Peppers started out as a tiny berry hidden on perennial bushes in the mountains of Mexico and Central America, but they’ve come a long, long way since they were domesticated 6,000 years ago. Ever since people around the world got a taste of these spicy, sweet, colorful fruits, we don’t seem to be able to
How to Feed a Family With a Cup of Meat or Less
Over the last couple of years, modern discussions about meat consumption have reached a strange, sensitive place. Some unequivocally state that all our global problems would be solved if we stopped eating meat and switched to alternative protein sources. Others staunchly defend their right to eat as much meat as they want, while still others
Making American Elderberry Syrup
Summer is waning, which means if you’re in elderberry territory — and most of us are — there are literal buckets on buckets of fruit available to anyone who doesn’t mind having purple fingers. If you read my last article on foraging for American elder, you should be a pro at finding and identifying this
The Difference Between Hay and Straw
I have an awkward confession to make. I’m watching “The Office” for the first time (belatedly), and getting up to speed with all the jokes my friends made back in 2007. While I have enjoyed the show (all the while giving thanks that I don’t work in an office anymore), I couldn’t let this scene
Foraging for American Elderberries: Identification and Harvest
I truly enjoy foraging in my neck of the Ozarks. As I venture out to collect the abundant wild spinach, pokeweed, and mulberries, my neighbors seem to think I’m mysteriously gifted with esoteric forest knowledge (which, of course, isn’t true), or just quaint and a little weird (which is actually pretty true). But for all
A Toast to the Realistic Garden
You’ve seen all the social media and glossy-paper magazine gardens. They’re lush. They’re perfectly weeded. Their plants are in proportioned rows without a single hole in any leaf, and they fill baskets of picturesque produce without a hitch. In short, they are photogenic perfection with huge amounts of repost-ability and very low amounts of achievability.
Vegetables You Can Still Plant in June
Spring is known as the season for “getting the garden in” but perhaps, for whatever reason, you haven’t yet put seeds in the soil. Now that spring has nearly run its course, and the long, hot days of summer are coming over the horizon, are hopes for growing your own food dashed? Not remotely. Though
Half-Forgotten European Food Plants to Consider
The Columbian Exchange was an incredible time across the globe, when among other things, crops of the so-called “New” and “Old” worlds were traded for the first time (or the first time in a long time, depending on what resources you read). Because of new trade routes established across the Atlantic, what we consider the
Native American Food Plants to Consider
When you imagine a “garden,” what comes to mind? Ripe, red tomatoes? Golden stands of jewel-like corn? Green beans, squash, potatoes, and peppers? These typical food plants all originated in the amazing gardens of ancient Native American gardeners. Much has been written about the mysteries of how teosinte was domesticated into impossible-to-self-propagate modern corn, or
Off-Grid Utility Options: How to Handle Electricity, Fresh Water, Sewage & Garbage
Now that we’ve covered how to find your land, build your home, and keep things warm or cold in the previous article, let’s get into the nitty gritty of off-grid living and talk about how to get the electricity and water flowing, and the toilets … er, toileting. The whole point of going off-grid is
Off-Grid Lifestyle Considerations: From Housing to Location to Social Life
As I type this, my husband Jaeger and I are finally and entirely off-grid. Woo hoo! It started with getting our home’s heat off-grid, then our water, then our toilets, and eventually, hand-building our off-grid home. Now, with the installation of some solar panels, we can run the computer we use for articles on solar
Seed Germination Techniques: Soaking, Scarifying, Stratifying, and Smoking
If you’re accustomed to planting simple annual seeds where all you need to do is open a packet, put seeds in dirt, and then wait for them to sprout, the process of more difficult seed germination seems bizarre in comparison. For years, I avoided certain plants because their germination requirements were to my (at the
How to Save Bean Seeds
Beans are an incredibly exciting plant to grow. This may come as a surprise to folks whose experience with the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is limited to the limp, gray-green cylinders that glorp out of a can and boil to depressingly mushy. If that’s the only way you know beans, I am delighted to introduce
A Guide for Discernment With AI-Generated Homesteading Content
Winter is nearly over, and I’ve been flexing my irrepressible hope and getting seeds started indoors. While watching my little starting pots with great anticipation, I did a quick internet search to find out the average time it takes for onions seeds to germinate. The first website that showed up featured an article with repetitive
6 Reasons You Should Have Flowers in Your Vegetable Garden
With self-sufficiency as the someday goal, my first gardening days were purely practical. I browsed through seed catalogs with an iron will, bypassing the flower sections with a steely gaze — and a resolved set to my jaw. I was convinced I didn’t need that flouncy, frivolous, floral frippery in my veggie patch. I was
How to Save Brassica oleracea Seeds
Originally titled “How to Save Brassica oleracea Seeds (Cabbage, Kale, Collards, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kohlrabi, Brussels Sprouts, Gai Lan).” I know it’s a mouthful, so you can see why the title was shortened, but I feel it would be repetitive to write an article on how to save seeds from every one of those vegetables independently.
What Is Landrace Gardening?
“No. No, no, NO! ARGHHH!” This is typically not the sound you want to hear coming from the squash patch. But I had reached my wit’s end and was throwing a (teeny tiny) hissy fit over my plants (maybe). With a desire for food security and self-sufficiency, I had planted about 30 Hubbard squash plants
How to Save Tomato Seeds
If you are a gardener, chances are you’ve grown tomatoes. There are few plants more adored and widely grown across the gardener landscape from carefully watered patio pots, to the sprawling volunteer emerging from the compost pile, to the ruby-studded plants staked out in the back 40. But I would guess that while the percentage
What Is Homesteading?
The story I’m about to tell happened more than three years ago, so I feel comfortable finally airing it out, knowing that the places and persons involved have forgotten this conversation and completely moved on. It all started when I submitted a bio for an article (to a publication I’ll not name, as I don’t
How to Save Eggplant Seeds
Eggplants are one of my favorite fruits. I feel conflicted admitting that, however, as they’re one of the more challenging plants to grow on my dry Ozark hill. Since I don’t spray plants with chemicals or grow hybrids, any plant grown in my garden is devoured by flea beetles before it reaches maturity. My best
Why Save Seeds?
As we dip into the cold stillness of winter, the garden lays silent and still under its mulch blanket. The trees are bare, the birds quiet, and anything green and growing seems like a distant memory. But for the avid gardener, this is the season of dreaming and planning. Seed catalogs will be arriving in
10 Bizarre Tomatoes You Can Grow
Tomatoes have come a long way through their agricultural history. From their domestication by the Aztecs to their first transatlantic adventure to Spain; from their bizarre stint as a deadly poison in Great Britain and early America to their present state of eminence in every seed catalogue and garden, human relationships with tomatoes have gone
Debunking Compost Misconceptions
For some, composting is a stinky mess that half-reformed hippies insist on building in “decent” neighborhoods. For others, it’s a mysterious, alchemical process that master gardeners alone comprehend. Still others may think composting is a grand idea but are intimidated by the initial setup and assumed learning curve. And finally, some can admit composting is
How to Fix Stinky Compost
When I was fresh out of college, I worked as a guide at a wilderness retreat center. We hosted weekend retreat groups, encouraged participants to compost food waste in our big compost bins, and provided a pamphlet to help them do it correctly when one of the staff wasn’t present. One hot fall afternoon, I
Underground Greenhouse: Uses and Benefits
As long as gardeners have existed, they’ve sought to extend their growing seasons beyond the limits of winter’s shutdown. Gardening history is dotted with an arsenal of methods created to rebuff frost and snow, such as cold frames, greenhouses, row covers, carefully-placed compost piles, and cloches. A relatively recent entry in the fight to defy
Enjoying Garlic Scapes
There are some obvious benefits from having a garden — freshly grown food, meaningful, rewarding work, and a relationship with your land that you can feel good about. Then there are some benefits that aren’t as obvious, such as getting “bonus” foods that you’ll rarely, if ever, find in a grocery store. These are fleeting
Caring for the Off-Season Woodstove
During the summer months, it probably seems strange to be discussing something as out of season as woodstoves. The days of freezing, blizzard-whipped nights and bone-shakingly cold mornings seem a lifetime ago when you’re sweating over your tomato beds. This time of year, however, is an absolutely perfect time to clean and care for your
Accepting the Mess of Woodstove Season
There’s nothing cozier than curling up beside a crackling fire, the orange glow warming both body and spirit. We must have some sort of innate programming wired in our minds that draws us to fire, and it stands to reason why we brought fire into our homes as soon as we could figure out a
Foraging for Wild Spinach
“Eat more healthy! Eat organic leafy greens!” The bleached-smile exhortations of the nutritional elite ring out from websites and health shows. So we trundle over to the grocery store and are greeted by the sight of an $8 bundle of organic spinach that would barely feed a rabbit — much less a whole family. Then
Foraging for Mulberries
The first time I met a mulberry, it was a confusing introduction. At the time, I considered my general plant knowledge to be better than average, but somehow, this unfamiliar tree didn’t make sense. It was a beautifully shaped, open grown tree with scalloped alternate leaves that I couldn’t identify offhand (because mulberry trees come
Foraging for Wild Mint
There are some flavorings that don’t seem to bear any resemblance to their natural counterparts. Artificial cherry sodas resemble cough syrup more than a juicy, tree-ripened fruit, freakishly purple grape drinks hardly bring to mind anything that ever came from nature, and don’t get me started on banana-flavored candy. I have a special loathing for
8 Beautiful, Drought Tolerant Plants For Dry Landscapes
You’ve heard the rain. All that free water falling from the sky, keeping the hills and valleys green. But if you live in a drought-prone area that cooling summer rain may seem more like a fever dream than reality, and all the lush, beautiful vegetation associated with rain — as far away as the clouds that
10 Summer Flowers to Make Your Garden Pop With Color
Summer is a time of bold barbecue flavors, bright sunlight, vivid green on the fully-leafed trees, and hot temperatures. The garden would be remiss if it didn’t have colorful flowers to match the intensity of the season! Move aside, you pale pastel spring flowers, these eye-zinging blossoms are here to fill the garden beds with
Using Human Urine As Fertilizer
Fertilizer comes in many forms, depending on your gardening outlook. If you’re super conventional, it comes in a nasty smelling, chemically-derived, pellet-filled plastic bag emblazoned with the 3-figure NPK ratio of your choosing. What’s it made of? Where did it come from? How was it made? What does it do the soil in the long
3 Mental Self-Sufficiency Skills to Practice
Homesteaders have a lot to consider and accomplish when physical and mental self-sufficiency is the goal. We store up pantries full of homegrown food and rest in homes heated by wood we split ourselves. We spend a lot of time researching natural remedies for chicken diseases or drought-tolerant varieties of squash. We talk endlessly of
Why You Should Start Using A Clothesline
When I think of using a clothesline, I think of a conversation I had when I still lived in the city. While hanging my laundry, my neighbor’s little boy poked his head through the fence. ”Whatchoo doing?” “Hanging up my laundry.” “Ain’t you got a dryer?” “We got rid of it. The sun and the
Growing Parsnips
I find it oddly infuriating when plants are described as old-fashioned — as if a living, growing thing occupies the same category as powder blue tuxedos, platform shoes, or rotary telephones. You’ll often find parsnips described with this unsuitable adjective, but that’s merely because they’re a root vegetable that’s been around and depended on for
How To Capture And Use Wild Yeast
I have a secret weapon in my kitchen. It makes my daily bread taste amazing (and far more digestible than anything store-bought). As long as I take care of the starter, this weapon is an endless material. And the best part of all? It’s free for the taking. I’m talking about wild yeast — a
What is Seasonal Eating?
Have you noticed the idea of seasonal eating “cropping up” in lifestyle magazines and organic-themed publications? I find myself viewing the trend with the same strange feeling as when I read modern articles about off-grid living, or pasturing livestock. Though these concepts are presented as new, they honestly couldn’t be more ancient. As mislabeled as
Soil Temperature: What It Is And Why It Matters
On any given day, normal people are concerned with the temperature of the air. If you have to walk a few blocks to the subway, or you want to plan a barbecue, the ambient air temperature can affect whether you go out in a t-shirt or hunker down inside. But us gardening folk are a
Getting Started With Off-Grid Water System For A More Self-Reliant Homestead
In my experience, it seems that discussions about off-grid water systems only take place in niche communities of homesteaders or preppers. If you were to bring it up in “normal” workplace conversation, I guarantee you’d get at least one set of raised “what a weirdo” eyebrows. But considering just how crucial water is to life
How To Deal With Egg-Eating Chickens
Is there any image more quintessentially “homestead” than a coop surrounded by clucking chickens? Being able to walk to the coop, basket in hand, and return with tomorrow’s breakfast, is a true homesteader’s delight. But what happens when you go to the coop and find the nesting boxes unexpectedly empty for days on end? Your
Foraging for Edible Flowers
Not all foraging has to be sustenance seeking. Sometimes, it’s just nice to sample the “trailside nibbles” mentioned in foraging literature, and none are more pleasant to pick than edible flowers. They’re a nice bit of flavor that can freshen your mouth after a long hike, and offer some guileless, fun foraging. Their contribution to
How To Make the Most of Garden Failure
“Oh, fiddlesticks! Another dratted hornworm has eaten a plant. How exceedingly grumpy I am.” You’d correctly guess these were not my exact words as I plucked the corpulent caterpillar from the stick formerly known as a lush jalepeño pepper, but they’re close enough for this article. I felt an understandable wave of schadenfreude as I
Stop Spraying Your Dandelions: 3 Simple Methods For Making Dandelion Tea
I find it a weird mix of sad and amusing that our current culture spends so much time killing dandelions. These nonnative lettuce relatives were brought to the United States from Europe for their very useful purposes as food and medicine. In a great stroke of what now seems irony, the grass was torn out
10 Heirloom Seeds and Their Strange Histories
Heirloom seeds offer much to the backyard and homestead gardener. They reproduce true-to-type, affording you seed self-sufficiency if you grow and save them from year to year. But for those who love a good story or who really enjoy delving into history, these seeds also offer something for the intellect and curiosity, as well as
What Size Is Best For A Vegetable Garden?
So you’ve taken a long, hard look at the sunny space in the back yard, and you’ve decided it’s time to grow more than useless grass. Maybe you’ve just moved to a new property that is full of potential and devoid of a garden, and your green thumb’s itching something fierce. Or, perhaps, you are
Vertical Herb Garden: What Is It, DIY Plans, And Photos
What can you possibly do for your ailing green thumb when all that is allotted to you is a patio, a balcony, or a postage stamp of an urban backyard with little room to roam? Don’t grow out…grow UP! With a vertical herb and vegetable garden, you can make a mountain of your molehill and
12 Garden Tools to Start Spring Right
Can you feel it? That shift in the wind? The faint whiff of waking soil resounding with the chorus of sprightly spring peepers in the forest? Winter’s losing its grip, and for those of us with gardens and itchy green thumbs, the final thaw can’t come soon enough. It’s time to bust out the tools
8 Ways to Practice Homesteading While Living in a City
The (most recent) Back-to-the-Land Movement may have peaked in the 60s and 70s, but that doesn’t mean people haven’t had the desire for a more land-based way of life every decade before and since. Many armchair homesteaders find themselves tirelessly reading through the Storey’s Guides to Livestock at their local library, browsing websites like Insteading
