For experienced but busy gardeners that still want to make something grow, most peers would recommend growing succulents. They always look beautiful, have a wide variety to choose from and are supposedly easy to take care of. It’s common knowledge that succulents don’t need as much water as regular plants. Want to know why your […]
How to Test Garden Soil
When someone tells me they have a black thumb, one of the first things I ask is what type of soil they have in their garden. Almost inevitably, they either give me a blank stare or a shrug. In the excitement of starting a new garden, it’s easy to get caught up in seed catalogs […]
9 Essential Herbs for the Homestead Garden
Every homestead needs a great herb garden! The good news is many herbs are easy to grow and can even happily grow in containers for the space challenged homesteader. The hardest part is deciding which herbs to grow! The first thing you need to determine is your growing zone to make sure your new herbs […]
The Ultimate List of Seed Catalogs and Plant Companies
Right now is the perfect time to start planning your garden. While we anxiously wait for the growing season to begin, we can all sit down with a garden catalog (or two) and pick out what we’d like to grow. I find the process of mapping out everything really exciting. You can begin to envision […]
Crop Rotation for the Backyard Gardener
You don’t have to be a commercial farmer with 100 acres to reap the benefits of crop rotation. Actually it is even MORE critical for garden success for the small scale backyard farmer to rotate crops! What is crop rotation? Crop rotation is a centuries old practice, and a way to ensure many years of […]
Sprouting Seed Potatoes Before Planting
How and why chitting or sprouting seed potatoes is essential before you plant them (hint: you’ll get a faster harvest and bigger yields, which sound like pretty good reasons to me!) Spring is almost here! There’s only one more month to go until it’s meteorological spring, and for many gardeners it will be game on! […]
