As some of you may know, I'm a medically retired person with disabilities, making ends meet on 2 different disability pensions. One is a provincial program, the other federal. Unfortunately, due to a significant amount of fraud that has been discovered, the provincially run one is undergoing a severe overhaul to weed out the fraudsters. As a result of said overhaul, all recipients are being reassessed for their qualifications. Those of us who do not meet the new provincial "requirements", will be put on a new pension program aimed at helping us return to work. Sadly, this new program comes with some significant reductions in benefits and a potential to disqualify some of us from the federal pension program as well. For the last two weeks I have reviewing and researching the new requirements, and they are VERY specific. These specifics basically disqualify many currently recognized disabilities. This basically means that when the new program is in full effect, those like myself who don't meet said requirements will be in a pickle. How is this going to affect The Skool Communities I run? Well, basically, I am going to have to retool and pick a different focus and direction. I will be shutting down my other community and focusing entirely on this community. I will be doing this because frankly, it will be easier to create content for The Pinchpenny DIYer while i am also working on income generating fabrication. On another note, March has been hitting us abnormally hard here with repeated snowstorms. This has severely impacted my ability to make the content that I had planned for you all, as it's all outdoor stuff. I currently have very little in the way of "indoor" content that I can shoot, but I am working on that as best I can, all things considered. I will be doing a further update early next week. For the weekend, I am taking some downtime to recover from the stress of the damage control I've been up to my ears in for the last couple of weeks.

Ah, the things you can find in the scrap metal pile at the local landfill.

Just putting it out there that I'm hosting the coffee hour at 10 a.m. Mountain time. Would love to have a few of you there! Direct chat page link Calendar link

When it comes to starting your plants, there are a number of things you can use. From peat pellets to reusable starter pots and potting soils, the list is long. The problem is that these all cost money. With the rising costs of just about everything, plant starting materials are also getting spendy. We usually start at least several dozen of each different plant. We do this to ensure that we have enough healthy plants ready for the garden once everything thaws out and warms up enough. To significantly reduce our seasonal garden startup costs, we do two things: First, in the fall, when we've cleared the garden of all the crops, we take a couple 5 gallon buckets, and we fill them with garden soil. This gets stored in our cold room over the winter and becomes next season's "potting soil". This saves us from purchasing expensive potting soil over and over. Second, over the winter, we save ALL our toilet paper and paper towel tubes. We save these because they are made from a light, unbleached heavy paper. They make great compostable "pots" for seedlings. We simply fill them with our saved garden soil, drop our seeds in them and let the seeds do their thing. When the seedlings are ready for the garden, we just plant the whole tube, and we're done. When everything is said and done, we've just saved anywhere from $60 to $100 on plant starting materials. The tubes pictured below are ready for seeds. Just debating what we want to plant this year.

With March upon us, gardening season will be starting for many. Around here, mid-March is usually when we start thinking about which plants we need to start. This list usually includes things like our Brassicas, such as cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. We don't do "exotics" like kale or kohlrabi because they aren't things we eat here. Our tomato plants are also usually on this list of pre-starts. We do this so we have time to harden them off before temperatures get stable enough before they can go into the ground. During this time, we also prepare our soil amendments, like our calcium by powdering our winter eggshells, and our nitrogen booster that we make from our saved coffee grounds. What's your March gardening to-do list look like? Drop your plans in the comments below. I'm curious to see who is doing what 😁