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.

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.

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.

Tomatoes

            They are the staple of the garden. They are the most plentiful of garden and homestead crops. The only problem is determining which variety to grow and how much you want. Growing a good tomato requires diligence and hard work, but the rewards can be immense. Three or four plants can yield more tomatoes than you can eat all year and many people love to share. I’ll talk more about some ideas for growing tomatoes in a later blog.

            My experience with tomatoes is up and down. I’ve only grown two varieties, Beefeaters and Roma. I am a huge fan of Roma tomatoes. I love the flavor raw or cooked. I love the size. And they couldn’t be easier to grow as the plant doesn’t spread as much as others.

            The Beefeater is another story. The plant grows very large and continues to spread all summer and into fall here in Kern County. You have to continually clip the new growth or your tomatoes will be small and sad. They also have a nasty habit of splitting when temperatures get high.

            This year I am going another way. I bought a few different varieties from Burpee’s catalogue just for fun. In the past, I’ve always bought the small plants so growing from seed is new. So what am I planting?

            Black Truffle tomatoes are from Japan and are grown a lot in Russia. They are pear shaped, but not real big. Apparently they have a sweet, yet acidic flavor. They are supposed to grow very well in my area.

            Brandywine Pink tomatoes are usually ready later in the season. Their taste is supposedly sweeter than a normal tomato (they are a fruit, after all). I got the heirloom variety because I am told the flavors are much bolder in heirlooms. Also, I want to collect the seed myself.

            Now, I may throw some Big Boy or some other variety in later. But I am very interested in how these will pan out. I planted 15 seed plugs and am still waiting from some sprouts. I’ll keep you posted.

Root Cellars

If you have a root cellar, count yourself blessed. Here in Bakersfield, CA, root cellars and basements are rare. You see them from time to time in the older houses (my grandma had a large root cellar), but rarely in the newer homes. When I lived in Wyoming, almost every home had basement space and many had either sectioned off space in the basement for storing canned goods or they had hand dug root cellars in a corner of the backyard somewhere.  

Why do you need a root cellar? It’s like a refrigerator for your produce and greens. Temperatures just a few feet underground hover around 55°F. That is great for potatoes, carrots, onion, lettuce, etc. They can last for months over winter or summer in that type of environment. It can also be used as storage space for you “back-up” food if you are the forward-thinking prepper-type.

You really don’t need a ton of space. An unused corner of the lot or an unused RV area would suffice.  It may even add to the value of your home if installed properly.

I recently downloaded and read a great little tome on building your own root cellar. It is old and probably outdated, but the information is solid. Using the book Building Your Own Underground Root Cellar, you can build a 8 foot by 12 foot root cellar by hand-digging a hole, lining it with cinder block, creating a cement floor and placing a reinforced roof covered in sod over the top. A couple of weekends would be enough to get it done. Be warned, it was written in 1983 and the cost of some of the materials has increased. Also, it may not jive with local ordinances and may require a permit. And for crying out loud, careful where you dig, right? There may be gas or sewer pipes down there.

“But that cellar is ugly!” “I have kids and they would play in it!” True, but what if you built a small shed over it? You could very easily disguise the cellar or the entrance so no one would even know it was there. How about digging out from underneath an existing shed?

If you have the money and the time, a root cellar can be a great benefit. You can store your produce. You can make your own cheese (cool, right?). You can store all the food you’ve canned. You can store your “just in case” food. It really can be a valuable asset.

What To Grow?

"What should I grow this year?" The question every good gardener asks themselves this time of year. It's a good question, especially when you have limited space. What are some of the things you like? How about your family? How much can you use? Will it go bad before you can use it?

Last year I grew some white onions and some purple onions. Roughly 30 of each. Some of the white ones I grew in clumps so they would stay small and others spaced out so they would become bulbs. The problem was I am the only one in my house that eats onions. The wife will eat a little, but not much. So even though I hung them in a mesh bag in a shady spot outside, they all sprouted before I could use them.

I also grew carrots, but since I didn't stagger their planting, they pretty much all were ready at the same time. Pickles grew well, but with only a few vines there weren't many ready to pickle/can at the same time. And corn, oh how I hate growing corn.

So think about what you can eat and what you want to eat. If you don't like okra, don't grow it unless you now someone who will eat it. Don't grow 10 tomato plants unless you want a lot of tomatoes. Don't grow watermelon or pumpkins unless you have a lot of space for the sprawling vines.

My suggestion is to take a look at the The Vegetable Garden Planner put out by Mother Earth News. It can really help. It costs like $30 a year, but there is a 2-week free trial. Design your garden space and fill it with vegetables. There is tons of information about various varieties of crops you could plant.

Careful planning now can really pay off.

Why Blog?

Why am I reluctant to be a homesteader? I love gardening. I love building things. I love working outside. I love almost everything about the homesteader lifestyle. However, I have several problems with becoming a true homesteader.

#1. I don’t live on a homestead. I live in Bakersfield, CA, on a small lot, with a family that is not all that keen on vegetables.

#2. I like my career. I’m a science teacher. I really love the job too much to give it up so I can devote my life to living off the land.

#3. As stated earlier, I live in California. Unless you have a sizeable bankroll, you’re not buying arable land. Heck, you’re not buying desert land without a pretty good sized wad of cash.

So now you know why I call it the “reluctant” homesteader. I won’t be slaughtering my own cows or pooping in a bucket for fertilizer. What I will be doing is working what small property I have, growing things I like to eat (and share) and experimenting with various growing techniques.

My setup so far includes two, large raised beds filled with potting soil, sand and a little native soil. One has been used for several years, one is new this year. I also have several patches of dirt that has been worked in the past and several containers. I make my own compost, but I am not above buying fertilizer from Home Depot when necessary.

I have quite a few books on homesteading, gardening and sustainability. I have a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology (didn’t see that one coming, did you) and a sincere love of the art and science of growing things from seed to seeds. Over time, I will update you on what I am doing on my own little “homestead” and giving you good resources for working yours, now or in the future.