Preparing the garden for winter is important for the garden soil and the perennial plants. We are in Zone 3 meaning winter temperature can drop to -40 degrees. In our particular area, this does not happen very often, but it might happen after a warm spell, where most of the snow melts. Protecting ...
Soil Preparation
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 ...
Soil For Container Gardening and Raised Beds
In this post, we wanted to address the soil for container gardening and raised beds. With raised beds we mean those that are not attached to the topsoil, they could also be called garden bed containers. What soils to use, how to plant it, so that you get the most benefits and how to re-use container ...
3 Great No Till Gardening Methods
Most green thumbs are really not green but rather black. Yes, success and failure in growing great gardens are mostly in the soil. Great soil = great gardens! Here are 3 no-till gardening methods to have great soil: sheet mulch, just mulch, and square foot gardening. One for each of the following ...
To Till or Not to Till the Garden
To till or not to till the garden is a blog post that we first published 5 years ago. We have gained more experience in no-till, and have also seen some confusion. So we thought that it's time to review the post and bring it up-to-date. Growing up on a homestead, our garden was cleaned up, ...
How to Create a New Garden Bed
I'm always thrilled to hear about starting out gardeners creating a new garden bed. We need more gardens and more growers. Not even 100 years ago every family had a garden. Gardens are rewarding and fun. But how to create a new garden bed if you have none? Note, a garden bed can be any size and ...
Convert a hay field into a garden
How to convert a hay field into a garden. This spring our Community Garden offered us to do a no-till garden trial. We were immediately on board. We have been using a no-dig or till method in our home garden quite successfully. To convert a hay field is a bit of a different story, but eh, we are up ...
Raised Window Protected Garden
The raised window protected garden started out of desperation to get all the spring seedlings out of the house a few years ago. It was our first spring in this house, and I was super busy so Anna put together a simple temporary greenhouse that worked surprisingly well. Next spring I built a bigger ...
Growing an indoor edible window garden in soil
In this post we talk about growing an indoor edible window garden in soil. Good soil for a garden is very important. Success and failure in growing great plants depends mostly on the soil. Great soil = great gardens! In our outdoor garden, growing in good organic soil is our very first ...