Grow enough to feed your family for a year!

So in our last post we discussed 5 different ways that you could homestead wherever and whenever in your life that you're currently at. These were the things that every single one of us can do. I wanted to go a bit into depth on some of the issues we talked about, because simply saying "grow your own food" yeah, that's all nice and whatnot, but it can really be overwhelming if you've not done it before, or if you're like me and had a salad garden and that's it. Going from growing a couple of heads of lettuce, some tomatoes and cukes to all out growing almost everything you eat.....well that takes time. And planning. And organization. And all those things that I wasn't good at. :) So I hope you can learn from my failures!

So lets get our hands dirty shall we? It's always a good day when you can play in the dirt!

Number One: Figure out how much space you can spare. 

We have a 1/4 acre lot. There's a large patio in the backyard, the chicken coop and run, the single detached garage and we can't plant anything in the front yard cause that's where the gas/elec/water lines run. The "front" portion of our side yard, contains a walnut tree (which nut trees give off toxins and the surrounding soils aren't fit for growing) and the other front portion houses a pine tree and no sun. That leaves us the side yard. Now you might think this isn't a lot of land to plant.

You'd be wrong! Our garden this year is 65ft x 30ft. That's over 1,900 sq ft in which to plant our food in. Now we use a very intensive growing method of sq ft gardening (where we amend the soil with homemade compost every year to help with nutrients) and so we plant everything pretty close together.

Number Two: Figure out what foods you eat and what you want to grow. 

I don't grow a thing we won't eat. I'd love to grow both cabbage and cauliflower. But we simply can't eat enough of it to make it worthwhile. So we forgo it. Instead I plant lots of beans, TONS of tomatoes, and loads of peppers and onions. We also plant potatoes, which a lot of backyard gardeners don't do because it's kind of land intensive. But we like organically grown potatoes, I feel like they're just so much better than what you get in the store, so I make that sacrifice. What you grow, will probably be changed year by year. I grew cabbage our first year until I realized we just don't eat enough to spend the space root cellaring it.

Once you figure out what you want to grow, planning the garden is easy. You'll have to have some trial and error on figuring out how much of what to plant, as it took me a season or two to figure ours out. But once you figure it out, you can then plant most of what you eat if not all of it!

Number Three: Learn how to Preserve the Bounty of your Harvest.

Photo courtesy of Mother Earth News Mag

There's a few ways to do this. Canning, Freezing, Dehydrating and Root Cellaring. Somethings will root cellar well. Like potatoes, onions, carrots, apples, beets, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, pears, turnips, radishes, dried beans, garlic, pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Almost anything can be canned. Things you don't want to can are pureed pumpkin, dairy products or mashed beans. Now there are people who do can these things, and like I tell people, you can how you want, what your comfortable with. I personally follow the guidelines given to us by the USDA so I can 100% know that my foods are safe.

Freezing is a great way to preserve things, especially things like corn and green beans that get mushy when you can them. However, this requires energy to keep them frozen and freezer space. I prefer to use the one time energy of canning these items and then simply putting them on the shelf for later. This is just a matter of preference.

One thing that I feel is underutilized is dehydrating. You can dehydrate so many things. Fruit slices, fruit leather, jerky, things like whole peppers for dried use or later rehydrated use....the list goes on. We are building a solar dehydrator this year, and I will be sharing the plans and the materials list with you so you can too, build your own for next to nothing. The only thing you'll need to use it, will be a clear sunny day.

Once you've got these three things down, you're well on your way to growing, preserving and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You'll know exactly where the food came from, what was used on it to grow it, and you'll bask in the greatness that is a 2¢ tomato seed turned into an entire plant that's produced roughly 25lbs of tomatoes that would have cost you about $100 at the store (if you purchase organic for around $4 per lb, which is how we farm here).

The savings are incredible, even though yes, it take some hard work, but the moment when you bite into that ripe, fleshy, and flavorful tomato, you'll realize the appeal of growing your own food.

How does your Garden Grow? Aug 7, 2013

 I can't believe it's already August! Where has the summer gone? Our garden is producing and starting to look really good! How are yours looking?

Tomatoes are finally turning! Check all those spots of red in there!
Won't be long now and our canning will go from the occasional
batch to serious biznass!

Strawberries! They need to be weeded in the middle there and you
can see the runners keep running! Every week I go through and pinch
off the extra runners as we've got enough this season. I'm also wondering if the
plants are June bearing unlike I was told at the nursery, we've not had a bloom since late June

Pea plants for our fall crop, they're getting big already!

Can you believe this melon patch? I have tried to keep it
contained, but to no avail!

Potatoes are still flowering and I rummaged around, they're growing just fine! 

I might be really proud of these strawberry plants that I have to show two pics!

Our lima beans are...beaning! We have a ton of these pods and it won't be long
till we can pick them! 

Tell me these aren't just gorgeous! These are the black cherokee beans we
planted, we like black beans in this house. I am just amazed how beautiful they are. 

This is what iron deficiency looks like in strawberry plants. The yellowing of the
leaves the green veins and the brown on the edges. We've added bone meal and
you can see the ones next to it have perked up a bit already. I estimate within a week
they'll all be back to being green. 

Side yard garden. All that green is just so pretty!

Carrots are finally getting it! Bout time too!

Look how tall these carrot tops are. We thinned a few weeks ago and might
need to thin a few more, but oh well, yummy carrots!

Love these maters. All that red coming in. 

Cherry tomatoes have been producing for a couple of weeks now.
Getting enough to eat in my salad every other day. And there's nothing
better than a homegrown tomato in your salad. 

Lookit how the watermelon vines have just creeped out of the fencing much to my dismay!
I tried to keep them contained, but I would wind them up only to come out the next morning and find
them through the fence and blooming, and I didn't want to hurt the blooms! 

These are bigger than they seem in the picture. The largest one, on the left is probably about 10lbs by now, and they're
growing larger every day. I can't wait to eat them! The kids are super excited too, wanting to check progress every day. 

A hidden watermelon I found this morning. I don't know how I missed it. It's about 10 inches long. 

What's left of our bean patch. We've got Montezuma Reds, Black Cherokee, Green Snap and Lima Beans. 

I don't remember which variety I planted, but these are getting about a foot long before they're ready.
They're also cross pollinating with my Boston pickling cukes and are making for some very misshapen
cucumber "balls". I need to not plant so close next time! 

I completely forgot until two days ago when it began to turn, that I'd planted red peppers.
Isn't it gorgeous!

These are the hot peppers I planted in the Smart Grow containers for salsa. I am really pleased with these containers. Six plants fit in this container and they're thriving!

Potatoes. Won't be long now, it seems. Some of the foliage is starting to die off already. More Smart Pot Containers. 

Finally! A bloom on the Eggplant! We haven't had any eggplant yet this season. 

Homestead Barn Hop!

Garden July 15th 2013 UPDATE!

I'm simply amazed every time I walk out my backdoor into our garden and see the vegetation. I'm amazed every time a bloom falls off and there's a tomato behind it two days later. I'm doubly amazed when I check on the squash at night and come back in the morning to find it doubled in size. Your garden is the backbone of a great urban homestead and it really makes me so proud to see how well it can feed our family of six. So
lets get to the garden porn shall we?

Finally got the potatoes topped off. This was the second time we'd hilled them up. We're doing it about once every three weeks. You can see there's no lack of vegetation! 

These were the first set of potatoes we'd planted. As you can see, they're beginning to die off already. Won't be long now! 

Finally have blooms on the pepper plants for our salsa peppers. 

Homegrown stevia. I throw a few leaves in the tea cup when I'm brewing tea and it's makes for a great natural sweetener. Hubby almost killed them when I was visiting family with the kids. I came back and they were bone dry and brown. I cut them down to an inch and have given them plenty of water and they've come back just as strong. 

Italian parsley. We use a LOT of parsley in our house. So I planted a lot. I'm thinking I might need double this amount next year though. Somehow, if you look closely, you can see there are a few green onions that ended up in the left side of the container, apparently I spilled some seeds :)

Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. This is our first year trying this variety and I'm in love. We had three days this week with 100º temps and only three plants bolted (you can see I cut them down, on the right hand side at the bottom). This has to be the most heat resistant variety I've ever seen. The taste is lovely, very crisp and crunchy! This will continue to be a staple in our garden year after year. 

California Bell peppers. It never ceases to amaze me how these plants grow such big fruit. 

Early girl tomatoes. 

Carrots are finally growing like weeds! Which you can see we have plenty of ;) We thinned them two weeks ago and ever since, they've taken off. We have another set of carrots going in along with peas for part of our fall crops. 

Onions in the back. I haven't weeded since the tops fell over, and as you can see, the weeds grow super fast! I need to remember that because just a few days can mean the difference between "under control" and "crazy out of control!". The onions have done so well this year, it was so great watching them go from tiny sets to onions the size of baseballs. We will be pulling them and curing them, then storing them braided and hanging to dry in the root cellar (post will include all the details!). 

Roman Candle Tomatoes. I had to have one tomato plant that was "cool" and chose this one. Check out these super cool tomatoes! I love it.  

 Onions up close. Aren't they just gorgeous? 

Cucumbers have really taken off. Notice all the blooms. Next year to save space I will be trellising them. They're taking up valuable real estate.  

We planted the straight eight variety for salads and eating. You can see one lone cuke back 

there if you look hard. 

Okra! We have two plants this year. We only use Okra for slicing and freezing or canning with our veggie soup and chicken soup mix as none of us are big okra fans. I do love how they grow upside down though.  

Boston Pickling cukes. Can't wait to get a whole crop in so we can make some pickles. My kids will eat a jar of pickles in a sitting if you let them. 

This. This is my pride and joy. I have my blood sweat and tears in this strawberry patch. We started out with 37 plants. We did a double hill system and spaced them a foot apart in all directions. Every single plant now has three runners, and you can see the rows certainly are being filled in. We have been pinching off all the blooms this year so that the root system will take as next year this means we'll likely have a bumper crop :) 

Watermelon patch. Hard to see as it's gotten so large it's encroaching on the grass next to the garden, but we have about 8-10 main vines that are about 8 feet long now. 

Baby watermelon! We planted Sangria and Sugar babies, not sure which

 one this is yet, but I for one, can't wait to eat it. 

Squash and potatoes in the back. We had to tear out one squash plant because it became infested with squash vine borers, but we were able to save the other two plants. We have one zucchini and one yellow straight neck. We also have three smaller plants in the back, that had been in containers which had stunted their growth a bit. So. Lesson learned. Squash in the ground, not in containers. 

Beans! Can you believe all these beans! We've harvested about 5lbs of green beans thusly and the pinto, cranberry, montezuma red and great whites already have plenty of bean pods. The Cherokee Blacks and Lima's went in later, so I expect we'll have some of those soon. We have plans of picking the beans, drying them out, shelling them and then storing them. We might can some of the fresh beans as well. 

We extended the garden a bit to accommodate the watermelon vines as they were trying to get through the fence. So, I decided to dig it up. We're going to put our fall peas and carrots over here. I have 250 carrots going in the ground and around 200 pea plants if they'll all fit. 

Beans beans they're good for your heart! 

Pinto beans. 

Aren't squash flowers beautiful? 

Potatoes. This was the last crop of potatoes that went in. They have been hilled twice and still have blooms. I imagine we will be harvesting them closer to fall. 

So that's our garden news for this week. How is your garden doing? 

Homestead Barn Hop #119