure for lawn baldness.

Trash to treasure

I love to turn an object headed for the dump into something useful. We found this ammunition box while we were out walking with our friend Kevin. We later returned and picked up the box while Kevin distracted the neighbors.

Unfortunately, I did not record the box's original appearance. I brushed several coats of exterior-grade varnish on the box, which unfortunately covers some of the wonderful stamped words on it.

I had found a very sturdy pallet not long before we found the ammo box. I thought the pallet would make a wonderful replacement top.



We cut the pallet to size.



I bought some remnant vinyl and foam from the local sign shop. I glued the foam to the pallet and stapled the vinyl to the top. We attached hinges with the help of another friend.



The ammo box makes excellent storage as well as additional table space.



I found a fellow blogger who changes Trash to Treasure and also shares my faith: Check her out.

Maggie Grace Creates repurposed an ammo box as well.