Our growing season is short, just over 100 days. It seems that with most plants we have just one shot. However, to use succession planting for a fall garden has been a goal of ours for many years. We started experimenting with it pushing the boundaries for planting a second crop, aka a fall garden ...
Car Radiator for Heating and Cooling a Greenhouse
After using a car radiator for heating and cooling a greenhouse for many years now, we thought it is time for an update. To control the temperature in our Geodesic Dome greenhouse, we used a Water Tank for passive temperature regulation and also an old car radiator for active heat exchange. To ...
Why we are not prepping
Survivalists or preppers who actively prepare for an emergency, disaster, end of the world, or the coming of zombies seem to like our blog. We are sometimes asked about prepping, or what we think about it. In our world, it would seem that everyone should be prepared. However, we do not consider ...
How to Deal with Garden Weeds
Weeds are plants that grow where we do not want them to grow. Any plant can be a weed, in fact in our garden we have chive weeds, delphinium weeds as well as dandelion weeds. "It grows like a weed" is a saying to describe what is thriving. Weeds always seem to be there. How to deal with garden weeds ...
Cold Spring Challenge in the Garden
Living in a cold climate cold is a constant challenge in the garden. We share many methods about how we survive blizzards and protect plants from early frost. In this blog post, we wanted to especially address the cold spring challenge in the garden. We find if we get en early healthy start to ...
Transplanting Tomato Plants into the Ground
It is always a very exciting day when my tomato plants can finally go into the ground! I start all the seeds indoors. We grow mainly heirloom tomato varieties. Here we share how we do the transplanting tomato plants into the ground. When to plant tomatoes out Tomatoes are a warm-weather crop. ...
Hardening off Plants the Easy Way
Hardening off plants the easy ways is different from the traditional method where you bring plants out on a nice and sunny day for 2 hours, then bring them back in, repeat that the next day for 4 hours and bring them in again. Adding a couple of hours each day it takes 7 -10 days till plants are ...
Rainwater Harvesting for Use in the Garden
Water is an essential need in the garden. Rainwater harvesting for use in the garden helps us to use water that would otherwise go to waste. Plants prefer to be watered with stagnant water that had the chance to warm up. Having rainwater around the garden is very convenient, during a dry spring it's ...
Do Not Use Weed Control Fabric in the Garden
Just to roll some Weed Control Fabric (a.k.a. landscape fabric) out in your garden and not to worry about weeding anymore sounds good. Stopping weeds without dangerous chemicals, and doing it for many years - some give a 25 years guarantee, wow! But is this true, does it work as promised? Here are 3 ...
All About Starting a Garden
Here at Northern Homestead, we write about gardening a lot, general, and also especially about cold climate and short-growing season gardening. We have so much information here that it can be hard for a newbie to find it. So today we merge as much information as possible about starting a garden in ...