Freebies!

We all like freebies right?  Even I do, this particular freebie only cost me some gas and the effort to get it into the truck bed.

That is half a truck bed full of composted sawdust with a sprinkling of fresh saw dust for our sawdust toilet on top.  The local lumber mill (well one of the 2 anyway) allows us to pick up as much of either as we want free if we load it ourselves.
If I wanted to pay $10 I could get one front end loader "bucket" full, the guy at the saw mill said it'd prob take 2 to fill the truck bed.   I'm alright with shoveling the stuff myself if it'll help my garden.

Thing is (sorry it's not in great focus), it looks more like dirt than just some composted wood.  It also has a nice "feel" to it.  This with some of the manures I have around here will make a lovely bed for my newest crop!  SUNCHOKES!
Before anybody comments about how invasive is can get I already know and I hope that it does take over as we have killed horseradish here!  I also have a rue plant that I started 3 years ago and it's maybe a foot tall and not even a foot wide.  As our soil is mostly clay I'd like to see something I want to plant become so "hardy" it takes over especially since we like the taste of them.
We're also hoping that when we get even more of this "dirt" maybe we'll do a good sized potato patch that'll eventually be for carrots, turnips, salsafy, etc.

So we are going to be busy as long as we have gas in the truck!  Yeah!   I also have my bell pepper and tomato seeds to I can start the plants soon.  I'm figuring if they produce as well as they did next year'll I'll only need 6 plants, so I'll start 12.  I am hoping I can get the peppers to sprout I've had lots of troubles getting pepper plants to sprout.  Growing peppers from starts no problem, but if I try from seed they do nothing.   SHRUGS   I'll get them eventually.  I can be a very stubborn and tenacious person sometimes.

That's it for now.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Quiet Days

We have been have a few quiet days here, between the rain and the cold.  My mom has flooding up near her in the Chicago area, though where she lives it would take a great deal of water to flood them out.  All of the seeds and plants I have put in seem to be doing well so far.  The one exception is my mini pak choi and edible chrysanthemums, something seems to like eating them;maybe I just need to give up on them.

Our next set of plans on building things is to get either the well house redo, the outdoor kitchen, or the pipe and wire for the new house.  As we sat down and figured we cannot really do any work on the house itself till the kids are fully out of school so they can help as we have at least one spot that needs three people to do the work.  ...and with how the weather has been I can't guarantee we'll have a clear day on the weekends.  So we wait on house construction till they get out and we have them around all the time.  Silly thing is we only need the "extra man" to put up the rebar for the frame the rest we can do two person.

My strawberries are starting to bloom, I'm taking that as a good sign that they like their new home.  We are going to order some huge jalapeno peppers and some sunchokes around the first and a lemon grass plant.  Seems I cannot get lemon grass to sprout at all shrugs oh well we'll just have to do with a started plant.  We are going to have to buy a pot and keep it inside in the cold weather, but I believe it'll be worth it.  I am considering when we get the dome built to get a laurel tree in a big pot.

I hope you are all about to work and get around in all the rain we've had and I alps hope you won't be in the path of any nasty snow melt when it starts up.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...