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. …
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 …
15 Trellis Plants For Your Wall, Pergola, And Arbor
Pergolas, arbors, and trellises look mighty boring without a plant wrapped around their nooks and crannies. But why should you bother finding trellis plants to cover your garden structure? It …
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Growing Lion’s Mane Mushrooms
Hericium erinaceus, or lion’s mane, is among the commonly cultivated mushrooms on the market. Its distinctive fuzzy texture resembles a lion’s mane or pom-pom. Not only are these mushrooms prized in …
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 …
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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 …
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Homestead Stories: Peonies
“It’s kind of like a May flower,” my friend said thoughtfully. “It’s considered the birth flower for the month of May and represents the values of honor, romance, and beauty.” “It is beautiful,” I …
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 …
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 …
How To Grow Celery
If you want a gardening challenge, try growing celery. Celery requires a long growing season, plenty of sunshine, lots of water, tender loving care, and infinite patience. A popular herb in the …
20 Types Of Succulents For Your Desktop Or Rock Garden
Generally, a succulent refers to a plant with chubby, fleshy greenery. The word on its own evokes a particular image, so if you think it’s a succulent, it probably is. The thick leaves are often plump …
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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 …
Foraging For Wild Berries
If you are looking to find berry variety beyond what your local grocery store or farmer's market offers, you can look to berry foraging to seek and find a delicious array of berry options in your …
Homestead Stories: Blood Oranges
“There’s something wrong with your oranges. Would you like me to get another bag?” The lad packing my groceries spoke with concern. “These are fine, thank you.” “But they’re all dark and …
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 …
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Growing & Harvesting Corn
Corn is one of the most ubiquitous food ingredients in the world and is unusually suited to growing in hot weather. Since much of the growing land in the U.S. gets hotter than 90 degrees Fahrenheit on …
Mushroom Hunting: A Helpful Guide For Beginners
Hunting or foraging for wild mushrooms can be a very rewarding experience, but knowing which mushrooms are edible is a key skill to have before heading out into the woods. In this guide, we'll …
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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. …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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What Is Hobby Farming?
Hobby farms are small-scale farms with the focus on following that farming passion to produce several benefits. This type of farming is not mainly about making money, but there is a potential for …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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10 Fast-Growing Vegetables
If you love to garden, but live in a region with a short growing season, you can still successfully grow vegetables outdoors in the homestead garden. Fresh scallions, chives, lettuce, spinach, basil, …
9 Flowering Trees To Consider
Flowering trees are available in a variety of sizes and shapes for almost any landscape application. Not only do deciduous flowering trees bring visual impact and beauty to your homestead, but they …
6 Ways to Preserve Summer Squash
Summer squash is an excellent garden vegetable that can produce large harvests in small spaces and a short period of time. One zucchini or crookneck plant can provide an abundance of deliciousness -- …
Foraging for Field Garlic
Winter is long. Even if you have a well-stocked root cellar brimming with canned goods and root vegetables, by the time January and February roll around, most anything that was green is long, long …
Keyhole Gardens: What Are They, The History Behind Them, And Photos
Drought. Nutrient depletion. Bending over with a bad back or dealing with mobility issues. Have you ever had to battle with any of these gardening-impeding troubles? Don't you wish there was an …
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How To Grow And Forage For Lady Fern
I am in love with lady ferns and tuck every variety into shaded crevices, niches, nooks, and crannies in my homestead rockery. Apple-green in the spring and a glorious golden-yellow in autumn, lady …
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Homestead Stories: Snowdrops, the First Flowers of Spring
Did you know there’s a flower that pokes its bud through the snow, impatient for spring? They’re called snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) and they’re one of my favorite flowers, especially since they’re a …
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13 Inventive & Simple Eggshell Uses For Your Home And Garden
Maybe it's because I'm frugal, but I hate to throw away anything that can be reused or recycled -- and that includes eggshells. No matter if you are raising chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, or turkeys, …
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Winter Foraging: 20+ Edible Greens, Nuts, Seeds, and Fruits to Forage For in Cold Weather
Foraging food and medicinal plants at temperatures below 30 degrees Fahrenheit may seem impossible, but you simply need some knowledge and know-how. Watch The Video Of course, winter …
Growing Radishes
Every garden has its challenges: Florence fennel that refuses to make a sizeable bulb, spinach that bolts immediately, corn that's full of tunneling, or kernel-wrecking worms. But every once in …
How To Grow Bamboo
Bamboo is an amazing plant! It has so many benefits to offer on so many levels. Not only does bamboo produce oxygen, which helps to clean the area where you grow your plants, but many varieties are …
Homestead Stories: Parrot Tulips
“Is something wrong with your tulips?” It was late spring, and I was admiring the colorful display of tulips in my friend’s garden. “They appear rather ruffled.” “They’re supposed to be …
Medicinal Benefits of Paper Birch
“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,But dipped its top and set me down again. That would …
No Till Gardening: To Till or Not to Till?
You may have heard a phrase that makes you wonder if you’re doing your garden bed prep correctly. No till gardening is a trendy idea right now and you may be wondering—what the heck is it? How do …
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Homestead Stories: Weird Trees
“Look at this tree!” I passed the image to my friend. It was a blustery, rainy day, and a good time to sit indoors and plan our next gardening adventure. I was looking for unusual trees to add to my …
Winter Fruits: 8 Delicious Garden Additions For The Cold Months
As the summer winds its way into fall, it's a good time to start thinking about preparing your garden for the darker, cooler days ahead. Hopefully, you've made dandelion wine, dried all your herbs, …
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10 Gorgeous Winter Flowers To Add Color To Gray Winter Days
It can be rather sad to see the blooms of summer fade. As your summer flowers die back and prepare for winter, plant some of these winter flowers to create color for otherwise dreary …
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9 Of The Best Decorative & Festive Christmas Plants
Have you started decorating your house for Christmas? Hung a holly wreath? Dangled some mistletoe over the entryway, decorated a Christmas tree, and bought your poinsettia? Or did you choose different …
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Foraging for Chaga
If you live within the circumboreal region of the Northern Hemisphere, and especially if you live near birch forests, this article could be pertinent to you. We will be talking about Chaga: What it …
Growing Pumpkins
Native to Central and South America, pumpkin is a low growing, vining groundcover plant with bell-shaped yellow flowers and shallow roots. Pumpkins are members of the plant family cucurbit …
10 Steps To Attract Birds In The Winter
Do you want to attract birds in the winter to your homestead landscape? Do you enjoy their sweet sounds and would like to have more feathered friends come to visit? Birds make the garden magically …
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Winter Squash Harvest And Storage Tips
Why do homesteaders grow pumpkins or winter squash? While the process may be challenging, the reward could be enormous. There are dozens of varieties of pumpkins and winter squash, weighing from 2 …
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Homestead Stories: Dynamite Tree
“I need at least one of these trees,” I decided. “A dynamite tree. A tree that can kill in multiple ways -- and I don’t mean by falling on a person. Though that could definitely kill as well.” “Why …
How to Find & Store Cheap Leftover Pumpkins After Halloween
I have been waiting for this day all fall. Specifically, I’ve been counting down the days until November 1. You see, now that the money-grabbing fall holiday has passed, the money-grabbing winter …
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Shutting Down the Garden for Winter Checklist
There’s a huge amount of anticipation when the first frost is close. It sometimes feels like you’re preparing for some sort of icy nighttime raid. Should you panic-pick all the remaining green …
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