To grow the healthiest vegetables and fruit, and to have a garden that is productive and disease-free, it is important to build fertility over time. Also, in the mid-summer, I often find that my garden needs an extra boost of fertility to maximize production and health. Over the years, I've experimented with many ways to add fertility to my garden, and here are a few of my favorites. 7 Ways to Add Fertility to your Garden 1) Comfrey Tea, Compost Tea, and Manure Tea While you would not want to drink these teas, liquid fertilizers for your garden, often called "teas," are a great way to add fertility to your garden. The basic gist is to add water to some well-composted manure, some … [Read more...]
5 Strategies for a Weed-Free Garden
If you're anything like me, you love to garden not only for the amazing nutrient-dense food that a garden provides your family and community, but also for the beauty and wonder of the garden. Weeds are not only competition for the nutrients and water that food plants need, but they can also take away from the aesthetic that we're trying to create. I actually don't dislike weeding - I find it very meditative - but I don't enjoy creating more work for myself than necessary. So I've found a few ways to minimize weeds in the garden. Here are my top five strategies for a (relatively) weed free garden. 5 Strategies for a Weed Free Garden 1) Water the Plant, Not the Entire Bed I have … [Read more...]
The November Garden
The first hard frost has hit, garden harvesting has come to an end. It's clearly time to close the garden gate, and knit by the woodstove until spring...Or is it? Even into late November and early December, I find myself going into the garden every few days, doing all the many necessary tasks to put the garden to bed. One of my least favorite tasks is clearing out dead plant material, but it's an important step in preventing disease and leaves my beds clean and ready to plant in the spring. Plants that are free of disease or pests go right on top of my compost pile. Currently I have three piles - one that is a few months along, a second for food scraps … [Read more...]
The 5 Best Heirloom Melons to Grow this Summer
This winter, when I received seed catalogs in the mail, I immediately turned to the Melon pages. After years of struggling to grow melons in conditions that simply were not suitable - partial sun, cool nights - I was determined to grow a few delicious heirloom melons in my tiny garden. Baker Creed Heirloom Seeds, based in Missouri, has the most incredible selection of melons I have ever seen. It was incredibly difficult to select only a few, and I ended up with a dozen or so varieties. Sadly, some of my starts didn't transplant well, but I was still left with an assortment of eight varieties, of which we are still harvesting several! Here are my favorite (and most delicious) … [Read more...]
Piles
Some days I look around the land, and realize that Brian and I are Pile Managers. I never really thought much about it before we started creating a new homestead from scratch, but the work of building and creating begins with piles. A pile of gravel leftover from the driveway we put in this winter. A pile of wood chip/sawdust mulch that we're spreading around the base of our fruit trees. A pile of lumber from a century old barn and outbuildings that are being torn down, and whose wood will become the siding of our tiny home (and has already been integrated into the building of our chicken coop). A pile of black walnut wood, ready to bring to a local Amish mill. The previous owner … [Read more...]
In the Garden: Squashing Squash Bugs and Whining over Wilt
Growing zucchini in Oregon took little more effort than tossing a few seeds over your shoulders and coming back in a month or two to harvest (and harvest, and harvest). Sure, a slug or two might eat your young plants, but if the zucchini plant outgrew the slugs, you were pretty much guaranteed more zucchini than you could possibly eat. It's not quite that easy here in Northeast Missouri. In fact, everything garden-wise is proving to be much less intuitive, and much more difficult than I imagined. Pests can truly impede a home gardener's ability to grow certain food crops. Growing summer and winter squash is made challenging by the presence of squash bugs, squash vine borers, and cucumber … [Read more...]
How to Identify Tomato and Tobacco Hornworms
If you've raised tomatoes for any length of time, you've probably experienced the devastation of the Tomato or Tobacco Hornworm. I originally thought that I was dealing with the Tomato Hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata), but truly, the caterpillar that is defoliating my tomato and tomatillo plants is the Tobacco Hornworm (Manduca sexta). The two are very closely related and can both be found on the same plants, primarily members of the family Solanaceae (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants). You can distinguish them by appearance: the Tomato Hornworm has eight V-shaped marks on each side and their horn is straighter and blue-black in color, whereas the Tobacco Hornworm sports seven diagonal white … [Read more...]