Creating a New Garden Bed with Milpa
Grow Food, Not Lawns. To create new garden beds from grass, I use a broadfork to turn over the sod, add compost, and then sow Milpa.
Skills
Your Companion Planting Guide to Deter Pests and Thrive
Which crops you choose to plant next to each other makes a difference. The right choice can provide nitrogen, deter pests, improve flavor, and provide shade or protection. Choosing the wrong plants can stunt your hard work in the garden. Companion planting examples such as the 3 sisters – corn, beans, and squash. The beans … Read more
How to Pick your Homestead Property: the Property Walk
Prepping for the Property Walk A new member to my local community group and his wife asked me to come over to their property and do a property walk – give an assessment and a plan for adding a food forest and regenerative practices to their unused pastures. In typical fashion, we turned it into … Read more
How I Built a Greenhouse from Recycled Windows
Extend your growing season with a greenhouse and start new seedlings earlier in the spring The first frost in NE Kansas averages around Oct-20. The last frost around Apr-20. That is 6 months of no growing season. I had setup grow lights in my basement to start plants earlier, but it was starting to take … Read more
How to Grow Chestnut Trees From Seed
Step by Step – From Seed to Garden Bed You want to grow chestnuts from seed, but don’t know where to start? You have come to the right place. This will give you a step by step guide to grow chestnuts from seed – from foraging the seed, to sprouting, to transplanting. Cross posted from … Read more
How to Save, Store, and Stratify Persimmon Seeds
How to grow your own persimmon trees The wild American persimmon is a puzzling fruit. If you pick it when it looks ripe, it will taste like alum – weirdly bitter and chalky. Your mouth puckers up, but not like from a lemon. Yet if you wait until your senses are telling you that they … Read more
Foraging and Pottage – Moving Foraging from a Skill to a Mindset
How to Use Foraged Veggies to Extend Your Oatmeal – Without the Blood Sugar Spike This year I have been more mobile than usual. I am very close to location-independent. I am extremely thankful to friends and family that have let me stay with or house-sit for them while I work through this time of … Read more
Homestead Aquaponics, Step by Step – The World’s Greatest Ebb and Flow Bed
Step by Step Aquaponics By Shudra Way My first introduction to aquaponics was during my suburbia days, through a neighbour who had a 5000 litre aquaponics tub containing hundreds of rainbow trout being grown for eventual sale. Water was pumped out of the tub and through a series of aquaponics grow beds containing various salad … Read more
Fight the cold and flu season with Autumn Olive Oxymel Medicinal
Autumn Olive is a superfood Autumn olive berries have a high amount of Vitamin C. The Ruby red variety has more lycopene than even tomatoes. I have autumn olive growing in my pasture, the Ruby Red, Amber (yellow), and the Punch Bowl varieties. I harvested the berries in October and froze them for use in … Read more
I Was Wrong About Chicken Feather Sexing Technique
Determining the sex of a chick by the feathers doesn’t always work in the 2nd and 3rd generation. It is Year 2 of trying to determine the sex of my newly hatched chicks by their feather shape. Year 1 was a success, as you can read here. Now it is Year 2 (with 2 generations … Read more
