Just curious who else is living super frugal

[Spifflove]

So, question about frugality and gardening ... to my way of thinking it is much more frugal for me to have plants that produce well and provide food for our family that we will eat. Others seem to have the opinion that only growing heirloom seeds is the way to be frugal because they can save the seed for the next year. My experience with heirlooms hasn't been great though. They are usually harder to germinate, harder to keep up with, they don't produce as well, and the bugs and diseases just seem to eat them alive from one day to the next - none of which makes for a bountiful harvest of food on my table. I also seem to get stuck with "heirloom" seeds that don't actually produce what they are supposed to produce even though they come from a company that is supposedly completely heirloom. Personally I can't see what's wrong with growing hybrids and think in the course of being frugal it's a good deal to have actual food at the end of the growing season rather than just more seeds. But I'm wondering what other people's experiences are on this thread.

Easier, the dark side is, not better. From a recent long term gmo soybean study:

Of course its just lab rats...

 

[nok13]

how can u all buy veggies and fruits without feeling/seeing/smelling them? that drove me nuts when i was visiting my sister in newton boston; i wanted to make an all israeli type dinner so we went shopping. it drove me nuts that all the veggies and stuff were wrapped up in nylon, even the organic veggies were all lined up wrapped up , same size same shape. here we will often take a grape to taste before purchase. the worst was when i was trying to by cilantro. finally we went to an ethnic indian foods store and i found some , but even there it didnt have the same aroma, so we went out somewhere to a farmers' market which was twice the price (thats really wierd to me), but i followed a bunch of vietnameise women and found decent cilantro and mint. i wont buy anything that has been pre washed, prewrapped, pre sliced (why wouldn anyone intheir right mind buy pre sliced muchrooms for instance? what,no one has even one knife in their studio apartment or whatever? i like to be able to peel, chop, slice, wash, dice and sniff .

i also agree about the coupun thing. here also coupons have been 'discoverd', even internet coupons, for things like hotels and stuff. but actually, u arent saving on your regular daily items. but u are saving if , as someone mentioned, it allows u to buy something that u normally wouldnt buy.

i always have a running list of needs and a running list of wants. the needs are daily items, like shampoos and stuff. the wants are things that i would like to buy for holidays, birthdays (my kids ahve gotten used to getting birthday and holiday gifts at all sorts of times, cause i buy something that i think is good for them, when i can afford it, or when the price is right and then i cant hold out, i HAVE to give them the gift.

a good example is now for passover, i have been wanting to get some new items (everything i own pracitcally is second or more hand), to finish a 'look' that i started on rosh hashana (jewish new year). i ended up in a name brand store since the store i had wanted to buy from had gone out of business (our closest mall , used to be local, cheap, and small has now enlarged and become name branded and expensive). in the name brand place, they had an end of season /leftovers sale, and lo and behold, they had three items that were on my list, in the range of colours that i was interested in (im flexible in style/colour but not in texture and washability), so that the prices were essentially within the range i had decided on ahead of time. and with my leftover amount, i bought one item that was a luxury, something that i dont allow myself to buy often.

im not a fun person to go shopping with. i am 'mission' oriented. i have a list, a mission and allotted time to do it all in. what i dont find, i put off to the next allotted shopping trip, planned ahead of time. fortunately, all three of my kids have got this same attitude, they are all thrifty and not hobby shoppers. (apart from bookstores and pet shop/tractor store type places). hubby on the other hand is additcted to hardware/tools. and although frugal in every other way, he isnt when it comes to tools. he also, for whatever reasons, does not know how to maintain his tools. in his village i noticed also that almost every shack had endless pieces and parts of tools/machines just laying around, rusting, not organized, or stored in any particular fashion. so that things get ruined easily. for a very poor people, they certainly waste the very very very hard earned money they spend on those items.

 

[vickichicki]

Just a small tip I can share to help with cutting cost for shopping.

When things like ground beef are on 'sale'. I buy as much as my buget will allow. At home I will take all but a few pounds and brown it up, section them into 1lb bags and freeze them, also sectioning the uncoooked into 1lb bags.
Same with chicken (not ready to eat mine yet). I cube, fillet thinly or cut strips and freeze. Sometimes cooking them ebfore hand.

We normally eat what meat was on sale the last time and 6-8lbs of ground beef or chicken is more than enough for us for the month.

 

[DennisK]

Easier, the dark side is, not better. From a recent long term gmo soybean study:

Of course its just lab rats...

I’ve been searching the web on this subject, and it seems we are discussing three different types of plants. Heirloom seeds are from well established plants which have been harvested by the gardener over a number of years. Through the process of selection, they will become more acclimated to a specific environment, and they will produce what the gardener wants – as long as the gardener stays where he or she plants. If you are young and intend to stay where you are, this might be a good thing.
Hybrid plants are basically cross pollinated with similar plants to produce a plant that has the better characteristics of both parent plants. We have been doing this since the advent of agriculture. I read that the seeds from hybrid plants can be unpredictable until after a number of generations when they normalize, or stabilize.
GMO’s are completely different in that the DNA is manipulated in a lab to produce all sorts of chemicals – like herbicides, or insecticides. It’s anyone’s guess what affect this has on us humans.

 

[MoonShadows]

Just a small tip I can share to help with cutting cost for shopping.

When things like ground beef are on 'sale'. I buy as much as my buget will allow. At home I will take all but a few pounds and brown it up, section them into 1lb bags and freeze them, also sectioning the uncoooked into 1lb bags.
Same with chicken (not ready to eat mine yet). I cube, fillet thinly or cut strips and freeze. Sometimes cooking them ebfore hand.

We normally eat what meat was on sale the last time and 6-8lbs of ground beef or chicken is more than enough for us for the month.

Ditto! We do the same thing. I love BOGO sales (buy one get one)..,meats, coffee, yogurt, etc. We divide whatever meats we get on sale and vacuum pack them. Then we date them and put them in a chest freezer. (We got the chest freezer at Sears a few years ago..."scratch and dent sale" for 1/2 price.) The vacuum rolls are a bit pricy (we try to get them on sale), but they keep the meat so much better than just putting it in plastic bags. We tried Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, etc., but found if we watch the sales in the 3 area super markets, we can actually do better price wise. We even have certain sale items, and their sale rotation, down to a science so we know just how much to buy so it will last us until the next time it will go on sale.

 

[ScottnLydia]

I’ve been searching the web on this subject, and it seems we are discussing three different types of plants. Heirloom seeds are from well established plants which have been harvested by the gardener over a number of years. Through the process of selection, they will become more acclimated to a specific environment, and they will produce what the gardener wants – as long as the gardener stays where he or she plants. If you are young and intend to stay where you are, this might be a good thing.
Hybrid plants are basically cross pollinated with similar plants to produce a plant that has the better characteristics of both parent plants. We have been doing this since the advent of agriculture. I read that the seeds from hybrid plants can be unpredictable until after a number of generations when they normalize, or stabilize.
GMO’s are completely different in that the DNA is manipulated in a lab to produce all sorts of chemicals – like herbicides, or insecticides. It’s anyone’s guess what affect this has on us humans.

Just to expound a bit on Dennis' great info, most heirlooms are stabilied hybrids as well. This is how corn has been developed from tiny, grass-like plants into what we know today. All tomatoes were developed by gardeners crossing different strains, trying to develop the 'perfect tomato', resulting in the vast array that we have today.

A few are 'sports', or spontaneous mutations that are propogated. To my knowledge, that is done mostly with woody cuttings like fruit trees and roses, things like that. The "Red Delicious" apple was such a sport, a single branch of red apples on a tree of what became known as "standard Delicious", a green apple with red stripes. Careful grafting has resulted in an industry! Standard Delicious is all but extinct.

GMOs are a Pandoras box that should have never been opened, in my opinion! Big Ag companies like Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, and Bayer remind me of the saying, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

 

[erinszoo]

Quote:
EXACTLY!!!!! Hybrid plants are nothing more than what happens when a bee collects pollen from two different varieties of tomatoes or squash and pollinates another variety. Even monks in the 15th century made hybrid plants to get better production.

GMO's are not what I want to plant at all. Whoever posted the lab rats needs to start reading posts a little better before they go off half cocked! Thanks! Besides if you research GMO's, you'll find that while "many" are screaming about stopping GMO's because they are supposedly poisoning us all, there are almost NO GMO's being grown anywhere. The technology does exist, yes, and it has been tried out BUT and this is a big BUT almost no county in the world will buy GMO products so there is no market for them in the large scale commercial operations. All the hype is another case of "brainwashing" by the media and people jumping to conclusions without actually researching all the information that's available to them because "my best friend Johnny would never lie to me - he's a great guy so I have to believe everything he says".

I'll step off my soap box now.

 

[jbirds2012]

Ditto! We do the same thing. I love BOGO sales (buy one get one)..,meats, coffee, yogurt, etc. We divide whatever meats we get on sale and vacuum pack them. Then we date them and put them in a chest freezer. (We got the chest freezer at Sears a few years ago..."scratch and dent sale" for 1/2 price.) The vacuum rolls are a bit pricy (we try to get them on sale), but they keep the meat so much better than just putting it in plastic bags. We tried Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, etc., but found if we watch the sales in the 3 area super markets, we can actually do better price wise. We even have certain sale items, and their sale rotation, down to a science so we know just how much to buy so it will last us until the next time it will go on sale.

yup, been doing that for years. we also noticed that smart and finale's meat prices were better than Costco's if you don't catch a sale at one of the 3 area super markets.

 

[ScottnLydia]

EXACTLY!!!!! Hybrid plants are nothing more than what happens when a bee collects pollen from two different varieties of tomatoes or squash and pollinates another variety. Even monks in the 15th century made hybrid plants to get better production.

GMO's are not what I want to plant at all. Whoever posted the lab rats needs to start reading posts a little better before they go off half cocked! Thanks! Besides if you research GMO's, you'll find that while "many" are screaming about stopping GMO's because they are supposedly poisoning us all, there are almost NO GMO's being grown anywhere. The technology does exist, yes, and it has been tried out BUT and this is a big BUT almost no county in the world will buy GMO products so there is no market for them in the large scale commercial operations. All the hype is another case of "brainwashing" by the media and people jumping to conclusions without actually researching all the information that's available to them because "my best friend Johnny would never lie to me - he's a great guy so I have to believe everything he says".

I'll step off my soap box now.

WHOA! I'm sorry, but you have got a serious disconnect in your information stream!!!

Case in point; As of 2005, 87% of the Canola grown in the U.S. was modified to be glyphosphate (Roundup) resistant. That's the Canola oil you use. By 2010, the University of N. Dakota found that 80% of the wild Canola plants also had the glyphosphate resistant trans-genes. So Monsanto could patent them too.

Herbicide resistant GM corn is grown in 14 countries. In 2012, 26 varieties were authorized for import to the European Union, and in 2012 the EU imported 30 million tons of genetically modified crops.

Transgenic soybeans are in use all over the world. The U.S. production is 85% genetically modified, for either domestic use, or export.

Monsanto regularly tests seeds for sale, and sues if any of their 'special genetic blend' shows up, claiming copyright infringement, making it harder and harder for 'organic' seed sellers to find and sell pure product.

Good Lord, don't believe me! I wasn't talking to no "Johnny"! GO TO MONSANTOS WEBSITE YOURSELF, AND LOOK UNDER 'PRODUCTS'!!! THEY LIST THEIR "ROUNDUP READY CROPS" RIGHT THERE!!!

Sorry, but this ain't Santy Claus. Just because you don't want to believe in it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!

 

[Spifflove]

EXACTLY!!!!! Hybrid plants are nothing more than what happens when a bee collects pollen from two different varieties of tomatoes or squash and pollinates another variety. Even monks in the 15th century made hybrid plants to get better production.

GMO's are not what I want to plant at all. Whoever posted the lab rats needs to start reading posts a little better before they go off half cocked! Thanks! Besides if you research GMO's, you'll find that while "many" are screaming about stopping GMO's because they are supposedly poisoning us all, there are almost NO GMO's being grown anywhere. The technology does exist, yes, and it has been tried out BUT and this is a big BUT almost no county in the world will buy GMO products so there is no market for them in the large scale commercial operations. All the hype is another case of "brainwashing" by the media and people jumping to conclusions without actually researching all the information that's available to them because "my best friend Johnny would never lie to me - he's a great guy so I have to believe everything he says".

I'll step off my soap box now.

Your simply wrong. Yes many other countries ban GMO but here in the free U S A you are not allowed to know if a crop is GMO or not. If it is not labeled certified organic or is not a crop yet approved to be genetically modified assume it is GMO. For example, 90% of US soybean products are GMO.

Many of you watch the state controlled media so your information is censored (like the communist news network and faux news). Do your own research. Think.