I wanted to evaluate my first year experience with the Back to Eden garden. I decided to break the experience into sections: preparation, planting, productivity, weeding and watering, overall experience. My rating scale is from 1-10 with 1 being unsuccessful and 10 being absolute success. The effort to reward ratio will be covered in the … Continue reading Year 1 Evaluation of Back to Eden Experience
It's been absolutely buzzing around the homestead lately, unfortunately, literally... We finally decided to get our own yellow jacket pesticides as they're beginning to take over the south side of our property, and that's just not okay. We put it off initially because of our honey bees- we were concerned they'd be innocent victims of … Continue reading Busy Busy Busy!
This year in gardening was largely experimental for us. This October marks our first full year on the homestead, and so far we have only had a spring and summer garden. We decided to forgo a fall garden simply in favor of letting our ground rest and compost before spring planting. That said, I discovered … Continue reading My Top 5 favorite Heirloom Garden Plants
I have been hang drying sage in the kitchen and it was finally time to put it away today! For anyone interested in herbalism even if it's just growing kitchen herbs, I highly recommend the book, "The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual" by herbalist, James Green. It's a very pleasant, conversational, and enjoyable read, … Continue reading Herb Preserving
The garden is still going strong. Last week I pulled out the peas for seed next spring, and they're continuing to dry inside. I let them dry on the vines, but with all the rain we were getting, I didn't want them to mold, as some were beginning to. I also pulled and dried some … Continue reading Back to Eden Garden Update #3
My family and I live in a rental home currently and doing any major planting or building is frowned upon. That said, we are contractually responsible according to our lease for the maintenance and beautification of the property. With that in mind, I set out to design and build a "reclaimable" compost bin. Ideally, I … Continue reading Building a Reclaimable Compost Bin
After a couple setbacks in my planning and preparation, I was finally ready to indoor seed my peppers today! I put a folding table down in the basement to elevate my boxes off the floor. I chose my basement near a southwestern facing window so that 1) they get some natural sunlight, and 2) I … Continue reading Sowing Day
Just a few words of wisdom coming from a place of having learned the hard way... 1) Inventory your seed storage early in January. Keep a log of the seeds you have saved and stored, the years you stored them, and approximate seed count. This will save you the heartache of thinking you have, for … Continue reading My Gardening Boo-Boos
In my last post on seeds, I mentioned I had discovered a small, new (to me) seed company called MIgardener. In doing an inventory of my stored seeds, I found a few things that I needed to buy this year so I decided to give MIgardener a try. I was surprised by how quickly the … Continue reading Recent Seed Order
I've been successfully growing things for the past 4 years. I started with basic culinary herbs like basil, parsley, dill, cilantro, sage and then added in tomatoes and this year will be the first time I plant a full garden. You can go about gardening a couple different ways. One is to buy seedlings, or … Continue reading Seeds seeds seeds
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