Understanding soil temperatures, rather than just the calendar dates, allows gardeners to get planting earlier by matching seeds to ideal soil temperatures for seed germination. Especially with local unpredictable spring air temperatures, this can make or break a garden season.
Let’s dig into soil temperatures for early season success.
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Seed Saving is something that has made me a better gardener in so many ways. It requires us to be more aware of how our plants are progressing through the season. It makes you see more than just the ‘product’ you’re growing—you see the plant as a self-sustaining entity. It can reproduce itself! For all these reasons and more, seed saving connects you to your garden in new and beautiful ways.
Did you know that saving annual flower seeds is a simple and cost-saving skill to master in your garden? It doesn’t require any special equipment and gives you another ‘harvest’ from your gardens.
Saving seeds is another way gardening helps us work closer with nature. And we need to really pay attention to nature as she moves through the seasons in order to save the best seeds. And being ‘in the moment’ in our gardens is one of things that brings us the most joy, isn’t it!?
So, I’m sharing my favorite annual flower seeds to save. The flowers listed also make amazing companion plants in any vegetable garden, along with adding color to the beautiful bouquets I get to bring inside all season…
Continue readingImagine buying less compost, growing more food and flowers while lowering water use, all by setting up our gardens to mimic the way nature multitasks... Here are three permaculture garden projects you can start today!
Permaculture offers exciting and common-sense ways to take environmental action in our own yards by working with nature. We can be part of the climate solution; one plant, compost pile, or rain barrel at a time.
The idea of permaculture has been around since the dawn of time, but the term was coined in the 1970s when two Australians joined the concepts of ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’. Since then, it has evolved to include the central ideas of earth care, human care, and fair share, supported by a dozen principles.
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Fall temps can quite literally cool our northern garden jets once fall hits its stride and apple season arrives. But for those of us that enjoy those frost sweetened crops and don’t mind gardening into the cool of autumn, Season Extension opens another mini-season of gardening and harvesting!
For those just getting started on season extension, you may be wondering why we bother with this extra work?
For me the reason is clear: by keeping plants alive in the ground, it allows them to hold onto their nutrients, compared to if we harvested at the first sign of frost. Food loses around 30% of its nutrients within three days of harvest…
Practicing season extension can add weeks or even months of harvesting FRESH FOOD from your garden. And isn’t harvesting healthy food one of our main goals?
Continue readingNothing ushers in summer like fresh-picked strawberries. These perennial fruits are an essential for small-scale homesteads, and growing strawberries is easier than you think!
To make the most of this fleeting, yet oh so sweet taste of summer – we’ve got tips and tricks on growing, picking and preserving all the local strawberries you possibly can.
I promise, you will thank yourself as you make a strawberry smoothie or strawberry muffins come winter.
Strawberries are one of our little homestead’s most anticipated foods by every member of our family. So, we spend some time prepping and loving on the gardens so they produce to their fullest. Here’s how we work at growing great strawberries.
Strawberries are as close to instant gratification as you can get with a perennial fruit. I recommend planting bare root plants, as you have more choice on suitable varieties. They’re also less expensive than potted plants, and the bare root plants seem to do better in the long run. The catch is you want to plant them in late May, before the heat of summer comes on too strong. You’ll soak the roots for an hour or two before planting. During the first growing season, plan to pinch off the first few buds that form, but let the next rounds of flowers mature to pick fruit later in the season.
Winter Protection: Cover with 3-4 inches of straw or pine needles after the first hard freeze to protect roots from severe cold.
Frost: Cover flowers in early spring if frost is predicted to avoid blackened, sterile flowers
Birds: Use bird netting to protect ripening fruit.
Slugs: Use beer traps or sand to deter slugs.
Water Well: Consistent moisture (1-2 inches/week)
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We love growing cucumbers! But there are many differences, so let’s do a cucumber comparison.
They’re a favorite of the vegetable garden and one of the homegrown treats my kids most impatiently look forward to munching fresh off the vine—as well as sliced (with ranch)—then fermented and pickled all winter long.
Needless to say, we grow a lot of cucumbers!
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There are different cucumber varieties including slicing, English (burpless), pickling, and then you can get into the specialty varieties that have been saved for their unique characters for centuries. These specialty varieties have a special place in my heart.
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I’m finally slowing down enough to take the time to get in that frame of mind where I can rewind and somewhat clearly peer back at 2022, the year in review.
Thankful for 2022
I distinctly remember being so very grateful for the late spring as I was frantically writing/editing/revising so many pages (so many times) along with Stephanie Thurow for our upcoming book, Small-Scale Homesteading.
I felt lucky that the maple sap held off until we got back from our March vacations. We brought home and raised a new brood of chicks into a healthy, happy (and spoiled) backyard flock. I took my local Master Gardener coursework and completed 50+ hours of volunteer hours. I helped grow vegetables and flowers at my son’s elementary school.
We took time up north in Minnesota to walk through and wonder at creation. I taught classes on companion planting, composting, growing garlic, garden planning and preserving the harvest, wrote for magazines new and old. I got to manage our 6th annual Winter Farmers Markets. My family all got Influenza A at the same time and we nursed each other back to health with homegrown remedies. And I grew as much food as ever- including so many new favorites.
We celebrated life as we lived it. What a year both in and out of the garden!
Symmetry within the circle of our season — that’s the overarching lesson from the garden. But just one of the ways gardening teaches me year after year.
It is perfectly absurd to search for a beginning or an end to this cycle; is it when the seeds start forming, when I harvest my saved seed out of the garden, as I store it over winter, or when I plant it next spring that is “the beginning”? Is it when the food emerges, when its ripe, when I harvest, when I eat it, or when I compost the excess that is “the ending”?
Taking into consideration the piles of compost, continuously added to by our hens, and all the other intertwined inputs and harvests from our little backyard homestead garden- I’m proud to announce that I can I find neither beginning nor end… instead I find a naturally flowing cycle that swallows its own tail year after year. A process without any one formula, rather a myriad of methods and infinite accomplishments along its way.
That being said; we all like to “take stock” every so often. The end of the calendar year, as the garden lays sleeping and frozen under the snow here in Minnesota seems a fitting time as ever. So, I’m taking a look back on this year of growing with you to share what I gleaned from my gardens. Or rather, what lessons my garden unearthed for me. I’ve added links to previous posts at the end of most topics, as it seems the lessons I learned this year are also perennial. But as with gardening- the roots grow deeper and the harvests increase with each passing year. I hope you can take a few of these ideas and let them inspire you to grow and harvest more (veggies, sustainability, peace) from your gardens this upcoming season. Let’s Dig In!
Continue readingAdding a cover crop for soil health to my home vegetable garden was a game changer for me, and the garden has been happier ever since.
Planting cover crop seed is an easy and effective way to practice good soil health on any scale. There are a few tips and tricks for having the best luck for home gardeners. Timing and seed selection are key!
Cover crops are plants, usually grasses or legumes in vegetable gardens that are grown to benefit the soil rather than for harvest. Planted during off-seasons or between cash crops, they prevent erosion, suppress weeds, manage pests, and increase soil fertility. They act as a protective, living mulch, improving soil structure and organic matter.
There are many different ways of cover cropping, from holding a field for a full year, or part of spring or over the winter. Because I succession plant so much of my garden space (from early spring to late fall), I don’t leave much of my soil bare at any one time. But one of the reasons I have incorporated cover crops is how easy it is to sow the seeds after harvesting a late summer crop.
There are many different benefits of planting cover crops in the garden. One is to build up organic matter in the soil. Another is using legumes to add nitrogen to the soil. A final reason is to help break up compacted heavy soil with plants that have think roots. If left to rot they create wonderful space in the soil for nutrient and water transfer. I see cover cropping as another way of Companion Planting for your garden.
Continue readingNo Dig Gardening includes recycling, composting and improving soil all by layering it on! This process is known by a few different names; Hugelkultur, Lasagna Gardening and Sheet Composting, but the ideas are based on “No Dig Gardening”.
Making garden beds this way works with nature’s existing cycles, creating healthy soil, less weeding and happier plants!
This process does NOT need to be created inside a box, just easier to keep layers tidy, I’ve success both in and out of boxes!
The idea of setting up a garden bed like this is to let nature do the work for you. You’ll be helping nature create good soil by composting in place- and that requires things for the soil organisms to eat. By giving a diverse group of soil life things to feast on you can create a very active and healthy soil to plant into.
Soil biodiversity creates a more resilient garden. I like to equate good soil organisms with good gut health. We’ve likely all heard of pre- and pro- biotics; the helpers of digestion (and so much more). Soil organisms help break things down and make them available to plants in a similar fashion.
Everything from worms and beetles we can see, to bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and actinomycetes (though I sure couldn’t tell you what those looked like!) have a specific job to do- and many work in relationship with vegetable plant roots to feed them. There is a whole world of info about the soil food web out there, and I suggest watching THIS by Dr. Elaine Ingham if you want to dig a little deeper.
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