gardening 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.

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…

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…

Beauty in the Fade, Fall on the Homestead

Finding meaning in fall. The leaves swirled down from our persimmon tree with a wind rushing up our hill. The chickens have lost quite a few feathers, as a palette of various shades have been wind-blown lining the sides of the chicken run like a tossed feathered boa. Our majestic sunflowers with multiple heads of…

Candied Jalapeños Recipe

Call it “Candied Jalapeños”, “Jalapeño Candy” or “Cowboy Candy”, it’s just yummy! Our nephew’s family joined us for a gathering and brought a tray, a block of softened cream cheese, and a jar of sliced jalapeños in a sweet, clear syrup, and dumped it over the cream cheese. There were crackers and tortilla chips to…

Garden Fresh Tomato Soup Recipe

There’s nothing like garden fresh tomato soup. After a couple sessions of canning tomatoes from our garden, and a few rounds of B.L.T. sandwiches, we needed another way to enjoy them and boy did we find the answer with this tomato soup recipe. Our dining room table has become the place to unload our rolled…

Corn Success Despite Adversity

1st corn crop brings less than an ear-full but more than “needed”. We are celebrating, knowing that we can check off one more item from our Homegrown Thanksgiving Menu! Corn! This success will taste so much sweeter come Thanksgiving when you consider how much adversity we faced with our crop this year. Second time is…

Summer Squash Muffins Recipe

There’s all kinds of ways to make squash… this recipe is delicious We only have one yellow squash plant and it’s really been producing! We are so thankful! From this one plant, we’ve been able to enjoy them sauteed, grilled, and fried. We’ve had squash casserole, summer squash pickles, and summer squash relish. Not all…

Embracing the “F” Word: “Failure”

Failure can create valuable lessons on the homestead, workplace or life. This homesteading adventure that we’re on is opening up all sorts of opportunities to face the “F” word… “failure”. In life we try to avoid failure, no one likes to be labeled a “failure”. It’s a brand that’s hard to shed from the psyche.…