Grocery Shopping April 2023

I'm sorry this is late, for those of you who enjoy reading about my grocery spending. April was a difficult month. As a result, I didn't keep track as the month progressed, but instead saved my receipts and am now tallying them. I won't list the individual prices or quantities for everything, but will give you an idea of what I bought and how much I spent in total at each store.

Spent $231.71 for month of April.

What was unusual about April's grocery spending:

• a double birthday celebration
• Easter breakfast and dinner, along with a postponed Easter due to daughter's illness, which meant buying strawberries a second time
• stock-up on soy milk powder, eggs, flour, different meats, instant milk, snack foods for family, and I bought some boxed and canned foods on markdown
• Sometimes I ran into the store just for 1 or 2 items as I happened to be in another business in the same strip mall. Sometimes I was shopping for gardening and home organization supplies in Fred Meyer, so I checked the clearance rack while I was there. This was not a very organized shopping month for me.
• My daughters also stopped into stores for me while they were running their own errands (breaded mushrooms, 15-dozen case of eggs)
• I did a lot of clearance rack shopping. Getting those bargains is a real mood-booster.

I shopped on 8 different days, going to one to three stores on any given day. Like I said, not organized.

April 1. Walmart $21.36   50 lbs flour, bananas

April 6. Swansons (online) $47.00  4 bags of soy milk powder

April 6. Grocery Outlet (salvage store) $9.98  coconut date rolls (Easter), Craisins, quick grits

April 6. Fred Meyer $5.10  asparagus, strawberries (for Easter dinner #1)

April 7. Fred Meyer $10.02  clearance rack: granola bars, cereal, canned vegetables, boxed donuts

April 15. Fred Meyer $32.93  clearance rack: instant milk, canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned pasta sauce.

Also bought chicken, pork loin, fresh strawberries (for Easter dinner #2 after #1 was canceled), tangerines

April 20. Chefstore (restaurant supply) $39.60  baklava, gyro meat (birthday celebration)

April 20. WinCo $27.18  produce, pita bread, tzatziki (birthday celebration), chicken breasts

April 22. Walmart $6.68  frozen breaded mushrooms (birthday celebration)

April 25. Walmart $1.87  bananas

April 28. Chefstore $29.99  15 dozen eggs

Did I spend more than recent months? Yes, but I was still comfortably within the range that I've determined for us. And I also have to take into consideration that we made 2 extended family meals for special occasions included in this spending. I do hope that May's grocery shopping focuses less on snack and prepared foods and more on basics to begin stocking up for next winter. We'll see how well I do. May is shaping up to be a better month overall for me, so that should help.

Growing Lettuce Vertically

 

This photo was taken 10 days ago. I now have 4 shelves of salad greens on my outdoor shelves. The shelving unit is actually the innards of this portable greenhouse, bought in February 2016. 

For growing salad greens on the shelves this spring and summer, I slid the plastic zip-up cover off of the shelf frame, and set the cover aside until fall rolls around. Because tall, narrow, and somewhat lightweight things tend to not stay upright in our gusty winds, here, I've secured this to the siding of our house with large hooks and bungie cords at the top and bottom of the unit. I did need to replace the bungie cords this season as the previous ones wore out. It's pretty secure against winds.

I'm growing the greens in the bottom halves of 1-gallon plastic milk jugs, the same "pots" I used indoors under lights this winter growing radish greens. I reused the soil from the radishes, stirring in fresh organic fertilizer specifically for greens to boost the nutrients for my little lettuce "patch".

I can add one more shelf of 2 rows of salad pots, when I have more empty milk jugs. That will give me 40 pots of lettuce, spinach, and parsley. 

I have staggered the seed starting dates, so that we will have a continuous supply of fresh salads through spring and into summer. The lettuce in this photo should be ready for the salad bowl in about a week. I will begin more heat-tolerant greens in early June so we don't lose our salads altogether when the weather warms up in July and August.

Although 3 rows of pots will fit on these shelves, I've only set up 2 rows, as the back part of the shelves doesn't receive the amount of light needed. As it is, I rotate the pots from front to back and back to front once per week, to ensure all of the plants are getting enough sun. 

Growing my lettuce vertically on shelves leaves the garden bed space free for larger plants, as well as keeps my lettuce out of the pathway of hungry slugs. In addition, growing vertically in this way has a much smaller footprint than growing 40 pots laid out side by side on the deck floor. 

Besides, I like the look of my vertical lettuce patch on shelves. There's something visually appealing about the tidy little rows of pots lined up on shelves, one shelf above another.