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 ...
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 ...
Turn a Yard Into a Garden
Living in a town or city house, either owning or renting you might not consider that you are able to grow a big portion of your own food in a healthy, organic way. However, that is possible. We want to encourage everyone to turn a common yard into a bountiful edible garden. In this post, we share ...