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 ...
Soil Preparation
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 ...
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? A few things to consider first New ...
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 ...
How to Make Simple Compost Tea
It is mid-summer, the gardening season is halfway over. Time for a plant boost. The easiest and most effective way to give the plants some instant food is by using compost tea. Compost tea is simply tea made out of good, finished compost, a liquid plant fertilizer. Plants love compost ...
Wicking Bed for the Greenhouse
We are in the fourth year of garage greenhouse growing where we grow food year round. You can read more about it here. A very important part of a greenhouse is the soil to grow plants in. Since a garage greenhouse, or any other indoor greenhouse, has no soil, we had to come up with a good ...
Replace Your Lawn With Food Production
While mowing the little lawn that was still left, I was hot and sweaty and mosquitoes were bugging me. I could not help but think how much work lawn mowing actually is. Thankfully, we turned our yard into a garden, and replaced all our lawn with food production. It was work too, but seriously not ...
Challenges with the Back to Eden Method
We are big fans of no-till gardening methods. We got into it through the Back to Eden film, a documentary of a sheet mulch gardening method using wood chips or other natural mulch material. Mulching is just the best thing one can do for a garden. There is no tilling or digging needed any longer. Our ...
To Till or Not to Till the Garden
Growing up on a homestead, spring time was a busy garden time. The garden was cleaned up, fertilized with composted manure, and turned over. We did that every spring. The young adults would form work groups to help to dig the gardens of those who were not able to do that by themselves. Digging ...
Preparing the Garden for Winter
Winter, in colder areas, is the time when gardens go dormant. Still, it is an important time for the garden and the garden soil. You might have noticed that the colder an area is, the richer is the soil. There are a few important steps that can make the garden soil even better and also help the ...