Choosing the plants that will grow well in your climate, weather, soil type, and garden is quite complicated. That's why a big part of becoming a good gardener is learning how to read your landscape, understand your conditions, and carefully select plants that are most likely to thrive where you live. If you want to… Continue reading Choosing the Right Plants for Your Garden
Tag: gardening
What to Grow in Your Potager (including a list of 30 categories of plants to consider)
It can be difficult to think beyond the grocery store, or the farmers market, when deciding what kind of food to grow on your homestead. Every recipe we know, every cookbook we have, tend to rely only on the readily available ingredients most of us can access. Yet, the most thrilling part about having your… Continue reading What to Grow in Your Potager (including a list of 30 categories of plants to consider)
Vegetable Garden Planting Calendar
If you are new to gardening and looking for a quick and easy tool to help you decide what to plant when, check out this new planting calendar. The programming team at Morning Chores developed it. Then, I helped refine some planting dates and adapt it to work for many different climates. This is a… Continue reading Vegetable Garden Planting Calendar
Meyer Lemon Love
If you are looking for a plant to make you happy mid-winter, let me tell you about these glorious golden globes pictured above. These luscious lovelies make the whole month of January feel like it's lit with radiant summer sunshine. On cloudy days, or when I just need a winter pick me up, I head… Continue reading Meyer Lemon Love
Cilantro and Coriander
Coriander and Cilantro are the same plant at different stages. Learn how to grow and use both.
Persian Basil
Persian basil is a mild tasting,easy to grow, member of the basil family.
Plant Your Homestead Potager
Now that you've constructed your homestead potager, it's time to plant. Well, almost... There are two more things I suggest you do before you put plants or seeds in the ground. Pre-Planting Step 1: Start Compost Tea The first thing I recommend is that you get a five gallon bucket, fill it with rain water… Continue reading Plant Your Homestead Potager
Constructing Your Homestead Potager
With all the hard work of gathering inspiration, choosing a garden site, deciding on our paths and bed design, and formalizing your plan done, it's now time to break ground. This is the moment when the dream - a thing that lives in the world of ideas - becomes tangible. This is when the seed… Continue reading Constructing Your Homestead Potager
The Homestead Potager Garden Design
In previous posts, I covered some things I know to be beneficial about choosing your potager location and designing your paths and bed styles. I also explained why I think it's really important to make a vegetable garden functional and beautiful and inviting. Now I want to cover a few other practical considerations that may… Continue reading The Homestead Potager Garden Design
Homestead Potager Garden Bed Design
The first gardens were forest gardens. Actually they were more like cultivated forests than gardens. The plants that humans found beneficial, they encouraged. The plants that didn't have utility were removed. Eventually, early gardeners installed fences to protect their food supply from being eaten by other free-ranging forest animals. There's no precise information on when forest… Continue reading Homestead Potager Garden Bed Design
Pathways For Your Homestead Potager
When you see past the pretty flowers and profuse plantings, you'll discover that every garden has bones and secrets buried beneath. A garden's design and its underlying infrastructure dictate how well it works and how much work it takes to maintain that garden. The Beaten Path For example, when I visit a garden that has… Continue reading Pathways For Your Homestead Potager
Starting a Homestead Potager
I strongly believe that all in-ground homestead vegetable gardens should be "potagers". Potager is a French word that embodies the idea of both a functional kitchen garden and a beautiful space that allows for creative expression and cultivation of your gardening skills. Potagers have lots of vegetables, of course. However, they often include plants to… Continue reading Starting a Homestead Potager
Less Trash + More Bokashi = Garden Love
I hate to take out the trash. It actually makes me sad when I see all the stuff I send (or used to send) to the landfill. That's because I know the place I send my trash is in the middle of a rural, residential zone. Property is cheaper over there. I suspect that's because… Continue reading Less Trash + More Bokashi = Garden Love
Simple Vermicomposting
All organic gardens start with compost. That's why, in our last post, we started saving materials to make compost in a 5 gallon bucket. In this post, we'll take a few more simple steps in the compost-making process. There are many different ways of making compost ranging from easy to elaborate. I am going to… Continue reading Simple Vermicomposting
Garden Dreams and Compost Calculations
Are you dreaming of a big, beautiful garden full of lush, tasty vegetables and fruits? Can you image the smell of a ripe tomato or of the earth as you carefully loosen pounds of perfect potatoes from your rich, loamy soil? Do your future beans, corn, and sunflowers climb 12 feet in the air and… Continue reading Garden Dreams and Compost Calculations
