Thursday, March 29, 2012

My Favorite Homesteading Websites


            I know it seems odd that I would be writing a blog that sends you to other blogs, but bear in mind that I have never intended to be all inclusive here. I’m small potatoes. I talk about baby steps to living a free lifestyle. I love sharing the websites I visit often with people. I have a few listed and a few honorable mentions, as well.

Mother Earth News The original homesteaders guide. I am a huge fan, getting their magazine and buying their How-To books as often as possible. Everything you could ever want to know about Homesteading and gardening in one site. Be warned, the site is slow at times. My guess is it is due to the tremendous wealth of information available. If you have any questions about gardening or the homesteading lifestyle, they are the place to be. You would love their CD-Rom collection that includes 40 years of their magazine (given to me for Christmas by my wonderful bride). I also pointed out in an earlier blog how great their Vegetable Gardening Planner is.

BackwoodsHome.com This magazine and website has been around for some time. The website is decidedly commercial in nature, but the articles are solid. I don’t have a problem with all the ads since you can’t do all that work for free. The articles are a little more geared towards survival, but that goes hand in hand with homesteading.

Honorable Mentions
UrbanHomesteading.org I first became aware of this family (and they are a family) a year or so ago on Facebook. They purport to grow “6,000 pounds of food on 1/10 acre.” From their pics, I don’t doubt it. There is not a ton of information, but what is there is pure gold. If you have ever said “I don’t have room to garden” you need to read their website. Be warned, there are some in the urban homesteading community that do not like the family because they had the audacity to trademark the term “Urban Homesteading,” but you can’t argue with their results.

WaldenEffect.org Anna and Mark have a great website devoted to homesteading. They operate a small homestead and gives very good tips on small scale animal raising and gardening. They also have a monthly magazine available on Kindle.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Raised Beds

            Installing raised garden beds is a good way to make your life easier. Having raised garden beds is like raising the ground up to meet you. You spend less time stretching and bending or having to get down on your hands and knees. For the older gardener or if you just to make things easier, raised beds are the way to go.

            That is, after you have built your raised beds. It’s not a simple task or a cheap one, but it’s not that difficult. It’s easier than container gardening, which I could never seem to master. Start small with a custom built raised bed that fits your space. Remember that you want to it to be a manageable size. Too wide and you can’t reach across it. Too deep and it will require too much soil to fill it.

            Most beginner beds are 10-12 inches deep. That’s not too bad as most of your roots are going to go much deeper than that. I would suggest that if you really want to keep from straining too much, you go 2 feet deep as a minimum. Also, don’t go wider than two inches or you will have to stretch quite a bit. Your first raised bed shouldn’t be too big or you will be overwhelmed.

            The structural material can vary. If you have the means, stone or landscaping brick is very nice. However, it is very expensive and heavy to work with. I prefer pressure-treated 1x6’s or even railroad ties. You can use a plywood bottom or just use landscape fabric across the bottom. Hand-water the bed or tap into a sprinkler line either dedicate a sprinkler to the bed or attach a drip irrigation system.

The soil you fill it with is also important. You can buy some prepared garden soil. Depending on the size of the bed, it could get real expensive real fast. You can use clean fill dirt, but you really don’t know what’s in the soil including herbicides or weed seeds. Go with a layer of cheap, bagged mulch with a layer of good Kellogg or Miracle-Gro garden soil mix.

            There are some great Kindle books on building raised beds. Kindle books don’t require a Kindle. You can download the free Kindle reader app for your phone or computer.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Seed Starting

            For many gardeners, now is the time of year where you make your pilgrimage to the local nursery and start looking at what you will be planting this year. You’re looking for tomatoes and peppers and onions and broccoli whatever the nursery has that is established. And you will pay for that convenience. But what if I told you that for a fraction of the cost, you could have far, far more plants in your garden? In fact, you could have more than you can handle.
Starting your plants from seeds is a time-honored way of getting your garden going early. I remember reading a article a while back that pointed out how in the winter months we gardeners are just itching to get back to work outside. Well, unless you have a greenhouse, you probably just waited on the sun. It really isn’t necessary.

You’re going to need a few things depending on where you are going to start your seeds. If it is in your house, then you will need something like a Jiffy Greenhouse for $5. You can start 50 plants in one flat with this particular one. However, there are all manner of seed starting flats out there and if you really look around, you can get them cheaper. Mine are just like this except they have plastic cups instead of paper so I can re-use it for several years. Others even come with a peat pellet so you don’t have buy soil.

You do need to be careful where you put the flats, though. They have a clear plastic top to trap the heat and if there is too much heat, you will fry the plants (I can personally attest to this). Also, you need to keep the soil moist, but not “soupy.” I put mine outside under a covered patio with a grow light over the top. On a warm day it some of the tiny sprouts very quickly. If you know it’s going to be warm, you will want to take the plastic tops off.

Now you need seeds. You can get seeds anywhere this time of year, but you want to be a tad discerning. You can get them at your local nursery or you can order them from a seed company. It really just depends on what you want. A lot of vegetable seeds are only a couple of dollars for several hundred seed. You can $4-5 bucks for one plant and $2-3 bucks for 100-200 seed. See the savings there? Sure, you will not likely need that many seed, but they will usually keep for a few years in a warm, dry place like a coffee can with a lid. Or, go ahead and grow too much. The neighbors and your friends will love you for it.

If you want organic or Heritage seeds, you will likely have to order them online. I like to use Burpee. Never had a problem with them and their online product catalogue is fantastic.

Make sure your seed can be started indoors. Some plants, like carrots or potatoes or beans, like to be directly sowed into the ground. Transplanting a plug with these plans disturbs the roots too much and they give out on you.