Welcome to our review of a groundbreaking product that's catching the attention of health enthusiasts and green thumbs alike: the Medicinal Garden Kit. This
Grow a large self-reliance garden for some food security. Self sufficient living means growing enough food for some sustainable living
What is a Victory Garden, and do we need to bring it back into popularity? Victory Gardens were popular during wartime, and everyone grew their own food.
You don't often think of grandma's hosta patch as the best place to harvest lunch, but hostas are edible (and delicious). Perhaps it's time to open your eyes to all the wonderful edibles lurking in
We call our blog “The Artisan Homestead”, so it’s no wonder we get the question “What is a homestead?” a lot, as the term homestead isn’t widely used or well known here in Europe. So in this blog post, I’ll briefly share some of what we know about homesteading, and in another blog post I write abo
If you long to get off the office treadmill and onto your own land, here are fifteen crucial steps you should take to pursue your life of freedom.
Plant once and harvest for a lifetime
survival garden - follow along with these 7 survival garden ideas that will be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.
You don't often think of grandma's hosta patch as the best place to harvest lunch, but hostas are edible (and delicious). Perhaps it's time to open your eyes to all the wonderful edibles lurking in
survival garden - follow along with these 7 survival garden ideas that will be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.
Grow a large self-reliance garden for some food security. Self sufficient living means growing enough food for some sustainable living
When we found our off-grid compound, I assumed that I'd have to give up just about every power-consuming modern luxury. We went through our kitchen cabinets and tested each appliance with a kill-a-watt electricity usage
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Back to Home Composting Resources What is compost? Compost is a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling material produced by the natural decomposition of organic materials like leaves, garden trimmings, and food scraps. During the composting process, bacteria, fungi, and other microbes feed on the organic materials. These beneficial microbes use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce in … Read More
The best way to begin your journey to sustainable living is first to learn self-sufficiency. Here are 40 smart self-sufficient living tips!
While most plants are planted in the spring for fall harvest, garlic is just the opposite. Usually, garlic is planted in the fall and harvested mid-summer the following year. Why is garlic so different? Because
Vertical gardening is nothing more than using vertical space to grow vegetables (or herbs, or flowers, even root crops), often using containers that hang
Grow a large self-reliance garden for some food security. Self sufficient living means growing enough food for some sustainable living
How did primitive potters harvest clay? People have been making pottery for millennia, and convenient hobby shops have only been a thing for a few decades at best. Before that, people harvested their own clay
You don't often think of grandma's hosta patch as the best place to harvest lunch, but hostas are edible (and delicious). Perhaps it's time to open your eyes to all the wonderful edibles lurking in
Self Reliant Gardening is the new trend and for good reasons. Learn what it is and why you should be doing it.
While most plants are planted in the spring for fall harvest, garlic is just the opposite. Usually, garlic is planted in the fall and harvested mid-summer the following year. Why is garlic so different? Because
survival garden - follow along with these 7 survival garden ideas that will be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.
Back to Home Composting Resources What is compost? Compost is a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling material produced by the natural decomposition of organic materials like leaves, garden trimmings, and food scraps. During the composting process, bacteria, fungi, and other microbes feed on the organic materials. These beneficial microbes use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce in … Read More
The best way to begin your journey to sustainable living is first to learn self-sufficiency. Here are 40 smart self-sufficient living tips!
We're having an early summer April; one where many days already pop up into the lower 80sF (upper 20sC). A week of hot days like that with no rain remind me of how quickly things dry out. So one of my April gardening projects is to install more ollas. Potted tree collard with olla. I first blogged about ollas last summer (Conserving Water in the Garden: The Olla). It's an idea I found in a book that I really like, Gardening with Less Water: Low-Tech, Low-Cost Techniques; Use up to 90% Less Water in Your Garden by David A. Bainbridge. A simple olla (oy' ya) can be made by plugging the hole in a terra cotta pot, sinking it in a garden bed, and keeping it filled with water. Water gradually wicks out and does a great job of keeping things from wilting. For my potted tree collard (above), I decided to try a different design. I took two pots, plugged the hole in the bottom of one, then inverted the other and glued it as a top half to the olla. When I transplanted my tree collard, I put both it and the new olla into a larger pot. The olla is sunk so that only the top shows. An inverted terra cotter saucer serves as a lid to keep mosquitoes out. The crimson clover & vetch are nitrogen-fixing volunteers. It's narrower, so it fits better in the large pot, but holds more water than a single. Easy to add water. Next up is a several more for the raised beds in my hoop house. Those raised beds tend to dry out quickly in hot weather, so hopefully these will help. How about you? Is your weather nice enough to work in your garden? Ollas Revisited © April 2021 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com
Vertical gardening is nothing more than using vertical space to grow vegetables (or herbs, or flowers, even root crops), often using containers that hang
One of the most valuable homesteading lessons Dan and I have learned is to think of new ideas and projects as experiments. Somehow, there is a difference between thinking "I'm going to do this," and "I'm going to experiment with this." The difference might seem subtle on the surface, but it's huge in terms of expectations. An experiment tests an idea, to see if it will or won't work and what aspects need to be tweaked or changed. With an experiment, we don't necessarily expect the outcome to be perfect the first time around; we expect to gain enough information either to make adjustments or decide that the idea wasn't as useful as we'd hoped. That's much less frustrating than seeing something as a failure. An added bonus to the trial-and-error mentality is that our imaginations have become freer to think outside the box. We no longer worry so much about failing because . . . it's an experiment! I've recently shown you a couple of this year's experiments: using the hoop house as a trellis for a natural shade house, and my idea for trying sprawling cherry tomato plants as ground cover. Here's an update on some others. Wicking pots This is an example of something that hasn't worked out as I hoped. Cherry tomato in wicking pot. Plenty of sun and water, but still struggling. I love that these are easy to water and with no evaporation of moisture, but I was disappointed that the tomato plants haven't grown well. I used good soil and plenty of compost, so what's the problem? I figured it out one recent sunny day when I put my hand on the pot. It was hot! Our summer shade temps are typically in the mid-90sF (mid-30sC), which puts them in the mid-100s (around 40°C) in the sun. I got out my soil thermometer and discovered that the soil temp in the pots was 100°F (38°C). So even though the plants had plenty of water, they were struggling with the heat. Sunchokes for hopniss trellises That link will take you to my first groundnut (hopniss) harvest post, and show you the smooth Jerusalem artichokes I planted in the bed. I read somewhere that sunchokes stalks make good supports for the hopniss vines. Blooming sunchoke in the foreground, hopniss on a trellis in the background. Unfortunately, I didn't think this worked all that well. For starters, the hopniss started growing before the sunchokes, so I ended up using the trellises anyway. I have one or two hopniss vines growing up sunchokes, but mostly they've climbed the trellises. So, not exactly a fail, but not a success either. Nitrogen fixers for the garden In the past, I've sprinkled Dutch clover seed in my garden beds to supply nitrogen. This only works moderately well at best. Germination wasn't that great, plus clover tends to prefer cooler weather than our summers offer. So this year, I experimented with different nitrogen fixers - hopniss (ground nuts) and peanuts. I can't remember if I mentioned planting my smallest hopniss tubers in the little garden bed on the side of the hoop house. I'm a big fan of diverse locations for perennials. I think it's a good idea to have a backup planting in case one location succumbs to something unintended. Anyway, they have happily used the hoop house as a trellis in companionable cooperation with the volunteer cherry tomatoes. They've helped my summer shade house be a success. Groundnut vines & cherry tomatoes have completely taken over the hoop house. In addition, the groundnuts have given the tomatoes a nitrogen boost, which they love. It hasn't protected them from late blight, but I'm getting tons of delicious cherry tomatoes. The peanuts were planted in various garden beds, where they've done well. Sweet potatoes with peanut plants (lower right corner), with volunteer morning glories and cherry tomatoes. Everything is thriving. The bonus will be harvesting a few peanuts, to boot! So this is definitely a success and will be standard gardening procedure for me in the future. Landrace experiment Before I give you my update, I'll refer you to two posts to explain what this is and why I'm doing it. A New Paradigm for Gardening & Seed Saving How To Landrace Garden Vegetables I'll also preface it by clarifying that I just started this this year, so I won't have actual results at least until next year. I chose two species to start - winter squash and cucumbers. Winter squash from landrace seeds. Early this summer, I planted a landrace winter squash from seeds I received through Permies.com. It has struggled for most of the summer, but finally responded to lots of hurricane rain and is now looking pretty good. I'm guessing it struggled so much because it was bred in the Pacific Northwest, which has a very different climate than I have in the southeast. I'm also guessing that it survived because as a landrace, it had the genetic strength to not die. The squashes are small and pumpkin-like, but I will get quite a few. Landrace winter squash. I'm looking forward to tasting them and saving the seed. And their offspring will hopefully be interesting because in the bed next to them, I planted sweet potato squash. The vines have intermingled freely, so I'm pretty sure I got good cross-pollination. Sweet potato squash (spotted leaves), tomatoes, and black turtle beans. Can you see the 2 squashes? The spotless leaves are the landrace vines. The sweet potato squash has truly thrived for me. Early on, I found clusters of squash bug eggs on some of the leaves, but those were discarded and the plants now show no evidence of insect damage or disease. So to add that to my winter squash gene pool will be a real plus! Of the cucumbers, I have mature fruits from a mix of about four varieties, mixed and planted in the same row. Very mature cucumbers ready for seed extraction. These will be the cuke seeds I'll plant next year. (For anyone interested, I have a cucumber seed saving tutorial here.) I think that's it for my experiments this year. Anyone else do some experimenting? I'd be interested in what you did and how it's turning out. The Status of My Other Experiments © Sept 2021 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com
How did primitive potters harvest clay? People have been making pottery for millennia, and convenient hobby shops have only been a thing for a few decades at best. Before that, people harvested their own clay
Sometimes all you need is a bit of motivation....and a lot of accountability. This guest post comes from Kimberlee at Old Walsh Farm. Her family committed to learning 52 homestead skills in one year, and
Grow a large self-reliance garden for some food security. Self sufficient living means growing enough food for some sustainable living
You don't often think of grandma's hosta patch as the best place to harvest lunch, but hostas are edible (and delicious). Perhaps it's time to open your eyes to all the wonderful edibles lurking in
Strasberies are a unique type of strawberry that tastes like a mix between a strawberry and raspberry. They’re the product of years of selective breeding, and they’re incredibly hard to find. Stras
Vegetable Planting Chart A quick reference chart with the most common veggies you might plant in your garden. Get it here. Clemson University: Planning a Garden A very comprehensive table with what and when to plant, however the dates are specific to South Carolina. Nevertheless, an interesting read. Container Gardening – Article 1 A really ... Read more
Hugelkultur is a great way of building on poor soil to get massive yields. Read here to find out how and why you should build your own mound.
survival garden - follow along with these 7 survival garden ideas that will be the difference between life and death in a survival situation.
Fresh lemongrass isn't something you see every day. It's one of those things that's usually reserved for ethnic markets and specialty stores. You can imagine my surprise when I came across bundles of fresh lemongrass
Humans require salt for survival, plain and simple. While it's easy enough to extract salt from seawater, that's only practical if you're near the coast. Inland sources of salt were well known to our ancestors,
Join me on my journey once again as I set my Self Reliance Challenge goals for January of 2019. I have a very busy month planned.
