2014 Garden: June

This year, I decided to keep the garden simple.  I have been overwhelmed over the years with too many plants, too many weeds, and not enough motivation to spend time out in the garden giving it the care and attention it needs to thrive.  My goal this year was to spend less than $50 on the garden, and to attempt to grow my garden in pallets we had picked up for free.

I will tell you that so far, I am really enjoying the pallet garden.  We had to get four times the amount of soil we needed because the nursery did not have the type of soil we wanted - we had to make our own.  Instead of getting just a ½ cu ft of soil, we ended up having to get 2 cu ft!  The price for that alone was $31.03!  I ended up using much less soil than expected in the pallets so we decided to use the rest of the soil to fill in low spots in our yard.  Waste not – want not.

This is what the pallet garden looks like (after 3 straight days of rain and no time to mow the lawn!) 

The zucchini and summer squash were planted by seed and took off almost instantly after I planted them mid-May.  I have 4 pallets of zucchini and summer squash planted.

I also planted yard-long green beans and cucumbers.  They have taken off as well! (the are the ones closest to us in this picture.)

I have 1 ½ pallets full of cucumbers planted – I am going to have to add a pallet tee-pee for the cucumbers to start climbing soon.

 I gave a friend several packs of Roma tomato seeds last year that I wasn’t going to use and this spring, she gave me several seedlings!  Unfortunately, the cats decided to use the pallets as a litter box and killed many of the seedlings before they could get established, but I have at least 4 Roma tomato plants that are difficult to see in this picture but believe me, they are there.

If I were to do the pallet garden again, I would put all the pallets together.  I did not space them to give enough room for the lawn mower to go through, so every month I have to take hedge clippers and cut in between the pallets when the weeds get too tall!  Also, if I decide to do a pallet garden again next year, I will be putting cardboard or weedblock under the pallets.  I still get weeds though they nothing compared to our garden last year.

Total cost of the vegetable garden in 2014: $38.88.  

This includes the price of soil and the cost of the seeds.

Now onto the fruits around our property.

I have no idea how to take care of concord grape vines, but I trimmed them back pretty far this spring.  Other people leave their vines as they are and new growth comes in each year.  I can see where the grapes will start to produce on the vines, and the vines have taken off like crazy since mid-May!  I joke with Todd that I can sit on the front porch and watch them grow.  I am hoping to propagate several of the vines to take over to the house next door to get established before we hit the road full time in the RV.  Plus, I don’t believe you can ever have too many concord grapes– they are probably my favorite fruit!

For the first time since we purchased the pear trees (5 years ago, I think it’s been), we finally have pears growing!  There are 5 of them!  I am beyond thrilled about this!

  

We purchased a blackberry plant last year at a flea market and it has just taken off!  We have a lot of these beautiful white flowers and I look forward to those plump, juicy sweet berries in the next few months!

   

I neglect our red raspberries every single year, but without fail, they always produce for me.  I didn’t even trim the red raspberry plants from last year and they are taking off!  It looks like we will have a bumper crop this year from the canes I transplanted two years ago. 

These are our cherry trees – we bought one along with the blackberry bush last year and we’ve had the other in the ground for a couple of years now.  It does not appear we will be getting cherries this year, but hopefully next year!  These are rainier cherries which are yellow and red in color and so sweet! 

There you have it.

This is what our vegetation looks like so far this year, and we’re just getting started!  It amazes me how things grow from seed and how quickly!

How is your garden doing this year?

Planning the 2014 Garden

Each year I say I’m done with gardening but when spring rolls around, I am ready to start planning for the year’s garden.  In years past, I have gone crazy with the amount I have tried to grow and it lead to me feeling overwhelmed and eventually I give upand let the weeds take over.  This year, we are keeping it simple!

Todd despises spring because he knows I will have requests for the upcoming garden.  He stated that the best part of last year’s garden was when he got to mow it down!  So while having dinner in early February, I sprung it on him that I wanted to try pallet gardening.  He immediately rolled his eyes and sighed.  “But wait,” I told him.  “Hear me out!  I only want to grow 4 vegetables this year.”  That got his attention.  After thinking about it for a couple of minutes and my promising that he wont have to do too much work to prepare for the garden this year, he was on board.

So, what does pallet gardening look like?

You can go to one of my favorite blogs, One Hundred Dollars A Month and take a look for yourself.  Mavis is an awesome gardener!

PHOTO CREDIT: One Hundred Dollars A Month
Please check out this website to learn exactly how to pallet garden!

What we are planting this year:

We are planting only 4 varieties of vegetables this year.

1. Squash (zucchini and yellow squash) by seed
2. Yard Long Green Beans by seed
3. Cucumbers by seed
4. Tomatoes by seedling

Supplies Needed:

• Pallets
• Compost/Soil
• Seeds/Seedlings
• Trellis

The only expenses we will have this year for the garden will be a half cubic yard of  soil (approximately 1,000 lbs) and the seeds/seedlings.  I expect to pay no more than $50 for the garden this year.  We have pallets that we got for free last year from Todd's place of employment.  We have also been composting, so we have some great compost to add to the soil we will purchase.  For our climbing vegetables (green beans and cukes), we will be using pallets!

PHOTO CREDIT

Please note: the pallet garden is great for vegetables with shallow root systems.  For tomatoes, we will be stacking 3 or 4 pallets on top of one another to create a taller raised bed for their root system.

One great thing about the four items we are growing this year is that these vegetables (yes, I know tomatoes are not considered a vegetable!) are prolific.  I have a hard time sticking with something that I cannot see results quickly.  With this produce, we will start to see results fast and a lot of them!  The first garden Todd and I ever had was a raised garden and it was the best garden we have ever had.  I am hoping that we can duplicate those results this year with the pallet garden while keeping the weeds away!

Plans for the Established Fruit

We have several fruit trees, bushes and grape vines.  My goal this year is to begin transplanting the fruit to the house next door so that when we are at our home base in the RV, we can enjoy the fruits of our labor.  This will include transplanting blueberry bushes (right now, they are just twigs!), red raspberries, blackberries, and cultivating concord grape vines from clippings off our established vines.

This year, I really want to focus on providing our fruits and vegetables with the nutrients they need to grow well and provide us with an abundance of produce!

What are your plans for the garden this year?

What vegetables are you going to grow?

Are there any fruits you will add to your garden?

Garden Status: Big Hopes – No Follow-Through

I am awful at following through: especially with the garden.  I plan the garden all fall and winter long, I am meticulous about getting all the seeds in the ground, but when the weeds start coming up alongside the plants, I lose all motivation to continue with the garden.  This happens every year.

Case in point, this is what our garden looks like right now.

What a mess.  I am extremely embarrassed at what I have allowed the garden to become.

Todd was helping me this year by tilling the ground and planting seeds with me.  He even put weed block in two rows but never got around to putting it in between the other 12 rows.  I cannot blame him – I’m just as bad.  Other things came up that took up nearly every weekend of our spring and early summer.  We had an anniversary (which I am not sorry for neglecting the garden for a weekend get-away with my husband), two out of town weddings within 5 weeks, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, 4^th of July, adjusting to a newmember of the family and trying to maintain our home to name just a few.  Not to mention we have had so much rain here, the weeds are thriving.

I enjoy planning and planting the garden.  I don’t enjoy the weeding and maintenance.

Solution: Mow it down and plan for next year.  Yes, it kills me to think about all of the time and work we have wasted, but this large garden is just too much for us.  We learned a very valuable lesson this year.

I already have a plan for next year’s garden.  I can guarantee you that it will be one word: simple!  There will be very few “fu-fu” plants going into the ground and the seeds that we purchase will all be heirloom seeds.  We will grow only what we eat an abundance of:  the three sisters (corn, green beans and squash), cucumbers and tomatoes (in pots). We are looking to maximize produce in the space we have.  Depending on how our melon does this year, we may decide to plant one variety of annual fruit.  Just the thought of planting and sowing these 5 vegetables eases my mind because I know how to plant and harvest each variety and I know the abundance each of these vegetables provides.

I found a great resource of teachable moments for little ones that explains about the three sisters and gives many learning opportunities for children to prepare soil, plant seeds, grow and sow the vegetables, save seeds and start again the next year.  I will be using this source myself next year! 

For now, we are focusing on weeding the red raspberry patch as well as watching our grape vines grow beautifully over the trellis (and even producing clusters of grapes!)  By weeding the red raspberry patch, I am hoping to focus my time and energy on keeping the beetles away, watching the berries begin to form and harvest an abundant crop in the upcoming months.  I also have plans to get our blueberry bushes (which look like twigs right now), pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees mulched and ready for the cooler months ahead.  I want to make sure these fruits trees stay healthy so that we get fruit on them next year!

For anyone interested in learning about gardening, please read this post from New Life on a Homestead which covers the basics of gardening and how to start!  It has a wealth of information!! 

How is your garden doing this year?

Garden Update : May 2013

The garden is coming along well this year!

It was my goal to start everything by seed, and so far, I have been able to do just that.  Not only is it less expensive, I am able to see what each vegetable looks like when it comes out of the ground (so I can recognize them in the future, or even in the compost pile!)

For the first time ever, Todd is helping out with the garden and it has made a huge difference.

In the beginning, he would do the brunt of the work and leave me to pulling weeds, planting, and picking the veggies which I would grow tired of pretty quickly.  Now, he is helping with tilling, pulling weeds, planting, and tilling some more because this is the biggest garden we have ever grown (I say that every year, but it’s true!). 

Main Garden Area May 2, 2013

A few weeks back, I mentioned to Todd that I didn’t think our garden was going to be big enough for all the seeds I purchased and planned on planting.  At the same time, he was complaining about a part of our yard that always flooded when it rained and he was tired of dealing with it.  So…he got out the tiller, built up the ground (with some ashes from a few of our burn piles) and made a new area for me to plant the huckleberry bushes (by seed), cantaloupe, watermelon and pumpkin! (I forgot to take a picture of this new area.)

I was able to plant peas, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens, brussel sprouts, onions, carrots, leeks and several different varieties of lettuce in early May.  This is what we have coming up in the garden now:

Grape Vines (and a dog tail)

Peas (2 rows)

Mustard Greens / Lettuce

Leeks

Green Beans (130+ seeds!)

Corn

Cantaloupe

Squash (2 varieties)

Added Bonus from last year.
Either pie pumpkin or spaghetti squash.

Added Bonus #2 From Last Year : Peas
 (many of them throughout the garden)

I love this time of year when the trees get their leaves, the garden is beginning to grow and the sun is showing its face longer throughout the days.

There is still a lot of work to do in the garden and many weeds to pull, but we are enjoying it!

How is your garden doing so far this season?

Starting the Garden: 2013

Puppy is pooped after her vacation at the pet resort.

When we got home from vacation  last Sunday, the weather was beautiful in Northeast Ohio.  It was too beautiful to sleep the day away (which is what we wanted to do considering we didn’t get home until almost 1AM Sunday morning and had been traveling since 10:30AM Saturday morning).  After picking up the pup from the kennel Sunday morning, we went home and got to work on the garden.

Planning in Progress

The first thing I had to do was sort through the dozens of packets of seeds that I’ve purchased and had left over from previous years.  I didn’t realize how many seeds we had!  I then sorted the seeds based on what weekthey need to be planted so that over the next 4 weeks, I can slowly but surely get everything into the ground.  The only seeds I was able to plant were the cold weather seeds like lettuce, strawberry and asparagus seeds.

 

The Attachment on the Weed Eater

 Next, hubby decided to come out and help till the garden.  For the past few years, we’ve wanted to get a tiller for the garden; however, we weren’t willing to pay hundreds of dollars for something we would use a couple times a year.  Upon looking into renting a tiller, we found it would cost anywhere between $45-65/day.  Todd learned that his weed eater has an attachment to till soil and it would cost $99.99 new!  I will willing to shell out the money until Todd found a brand new one on Craigslist for $50!  Cha-ching!  NOW we’re in business!  We’ve already used it 3 times and it works like a charm!

This year, we have decided to plant some vegetables in the flowerbed in front of our home to utilize the space we’ve got.

 

 

Future Herb Barrels

These planters used to house perennial flowers, but this year, they will be growing herbs.  (I know they are really ugly right now, but I haven’t had a chance to get around and take out last year’s dead stalks.)

 

The "Salad Bar"

Even though this looks like an empty patch of soil, there are 5 varieties of lettuce planted in this area.  This is going to (hopefully) be our “salad bar” in the next month or so.  I have never had much luck with lettuce or spinach, so we will see if planting it at the proper time in the season and watering it once in a while will help.

Last year, the chickens scratched up our 2-year old asparagus plants, so this year they are going in front of the house.  I decided to plant them by seed in the front corner of the house fully aware that it will take 2-3 years to start producing asparagus.  I love perennials; however, patience is not my forte.

We have had a lot of rain over this past week.  After a couple of days of rain, I noticed our pear trees are getting their leaves!  I wonder if these 3-year old pear trees will produce any fruit for us this year or not.

Pear Tree

 

Our transplanted red raspberry plants are doing great.  We already have many new chutes coming out of the ground and some green buds forming on the canes.  Oh how I love my red raspberry plants.  No matter how much I neglect them each and every year, they always return the next spring.

Red Raspberries Have Leaves Already

This past weekend, I planted over two hundred peapod seeds.  We really enjoy eating peapods and I am hoping we have enough to freeze or can so that we can enjoy them throughout the year.  If a couple hundred plants doesn’t do it, we may have to turn our entire front yard into a peapod field!

So far this season, that is all I am able to plant based on our last frost date of the year (which will probably be mid-May here in Northeast Ohio). 

How is your garden coming along so far this season?

Companion Planting in the Garden



Source

I am a fairly new to gardening (this will be my 4^th year) and in no way do I have a green thumb.  Most years, I am tickled pink that anything grows because I tend to neglect my gardens shortly after it starts producing.  If I don’t see results (quickly), I get distracted and give up on the endless pulling of weeds and fostering the tender plants.

It wasn’t until last year that I had ever heard of the term “companion planting,” so I was naturally curious.  With many Google searches and several books from the library, I was intrigued. 

Companion planting not only enhances the soil and works to keep those pesky bugs from eating leaves and produce, but you can grow a lot more in a smaller space!  I have also read that it is a good way to keep the weeds at bay (which has always been a struggle for me.)  I am looking forward to planting more in less space this year.  I think we will need to in order to grow allof the seeds I purchased this year!

 

 

From my research, I have found a couple of great websites that are helping me to plan my garden this year.  They include:

Companion Planting InteractiveExcel Spreadsheet
This interactive spreadsheet from mysquarefootgarden.net  is awesome!  You can choose the vegetable you are planting and see what is bad, good, better and best to grow alongside your plant. 

Companion Planting with Herbs 

I am looking forward to incorporating more herbs into our garden this year for medicinal purposes as well as to dry and use for later use.  This link shows where to plant the herbs based on other vegetables or flowers. 

This link has an extensive list of all fruits, vegetables and herbs as well as their companion plants.

Free Garden Planning Printables

5 Dollar Dinners offers free garden-planning printables to help organize this year’s garden!  I am going to be using all four of the free printables on this site!  They include: The Garden Planner, The Square Foot Gardening Planner, The Container Gardening Planner and the Garden Harvest Planner. 

When to Plant
In years past, I planted everything by seed all within a 2-3 week timeframe.  Not only is this exhausting for me, some of my plants didnt do as well as others.  I learned that this is because some plants do better when planted in the ground several weeks before the last frost versus planting them after the last forst. (Duh! Can you say cold-weather plants?)

I came across a link that shows you exactly when to plant each vegetable in your garden based on the last frost in your zone! 

First, go to this website to see when the frost usually ends in your zone.
I am a Zone 5, so frost usually ends mid-April for me.

I entered May 16th into this spreadsheet and it shows me exactly when to plant each vegetable! This completely takes the guess-work out of when I need to be outside planting seeds.

My hope is that you find a few of these links as helpful as I have.  May this year be the best growing season for us all!

Have you ever used the companion planting method before?

 

 

Planning the 2013 Chicken Garden

The chickens have been eating us out of house and home.  Alright, I am exaggerating a bit, but they sure do eat a lot!  We have lazy chickens that would prefer me to throw them some cracked corn or rolled oats before they forage for bugs!  Once they figure out that I’m not going to feed them, they eventually meander around the yard foraging.

I learned about breeding mealworms late last year and have been quite successful at doing so.  My goal is to reduce the amount of commercial chicken feed we buy and to become as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to feeding the chickens.  The mealworms are just the beginning.  We plan on growing and preserving the following items to feed the chickens:

 

Wheatgrass

Alfalfa sprouts
Pumpkins (we bought a variety that grow to be up to 100 lbs!)
Sunflowers
Squash
Corn
Watermelon
Chickweed
Rye grass
Oregano

 

My hopes are to grow enough of the above items to feed as well as put some away for the fall, winter and early spring when the ground is frozen and bugs are hiding.  It would be awesome to spend $0 on chicken feed in 2013, though I am aiming to spend no more than $50 between the seeds to start the chicken garden and some chicken feed to hold the chickens over until the garden gets started.

 

Do you grow your own chicken food?

What do you feed them?

Planning the 2013 Main Garden

I love this time of year when nothing is going on because everything is frozen outside.  It gives me an excuse to stay inside and daydream about what our garden(s) will look like in 6 short months.

I am planning to grow 3 different types of gardens this year.  The main garden in which we would consume and preserve the contents, an herb garden for medicinal purposes and to stock up our herbs for the year, and a chicken garden in an attempt to completely get rid of the cost of chicken feed.

This year, I am going to try to stay away from the greenhouses in the spring because I am going to try to plant everything from seed.  I have high hopes of planting the seeds in the ground this spring because I have had no luck in the past starting the seeds indoors and transplanting them outside.

 

This is the list of fruits and vegetables we plan on growing this year in the garden:

(* denotes items we have never grown before)

• Amish Paste Tomatoes*
• Grape Tomatoes
• Early Girl Tomatoes
• Bush Beans
• Yard-Long Green Beans (we loved these last year!)
• Peas (2 varieties)
• Cucumbers (2 varieties)
• Brussels Sprouts
• Zukes
• Summer Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Onions
• Leeks*
• Carrots*
• Sweet Potatoes*
• Strawberries
• Watermelon *
• Cantaloupe*
• Ground Cherries*
• Radish* (I bought seeds for $0.10 a packet at the end of last season)
• Asparagus (we have some in the ground already, but I think the chickens may have destroyed them.  I have some seeds that will be planted and I will cover so the chickens cannot get to them!)
• Rhubarb*
• Cauliflower*
• Broccoli*
• Romaine Lettuce*
• Mustard Spinach*
• Spinach*
• Vine Peach*  (An annual that fruits the first year!)   
• Elderberries*

We have several fruit trees and bushes scattered around the yard including a dwarf plum tree, two pear trees, four concord grape vines, red raspberries, blueberries, and two cherry trees. 

Take a look at this diagram about how much land is (theoretically) needed to be self sufficient for a family of 4.  I thought it was pretty interesting, though I think we could do it on half the land (there are only 2 of us, we don’t eat many grains and don’t use dairy other than butter).

We get our seeds from Groco Seeds as well as from WalMart.  I have started my transition toward heirloom seeds this year in order to fulfill one of my aspirations of saving seeds. 

 

Have you started to plan your garden for this year?
I would love to hear what you are going to grow!

 

This post is linked up to:

 

 

 

 

Midgilist

It is a little known secret that at work, my nickname is Midge.  It is an inside joke because I had a vendor call me from another country and ask for “Midgin.”  Lucky for me, it was one of the sales reps that took the call and the nickname has stuck ever since. (Please note the sarcasm.)

My coworkers think I am absolutely crazy for all of the things we do in our family.  I have been told by a friend that he is creating a new term for people like me and it is called Midgilists.  What kind of person is a Midgilist?  Someone who goes above and beyond to find ways to do everyday tasks for little or no money.  He is pretty much telling me that I’m cheaper than cheap.

I asked him why he felt this way, and he fired back with about a dozen of the following things I have done over the years.  When I thought about it, I added to his list just to give you an idea what a Midgilist does:

• Raise chickens for eggs
• Raise chickens for meat
• Going no ‘poo
• Researching (and still considering) bamboo as a renewable heat source
• Research solar panels and windmills (and ways to make them ourselves for less!)
• Grow a garden
• Cut our own hair
• I touch up my roots using hydrogen peroxide (for pennies a month)
• Plant perennial fruits, vegetables and herbs
• Crochet some of my own sweaters
• Create a chicken garden to help cut the costs of chicken feed
• Breed mealworms as a food source for our chickens
• Harvest mealworm poop to fertilize the garden areas (a new infatuation of mine)
• Make homemade vanilla
• Brew our own beer/wine
• Can the overabundance of apples
• Make homemade jams
• Freeze vegetables to consume throughout the winter
• Make our own soap
• Convert our vehicle (Kia Rondo) into a mini-camper
• Do our own oil changes and car maintenance
• Home improvements using recycled materials
• Cancelling the satellite and installing an antenna instead (we get over 30 channels now, by the way!)
• Homemade laundry detergent (a new recipe for our HE )
• Homemade dishwasher detergent (another new recipe)

…and the list keeps going on and on.  Until I sat down and thought about all of these things, I completely forgot we do most of them!  We do these tasks on such a regular basis that it is second-nature to us and we don’t feel it is really out of the ordinary.

There are some people who are preppers and others are survivalists…but I’m a Midgilist and I’m OK with that.  I am proud to be thrifty and willing to put some elbow-grease into whatever we do to help save money and become self-sufficient.  There is much more we could do to improve on our Midgilism in the upcoming years.

Until then, may the Midgilists unite!

(I know there are a few of you out there. J)

This post is lined to the Farm Girl Blog Fest.

 

MIA

I am not sure if anyone has noticed but I have been (intentionally) MIA for the past 2 ½ months.  At the beginning of July, I scheduled an post that I decided never to make live, but to just let the blog sit idle.  I didn’t know for how long the site would sit unattended, but it wasn’t until I received encouragement from a reader several weeks back and a friend ofmine who also reads the blog that I decided to start writing again.

Don’t get me wrong, I have missed updating and writing on the blog over the past 2 ½ months, but I really needed the time away to focus on other things in my life.

This is the post that never made it live back in July:

I Don’t Want To Be Connected (To Electronics, That Is)

Over the past month, I have been struggling with being “connected” by the internet and cell phone.  For the first time in my life, I am not concerned about the amount of time I am spending online because I am met with my own personal resistance to being connected.  I am perturbed by a society that is connected to their cell phones and internet connections every waking minute.

In the month of June, I inadvertently started to break away from blogging* and the internet in general.  I think I posted once a week for two or three weeks.  I checked my email every several days but I was horrible at responding back.  It was so bad that I even received a second and third email from a friend who was worried that something happened to me!

With the fast-paced world around us, I have been yearning for the truly simple life.  A life with no real plans on the weekends and time spent together with friends and family face-to-face.

Have you gone through a phase that you completely disconnect from the internet and your cell phone?

 

*Please note that I love-love-love connecting with people! I enjoy blogging and reading emails and comments from followers of the blog.  But I have been cutting back a bit to “stop and smell the roses” along the way.

 

So, what have I been up to over the past 2 ½ months?  A lot!  I have several posts to write and update my faithful followers on what we have been up to here on the homestead including what we decided to do with our broody hen, how our garden turned out this year, our new way of eating gluten/dairy and sugar-free, and many other topics.

The only difference from the past is that I will not be posting nearly as much as I used to: most likely just once a week.

To all the readers who have stuck with me through all of this, THANK YOU.

The Cost of Gardening (May)

In the month of May, I spent $15.96 for a flat of vegetables!

In this flat, I received the following:

• 18 beefsteak tomatoes
• 3 early girls
• 6 cherry tomatoes
• 3 red peppers
• 4 zucchini

That being said, I spent $0.47/plant!

I am not sure why I buy my zukes and tomatoes every year in flats, especially considering I have had a lot of luck in the past with growing tomatoes by seed.  Maybe next year, I will plant them by seed.

Yard Long Green Beans

Cukes

I planted cukes and yard-long green beans when we got back from vacation in mid-May and they are taking off!  I am so excited to see how the yard-long green beans do.  I also planted over 200 bush {green} beans this year, hoping to have enough to freeze and eat throughout the year. 

Spaghetti Squash & Pie Pumpkin Patch

This is the first year that I’ve tried to grow spaghetti squash and pie pumpkin, and so far, they are doing great!  As you can see, we are battling weeds.  I try to pick some every evening, but they grow faster than I can pick them!

Wilted Pea Plants

The pea pods I planted back in April are growing, but don’t look so great.  They are all yellow and some are starting to shrivel.  I’m not sure if they don’t like all the sun they are getting, or if their roots are damaged by the straw bale.  I am completely frustrated that they made it this far, and we may lose them all, even though most of them are flowering!  I water them every other day at a minimum, so I’m not sure what is going on with them. (Any insight on how I can make them healthy again?!?)

Onions

I have never tried to grow onions before, and within a few weeks, we got these little things coming out of the ground!  Seeing these make me curious as to what’s going on under ground.

While taking pictures at the end of May, I noticed that the grape tomatoes are starting to flower!

So there you have it.  Our garden is coming along!

I have pretty much decided that next year, we will not be doing straw bale gardening.  It is still pretty early, so I may change my mind, but the vegetables don’t seem to be producing as well as they would if they were in the ground.  I am also considering buying black plastic next year and putting it on the ground where I am planting to avoid weeds!

The Nitty Gritty:

January: $35.29

February: $60

March: $69.74

April: $0

May: $15.96

Total Spent on the Garden in 2012: $180.99

How is your garden coming along?

Book Review: Backyard Homesteading by David Toht

Photo Credits

I checked out a book from the library several weeks ago that is an awesome reference book for those who are striving to become homesteaders!  The book is entitlted Backyard Homesteading : A back-to-basics guide to self-sufficiency.

For me, this book is everything I need to plan my homestead and to make it as efficient as possible!

The contents of the book include the following topics:

• Getting Started
• Raising Vegetables and Herbs
• Growing Fruits, Berries and Nuts
• Raising Chickens
• Raising Goats
• Beekeeping
• Harvest Home

Because our garden is in full swing right now, there are several resources in this book that are priceless to me!  One of them being "How much should you grow?" which tells you how many pounds of each vegetable a person eats on average and then tells you how many rows of the specified vegetable you need to plant and harvest to feed that person.

Another valuable resource in this book is about companion planting, which I have not gotten into yet with my gardening, though I should!  There is also a section in the "Raising Vegetables and Herbs" chapter that explains each variety of vegetable, how to plant the vegetable, how much the vegetable will produce, and other instructions to make the most of your garden experience.

We now have a half dozen fruit trees around our yard and we have no idea how to prune them or when to prune them!  Backyard Homesteading spells out when we need to prune the trees (with photos), what branches to clip and which to leave alone. 

I was contemplating trying to raise bees this year, but decided to try to focus on a productive garden instead, not to mention my husband HATES bees.  Backyard Homesteading provides an abundance of great information on raising bees, and even a diagram on how to build your own bee hive!  One deterrent to becoming a beekeeper this year was the investment of the hives, bees and equipment.  If hubby can make the hive for me, the investment will be very small compared to what the bees would {hopefully} provide for us!

If you have a weakness for animals, I would skip the chapter on raising goats.  I so badly want to raise pygmy goats for the milk, however, we would have have 3 goats in the rotation to maintain a steady supply of milk.  Not to mention each goat can have anywhere from 2-5 babies per pregnancy!  Ummm...no thanks.  That is a bit too much for our acre homestead.

The last chapter in the book is entitled "Harvest Home."  This chapter shows step-by-step how to can fruits and vegetables, dry fruits and vegetables, can meat, smoke meat, make beer, wine or apple cider and even how to make a simple mini root cellar (which I may try next year!) to help preserve the harvest of the season.  The only thing this book doesnt have that I am interested in is  identifying trees and how to tap them for syrup!

If you are even remotely interested in homesteading, or are looking for resources on how to begin your journey as a homesteader, I recomment checking this book out from the library.  I look forward to taking this out from our library every spring and fall to keep our homestead growing abundantly!


Disclaimer:
I was in no way compensated for writing this review.  I wanted to share information and my findings from this valuable resource so that others may benefit from it as well.  All views and opinions on this book are my own.