As a gardeners, one of the goals of growing your own food is to achieve good nutrition to put on the dinner table. Most crops are preserved by some sort of food preservation method like canning. However, if you have a root vegetable storage plan, you can cut out a lot of extra work for yourself! Root Vegetable Storage Made Easy The benefits for storing root vegetables ...
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How to Make Fruit Leather from Any Fruit
If you have your own fruit trees or partake in loss leader deals at the store, you may find yourself with lots of extra fruit on hand during the summer. Rather than letting your overripe fruit go into the compost pile, why not take advantage of the sweetness of fruit at this stage and learn how to make fruit leather? It's nature's candy! So you've made your strawberry jam, ...
How to Make a Delicious Peach BBQ Sauce {+ Canning Instructions}
Whether you are purchasing peaches from the store or using your peach harvest, you may not have thought of making something savory with them. After you've made your jam, fruit leather, and wine, make sure to save a few lbs to make peach bbq sauce! Barbecue is some of the best food on earth, thank God it's so easy to do! Todd and I ran across this recipe when we were trying ...
How to Make Strawberry Wine Step-By-Step
There's little more satisfying than filling your plate or glass with something you made with your own hands. Even better if it's something you have grown on your homestead! Making fruit wine is one of those satisfying activities, and this one yields the best flavor. This post will teach you how to make strawberry wine with store bought, or home-grown berries. If you ...
How to Use Diatomaceous Earth in the Garden
These days with all of the concern over food quality, widely used chemical pesticides are viewed askance by those wanting to live more naturally. If you are among this group, you will want to find ways to grow your own food without harmful pesticides. Learning how to use diatomaceous earth in the garden can help eliminate some of the chemicals you'd prefer not to have on your ...
How to Make Strawberry Sauce {Using the Tops!}
It seems such a shame to throw away some of the kitchen scraps we generate. If you are a gardener, chances are that you throw yours into the compost pile, or if you have chickens, to them. But have you ever thought of eating some of them? This recipe will teach you how to make strawberry sauce out of the scraps you may have leftover from canning or dehydrating! There is ...
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 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 ...
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 ...