Gardening on the Homestead

Gardening is an important aspect of homesteading, because the main principal of the homestead life is being self sufficient. There are many aspect of self sufficiency, be it operating off the grid, making your own cloths, canning, spinning your own wool, raising your own meat, hunting, and of course growing your own food.

Gardening not only supplies one with veggies, fruit, herbs, flowers and shade trees, it also supplies one with exercise and sun, all a must in our lives. It is easy to just throw some seeds or plants into the ground and alot of people have alot of success this way. I find though, that there are better ways to do things, we can improve the soil to make the foods we grow even healthier for us, this same action helps the plants to be stronger, thus fending off attacking insects and disease naturally so we can avoid the use of harmful chemicals on them. The use of man made fertilizers, insect sprays and weed killers not only harms us but harms the soil, depleting it, destroying the healthful organisms in it, as well as making the plants weaker, the bugs resistant. It takes awhile to rebuild a soil that has had chemicals used on it but it can be done, the soil will be health teaming with wonderful organisms that create healthy plants.

Part of making a healthy garden is putting together a compost pile using plant matter, animal manures, water and heat to break down the ingredients to make a nutrient rich addition to the soil that builds the soil. It is easy to find information on composting on the internet, so I won't go into it here.

Gardening has always been a part of my life, for over 40 years I have gardened. This year without water though it looked like it would not happen, after all a garden takes alot of water. Several of the gals in town share a plot of ground and invited me to join them, the garden could be watered by ditch water (irrigation ditch), so I decided to take 3 rows. Above is a picture of the garden ready to plant in early spring. This looks promising, except I know I won't have alot of time. Julie shared potatoes, onion and some flower seeds with me. I had carrot, green onion, sage, squash, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce to plant.

What I did not realize is how overwhelming the pasture grass would be. Several people said spray with roundup.....no thank you. The 'weeds' grew like....well weeds! Within days (no kidding) the ground was turning green and not because of anything I had planted. Julie and her husband and son worked on there rows daily and kept ahead of the on slat. I weed areas and got the potatoes in and on another area put in the carrots, green onions and sage. Then we made a week long trip to Ca..................the weeds were 8 inches high when we got back, so I pulled them out of the areas I had planted. Then work kicked in and I did not get back to the garden until a month later and another trip to Ca. Kirk had to take the weed eater to the now 2 feet tall weeds. Once again we pulled the weeds around the potatoes and other items.....hay there are potatoes under there...........way cool.

Meantime up here on the hill near the house we filled a tractor tire with soil and planted lettuce, and put 4 tomato plants into pots. These grew well and we are still harvesting tomato, expecting frost any time.

The garden down in the pasture................BIG SIGH................well take a look.

The weeds have won, now there are potatoes
way down at the end, we got some the other
day and they are good. Does this mean I will
use things like roundup? No. I also won't garden
in the pasture, where pasture grass rules.
Our plan is to install raised beds on the hill
(in the back ground) this way I will hopefully
have better control over the weeds. LOL.

So watch for next years garden, Lord willing and we have water, it will do much better.

A great weekend to all.