Homestead gardening is an art that everybody can learn.
Yes, it’s that easy but all you need is a little patience.
I started my homestead garden a few years back and now I feel like a pro.
As a happy homestead gardener, I felt like sharing my own experiences with you all.
And so, here I begin with some useful gardening tips to help you succeed.
How Big Should A Homestead Garden Be?
A reasonably sized homestead garden should be at least 10 feet by 20 feet in size.
It’s the ideal size to fulfill the yearly needs of two people. But, if your family has four members, you just need to double the size.
Accordingly, depending on the size of your family, you can increase or decrease the garden size. But, that being said, there’s no standard size that you need to maintain.
You can even start your homestead garden by finding a small corner of your homestead.
Can You Be Self-Sufficient On 1 Acre?
I think 1 acre of land is perfect for making you self-sufficient.
But, the size of your homestead garden will ultimately depend on what you want to grow.
If you are planning to grow a huge variety of veggies and livestock as well, 1 acre won’t be sufficient.
What Is A Micro Homestead?
A micro homestead refers to a firm with a size of a maximum of 5 acres of land.
It can be less than 5 acres also but more than 5 acres of a firm isn’t definitely a micro homestead. So, a micro homestead is simply a compact and small firm around your house.
The subjective meaning of micro homestead may vary. Some micro homesteaders like me love to grow veggies and raise livestock in their homestead.
Others are keener on maintaining the aesthetic appeal of their homestead by growing flowers and decorative plants.
Homestead Gardening 101 (getting started)
Planning
It’s the first step that you can never go wrong with if you want a well-executed garden. First, you need to gauge the garden space that you can use. Then, you can divide it into separate sections depending on which plants you want to grow.
Soil
The soil of your garden will determine which plants you can grow in it. For example, some veggies like blueberries grow the best in sandy soil but not all veggies need the same. And still, if you wish to grow some specific vegetables, you can add compost to the soil to make it fertile.
Climate
Climate is the determiner of plants that you can grow in the homestead garden. Choosing the wrong veggies can make your gardening experience worse. So, make sure you know your climate and choose the plants wisely.
Sun
Some plants thrive in sunny spots whereas others need a shady spot to grow well. For example, if you’re planting tomatoes, basil and chilies, you need to expose them to light the most. The same goes with beetroot or kale which needs full shade.
Land
You need to prepare your land to make your homestead gardening successful. To do it, you may need to even the uneven parts of your land first. Then, you need to get rid of weeds and dirt from the land through raking.
Rainfall
As we all know, rainfall plays a significant role in gardening. Excess rain can affect the soil whereas no rainfall can also make the soil too dry. So, the general rule is to water your plants according to the rainfall.
Gardening Tips for Spring
If you’re ready to grow your garden in spring, here are some useful tips to follow.
Spring Cleaning
To begin with, you need to clean up your garden to get rid of weeds and dirt.
Check the Soil
The next thing that you can do is test the soil quality to ensure fertility.
Add Compost
If your garden soil needs some nutrition, adding some compost is a good idea.
Choose the Plants
Some suitable plants for spring are cucumbers, tomatoes, and broccoli among others.
Start Indoors
You can start sowing the seeds indoors or in a greenhouse and then transplant them.
Check the Forecast
To save your garden from the upcoming frost, checking the forecast is important.
What Should I Grow In My Homestead Garden?
Veggies like tomatoes, peas, carrots, onions, and cabbage are the common ones that most homesteaders grow.
I additionally have grown broccoli, peanuts, corn, and avocados in my homestead garden.
You can grow these common veggies or anything that grows the best in your garden bed.
What Vegetables Grow Well In Homestead?
As mentioned above, plants such as spinach, kale, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and carrots grow really well on a homestead.
These are survivalist plants that need minimum maintenance and can grow in most soils.
But, depending on the soil and temperature, the list may slightly vary.
What Month Should You Plant A Vegetable Garden?
Spring is the best season to plan most veggies in a homestead.
The harvest time of these veggies starts in summer. But, there are definitely some exceptions like broad beans, which need to be planted in late winter.
What’s The Easiest Vegetable To Grow?
Lettuce, carrots, and kale are the plants that are the easiest to grow.
Apart from them, I find spinach, tomatoes, and onions also quite easy to grow in my garden. These plants are quite resistant to harsh weather, which makes the sustain well.
What’s The Fastest Growing Vegetable?
Radish is a vegetable that grows magically within only three-four weeks.
You can actually harvest ripened radishes within just one month of planting them. And they are really easy to grow as well.
What Vegetable Grows All Year Round?
Plants from the brassica family such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflowers, and cabbages grow all year round.
You can harvest these veggies even in winter when the most vegetable plant will reduce producing crops. Kale and spinach also grow all season.
What Month Should You Plant A Fruit Garden?
The best time to plant a fruit garden is either early spring or late winter.
But, you need to put a little effort into protecting the plants from frost and harsh weather.
If you’re growing from seeds, I’ll suggest sowing them indoors or in a greenhouse and then transplanting them outdoors.
What’s The Easiest Fruit To Grow?
The easiest fruit to grow would be blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.
If you’re planting from seeds, they germinate really well. Also, these plants need usual maintenance and full sun to grow healthily.
What’s The Fastest Growing Fruit?
Blueberry is a fruit that grows exceptionally faster than other fruits.
But, you need to make sure that the plant gets enough sunlight. Also, acidic soil is the best to grow blueberry plants.
What Fruit Grows All Year Round?
Bananas, apples, and lemons are fruits that grow all year round.
These plants are also very easy to grow in your homestead garden. And the best part is that apart from apples, bananas and lemons need very little growing space.
Maintaining Your Garden
You need to take proper care of your garden to ensure the healthy growth of the plants.
Maintenance plays a significant part in homestead gardening that you can’t skip. Here are some methods of taking proper care of your garden.
Mulch
To make your soil healthy, mulching is essential.
The additional benefit of mulching is a proper balance of soil moisture. You can make organic mulch from dead plant materials or buy them as well.
Herbicides
To control weeds in your garden, you need to use herbicides.
Before planting the seedlings, you can apply herbicides to the garden soil. Some common examples of herbicides are diquat, diclofop, paraquat, etc.
Weeding
Weeding is a process of gardening that refers to killing weeds from the soil.
Weeds are undesired plants that can affect plants by feeding on their nutrition. If your garden has weeds that you want to clean, you can use mulch.
Plant Diseases
Environment, bacteria, harmful insects, and other causes can lead to plant diseases.
Some common plant diseases are leaf spots, black spots, downy meadows, cankers, blight, etc. Once you spot these conditions, you need to remove the diseased part of the plant to save it.
Pests
Pests are harmful insects that can harm your plant growth and can even cause their decay.
For this reason, you need to be very careful and use pesticides when spotted. Some common garden pests are beetles, mites, snails, slugs, termites, etc.
Pruning
Pruning is a process of chopping off the specific parts of the plants that curb their growth.
For pruning, you need a gardening knife but you need to know which part to remove. Through pruning, it’s possible to boost the growth of tomatoes, cucumbers, and flowering shrubs.
Watering
Plants can’t take part in photosynthesis without water and gain energy to survive.
That’s why you need to water your plants on a regular basis. But, since different plants need different amounts of water, it’s important to know the right amount.
7 Tips For Harvesting Your Garden
Here are 7 useful tips that’ll help you to harvest fresh, ripen crops every time:
- Every vegetable has a different growing time that you need to know before harvesting.
- It’s not required to wait until the veggies grow too big as the production won’t be good.
- Always make sure that you have the right tools and that you’re gentle while picking veggies.
- To avoid bruising, you can use a large-sized basket when collecting vegetables.
- If you have a large garden, make sure you keep track of the harvest time of each crop.
- When harvesting fruits, you need to wait until they hang and ripen fully
- It’s important to check the growth of your plants on a regular basis.
Preparing For Next Year’s Garden
You can check the Gardening Tips for Spring section for essential planting tips. Here are a few more tips that’ll help you to prepare your garden soil for the next year.
Saving seeds
Saving and storing the seeds will help you to grow the same quality plants in the next year.
Evaluating The Seeds
Before planting your saved seeds in the next year, it’s essential to evaluate their quality.
Gardening Results
Gardening can lead to a lack of nutrients in the soil, which you need to cure with compost.
Clearing The Garden
Once harvest is over, you need to clear the soil carefully and remove undesired plants.
Rotating Crops
You can rotate your crops to enrich the garden soil with different nutrients.
7 Common Mistakes In Gardening
As per my experience, here are 7 common gardening mistakes that you need to avoid.
- While choosing the gardening location, make sure that it’s near the water source. If the water source is far, it’s going to be really difficult for you to water your plants.
- The second mistake that people do is choosing an inconvenient location for gardening. You need to avoid the same by selecting a space that’s easy to access.
- If you sow seeds too close, it’ll be very difficult when the plants grow. If you don’t want to curb the growth of your plants, always measure the space before planning.
- Some homesteaders miserably fail for not prepare the soil before planting. It’s a huge mistake as you can’t do much once you’ve already sown the seeds.
- There’s no point in planting veggies or fruits that you’re allergic to or you don’t like. Instead, you can plant the ones that you’d like to enjoy the most.
- Choosing a plant that doesn’t grow in your climate can ruin your effort. So, knowing which cultivars grow the best in your climate is really important.
- Not having proper gardening tools can lead to poor cultivation. For this reason, you need to make sure that you arrange all the equipment before planting.
What Is The Secret To Gardening?
Proper planning is the secret to gardening in my opinion.
I’ve started with basic planning which has worked really well for my garden. The way you chalk out and divide your garden space matters a lot if you want healthy plants to thrive.
The secret to gardening also depends on how you follow my gardening tips for Spring. Once you follow all of them with attention, a perfect garden isn’t far behind for sure!
Conclusion
Now that you know everything about homestead gardening, what are you waiting for?
I hope all the above tips will help you ace your gardening skills.
Wish you all the best for your gorgeous homestead garden!
Below is a Pinterest friendly photo…. so you can pin it to your Homestead Lifestyle Board!!
