I don’t know about you but when I final settle down from all the Thanksgiving through Christmas Holiday craziness, I start to get excited about the garden. January is a time to reflect on the past year and dream about the new year. I know I am strange but when February 14th rolls around I think Spring, warmer weather, flowers and gardens. So at the end of January I feel compelled to start thinking about the garden and order new seeds.
I sat down this past week and planned out the Potager garden as well as the market garden for this year.
I took out all my old seeds to see what I still had on hand and what I would need to buy. Originally I didn’t have a set budget for anything. I just bought a ton of seeds from my favorite seed company, Baker Creek Seeds https://www.rareseeds.com/.
But when I received them a light bulb went off in my head. I was super excited to see the beauty of all the seeds in front of me but wondered, am I jut spending to spend? It sure is fun to look through the seed catalog and dream, then get caught up in buying as much seed packets as I can. Well this year I wanted things to be different in my life so why not make things different in all aspects of my life sense gardening is a big part of what we do on the farm.
As I sat there staring at packets It dawned on me that I didn’t even know how much I spent on the 22 packages of seeds I bought. So I looked at the receipt $63.75. I bought tons of seeds that should provide enough food for us for the year. Or at least that’s the plan. I really want to save money on the garden this year and use all that we have and can grow. So I was thinking of a budget for the garden this year, which I have never done before. I just dropped my food budget down to $200 a month, thanks to Mavis Butterfield’s inspirational post of $100 monthly food budget https://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/, so why not add a budget for the garden as well. A $100 sounded good at first but then I decided sense I have a $200 food budget we should start there. I know I am going to buy new blueberry bushes which will be most of the budget but with $100 for the year that would probably only buy maybe one bush. With $200 maybe 3. So that’s the set budget.
Now this amount wont include the bricks & box woods for around the Potager garden (because these should have been in last year) but I included the seeds I just bought and bushes, plants or fruit trees for the year.
Can I do it? We will see. I will keep you posted!