When you are going to a lot of effort to grow a beautiful garden, there is nothing quite so frustrating as an animal ambling in and trashing the lot. Whether it’s a slug who thinks it’s okay to trail slime all over the place or a deer who thinks that being cute is enough to get away with chomping through your foliage, you need to have a few defenses in place. This is where ...
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How To Eliminate Food Waste When You Harvest
Gardening is a lot of work, and throwing any part of the harvest away can feel excruciating. Learning the ways to use more of our harvested produce will put more food on the shelf and eliminate food waste in the kitchen. Love finding ways to use up every bit of what you harvest from the garden you work so hard on each season? I get you! For some reason, I feel a little bit ...
How to Process a Fresh Mint Harvest
Springtime is prime time for harvesting herbs for medicines and teas. The temperate weather allows delicate and not-so delicate herbs to grow abundantly in the garden, and if you are growing mint, plentiful harvests of fresh mint are sure to follow. Mint plants produce and multiply like crazy and trying to figure out all the ways we can use it can be pretty tricky. ...
How to Know What to Feed Chickens
Keeping chickens is one of the easiest ways to grow nutritious food on your homestead. These feathered friends don't need much if they have space to graze, a place to sleep and lay eggs, and of course, proper nutrition. Here is some info on what to feed chickens, including specific things you can do to feed them well, and inexpensively. What Can Chickens Eat? Chickens ...
How to Use a Natural Fly Repellent (or more than one) in the Rabbit Hutch
Keeping outdoor animals often means the gathering of pesky flies in your barn, yard, or both. Flies are an inevitability as we move into the spring and summer months. Use these ideas for natural fly repellent, and you will be able to keep the hutch nearly fly-free, and your rabbits happy and healthy. Keeping flies away from your rabbit and her feeder can be tricky, but it ...
How to Make a DIY Rabbit Feeder
Sometimes, you just need a vacation, amiright? But with animals to care for, it's sometimes hard to get away. A diy rabbit feeder can be a great help for those times you need (or want) to go out of town for a few days. When we first got our rabbits, we never realized how tied to our home we would be, caring for them and making sure they had all of their needs met. While ...
Top 10 Things to Bring Home with Your New Pet Rabbit
Every time we bring a new animal home, it's the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. We will now share a relationship with a new small creature. We think of all the possibility of owning and befriending our new pet rabbit. Our hearts soar at all the prospects of play time, binkies (if we know what they are!), and cuddles. It was such a great day on December 10th, 2011. ...
Reusing Plastic Water Bottles to Make Easy Drip Waterers
If you live in an area where you experience summer middle-of-the-day scorching temperatures that causes your garden to wither and wilt, you may find that some of your plants may need more watering than others. Reusing plastic water bottles for drip waterers may fit the bill, and do well to provide your plants much needed water. Reusing Plastic Water Bottles in the ...
Pruning Tomato Plants: 3 Guarantees for a Better Bounty
When it comes to tomatoes, they can be quite an unruly plant. That overgrowth can make harvesting a chore, not to mention "set the table" for hornworms and other pests. These and other issues can make growing tomatoes less profitable for you. Learning the skill of pruning tomato plants can help that bottom line in positive ways. Gardening can be an expensive undertaking if ...
How to Make a Simple Organic Banana Peel Fertilizer for a Healthy Garden
Most plants need a certain amount of these top three macronutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. While there are TONS of different ways to get nitrogen to your vegetable garden, there are fewer to boost potassium. Banana peels can help with that, and and banana peel fertilizer is so easy to make. Potassium helps your plants move water and nutrients between cells. ...
How to Make an Easy, Shelf Stable Homemade Fertilizer from Banana Peels
Banana peels make a great liquid homemade fertilizer to provide essential nutrients to our potassium-loving plants. But sometimes you just need a shelf-stable option, and it's tempting just to go to the store and get something that fits the bill. Instead, make this version of homemade fertilizer that you can keep on your shelf for a couple of months, ready to use! Homemade ...
6 Simple Tomato Growing Tips for a Great Harvest
If growing tomatoes has been a thorn in your side and it seems like everyone else is able to grow them without even applying any tomato plant care rules, this post is for you! I've been there too, so I'm sharing my best tomato growing tips with you. For years, I would plant my tomato transplants that I bought from the local garden center, along with bags of manure....and ...