Let's Get Growing Archives - Our Homestead Adventures

How to grow a garden through plastic sheeting

Two things that can frustrate a hopeful gardener are weeds and slow growing plants. Planting your garden through agriculture plastic can be a cure for both of those worries. Here’s how to get growing.

Gardening: In A Coronavirus Crazy World, Control What You Can Control

Why gardening can: calm the soul, ease food security worries and lead to self empowerment even as the world seems to be going crazy during the coronavirus crisis.

Dilly Beans Recipe, Small Batch

A good green bean harvest meant we could feast on dilly beans this year. This was our first season of pretty good success with beans. At least in our eyes. Success looks different to different people. Let me explain that last year we were only able to save 11 ounces of beans… carefully packed away…

Lemon Balm Tea, aka Melissa Tea

Herbs have so many uses, you should grow some. Herbs can be used for so many ailments as well as for enjoyment, that’s especially true with Lemon Balm. Our herb garden started out small, with the herbs that were most familiar to us. As we began learning more about homesteading through taking classes, listening to…

Growing Coriander in the Garden

You may be growing Coriander and not even know it. It’s what comes after your cilantro plant bolts Our coriander was truly a “learning by living” experience. We had an extended cool, spring season. Many of our herbs thought summer had gone and started “bolting” into flowers. It took about a month after the white…

Frugal Gardening and Farm Tip: Tomato tie-up wire

Check out this frugal gardening hack. Why pay full price for stuff to tie-up your tomatoes? This is actually Christmas wreath tie I bought at Walmart. I picked it up the day after Christmas for 75% off… they were basically giving it away. This is what we like to use to tie-up our tomatoes. It’s…

Sweet Potatoes Sunday

Hunting for sweet potatoes on a sunny Sunday. Sweet Potatoes are one of Amy’s favorites. The kids like them too, especially with a little cinnamon. Our summer crop yielded a handful of the red-orange beauties. Most of them were found peeking above the heavy clay soil (we mixed in a heavy dose of compost this…

Jalapeño Poppers on the Homestead

Jalapeño Poppers, with or without the heat. When we lived in Arizona, we had access to heat, both in temperature and in foods (especially jalapeños). We ate with friends who would joke about spicy foods- “That’s not spicy! That’s like toothpaste!” We’ve had deep fried jalapeno poppers with oozy yellow cheese from restaurants- this is…

Jalapeño Popper Cheese Ball

Jalapeño jackpot makes a tasty Jalapeño Popper Cheese Ball At the end of the summer, our garden struck the jackpot with jalapenos. I preserved Cowboy Candy, prepared Make as you Go, Pico de Gallo, and made Jalapeño Poppers near the end. The Jalapeño Poppers got me to thinking about incorporating these flavors in a different…

Persimmon Seed Weather Prediction

The first year we lived on our property, we discovered we had a few trees with small, orange, crab-apple sized fruits on them. We weren’t sure exactly what they were until, one day in the fall, we tasted one and then we knew exactly what we had- a persimmon. The next year, we worked on…