One of the most important aspects of higher level preparedness is to be successful at gardening / growing your own food. Why? Because self-sufficiency is more important the higher you go with preparedness. Improving self-sufficiency is a cornerstone in my opinion. And putting food on the table is huge. We are all at our own…

First of all, why would one build a raised garden bed at all? The most likely answer is for the sake of bending over and your back. Other reasons include the comparative ease to amend and control the garden soil, and the potential to construct / attach a sort of green house cover in order…

This year I’m going to try another way to grow potatoes. I’m going to plant my seed potatoes in a barrel. Several barrels. The past few years I’ve grown them the traditional way, in garden rows. For a homesteader, growing potatoes that way is a bit tedious to say the least. Why? Because you have…

Guest Article by Lauren: Seed saving is not difficult. The hardest part of seed saving is knowing when and how the particular crop produces seeds. Some seed in the spring, some in the fall, some the 2nd year. Some have seed pods, some have fruit. If seeds come from inside the edible fruit (like tomatoes,…

Depending on the growing time to maturity (time to harvest) for a given vegetable you might consider a two week staggered planting delay instead of starting everything all at once. Why might this be a good idea? One of our readers recently said this:

Ideas for do-it-yourself raised garden bed planters while dealing with cold weather climates and a shorter growing season. Some of us live in northern regions and climates where the growing season is shorter and cold weather from winter takes its time releasing its stubborn grip on the land. This can create a challenge, especially when…

image: FarmersAlmanac   When is it safe to plant garden vegetables? Is it simply after the last frost date for your area? And if that’s correct, then how do you find out when is that last Spring frost date? Can you plant some vegetable crops before the last frost date?

Lets talk garden. It’s the time of year again when many of us are planning or even planting our vegetable gardens. The question for today is: Which vegetables are you going to grow more of this year, and why?

As I sit here on the back porch enjoying the fine weather at a friend’s home here in California during our cross-country road trip, I can’t help but notice the fruit producing trees all around the yard – especially the orange trees which are currently loaded with beautiful oranges! While not all climates are conducive…

LED grow lights are made up of light-emitting diodes, and are advantageous over other methods of plant lights because they consume much less electricity and the typical LED has a life span of 50,000 hours (if on a 12 hour timer, 11 years). If you use an alternative energy source in your home (e.g. solar…