A garden that feeds your family in every season sounds like a dream, but it is completely possible even if you are brand new to gardening. The key is thinking beyond the traditional “spring rush” and instead designing your garden for a continuous harvest. Year-round gardening is about timing, smart crop choices, and protecting your plants through the seasons. With some ...
HOMESTEAD
How to Start an Urban Homestead on a Tiny Backyard
You don’t need a hundred acres or a red barn to start homesteading. In fact, some of the most productive homesteads I’ve seen fit comfortably into a small suburban yard. If you’ve got a patch of ground (or even just a patio and some containers), you can grow food, raise small animals, and build a more self-reliant lifestyle right where you are. Urban homesteading is about ...
The Top 10 Homesteading Questions and Real Answers
If you are thinking about starting a homestead, you probably have a list of questions a mile long. And while social media can make it look like a never-ending string of peaceful mornings and pretty harvest baskets, the truth is that homesteading is a mix of beauty, hard work, and problem solving. Here are the ten most common questions people ask before they start, along with ...
How to Make a Small Plant Cage in 15 Minutes
Small animals can really do a number on our seedlings. Their tender leaves are so yummy to chickens, rabbits, squirrels and other pests. It's not unusual to find that our seedlings have been chewed down to the stems if we are not careful to protect them. Here's how to make a small plant cage that will protect your seedlings until they are large enough to withstand small ...
6 Helpful Tips You Need to Know About Seed Germination
Depending on the seeds you are using, germinating seeds can be a tricky business. Some, such as tomato and pepper seeds, need more than just damp soil. So how do you know? Here are some tricks and tips to make seed germination much more fruitful all the way around. 6 Tips for Successful Seed Germination 1. Always Plant More Seeds Than You Need Nature has a way of ...
How to Start Seeds Indoors for Best Results
Are you wondering which plants you can plant now for your spring garden? The time is now to do this, and I'll show you how to start seeds indoors so they will be ready to be transplanted into the spring garden once the last frost of the season has passed. Starting seeds indoors is one of those things that becomes a bit of an itch once you have gardened for a year or two. ...
How to Make a Cheap and Effective DIY Grow Box
Almost every successful gardener has a system for starting plants from seed and caring for seedlings. Some systems work better than others, but that shouldn't stop us from trying different setups to see which one works best for our space and habits as growers. My favorite method for growing seedlings is in a diy grow box. Most of us try to start our seedlings by spending ...
How to Get Cheap Garden Supplies: Dollar Store Edition
Gardening and starting seeds indoors doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. When starting your garden is expensive, there are so many cheap garden supplies available at the dollar store that can put money back into your pocket! Dollar stores are one of the very best places to get inexpensive garden items. Many items that you find there could cost you multiple times the ...
Garden 101: How to Start a Vegetable Garden from Scratch (Fall or Spring)
People that are new to homesteading often get a bit of a shock when they buy a house with some land because they think that it will be all ready to go once they move in. If you’re lucky, the land may be ready for growing but a lot of the time, it isn’t. If your land isn't ready for gardening quite yet, here's some information for how to start a vegetable garden from ...
How to Harvest and Store Romaine Lettuce Seeds
While purchasing seeds won't necessarily set you back a whole lot of money, as a homesteader, you are likely interested in frugality to some degree. When seed quality and frugality can intersect, all the better! This year is a great time to learn how to harvest and store your very own romaine lettuce seeds. Rather than yanking the bolted lettuce plants out of the ground ...
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 ...
A Simple Method for Hardening Off Plants Easily
Now that you've started your seeds indoors, you are wondering when it's time to plant them outdoors. There is something that needs to be done before you do that, called hardening off plants. This will aid your little plants in making their way to their final destination, your garden. What Is Hardening Off Plants? Grown indoors, seedlings have live somewhat of a charmed ...