How Does Your Garden Grow?

Homesteading and gardening are great for the planet, the budget and the spirit. From DIY formulas for pest control to information about how to grow kohlrabi (What’s that?), you’ll find something useful below.

20 Perennial Vegetables to Plant Once and Enjoy Forever!

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Perennial vegetables—crops that you plant just once and harvest year after year—are relatively rare in North American gardens. With the exception of asparagus, rhubarb and artichokes, most gardeners are probably unaware of the tasty, extremely low-maintenance bounty that can be harvested when many annual crops aren’t available.

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Online Tools for Planning the Perfect Vegetable Garden

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Maybe you are an experienced gardener, and you have a neat binder full of garden plans and notes where you’ve carefully recorded your crop rotations, varieties and successes over the years. Or maybe you are starting a new garden in a new place, and want an easy way to plan and track your plantings. Or, [...]

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The Difference Between Hybrid Seeds and GMOs

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It is common for people who support or defend genetically modified foods (GMOs) to argue something along the lines of, “What’s the big deal? Humans have been genetically modifying plants for thousands of years.” Unfortunately, this claim can only be made by someone who either doesn’t understand seed breeding, or who is outright trying to [...]

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How to Keep Monsanto Out of Your Garden

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It’s that exciting, hopeful time of year again: All the seed catalogs have arrived and it’s time to plan your garden and buy seeds. 

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Simple Pickled Beets (And How to Grow Them)

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There is something about the New Year that has me in the mood for pickled beets. Now that they are in season, here is an easy, delicious recipe for them.

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How Much Land Do You Really Need to Be Self Sufficient?

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Most Americans think that miles of machine-planted row crops and crowded feedlots are required to feed everyone—that without large-scale, industrial agriculture, with its chemical inputs and GMOs, we would all starve to death. Even people who know that organic agriculture is just as productive as industrial agriculture often think you need to have acres of [...]

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Arugula is Not for Snobs (With 2 Recipes!)

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The cool weather greens are just starting to come ready for harvest here, and this week both my garden and my CSA box have plenty of arugula with which to make salads and other delights. 

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You Can Fix All the World’s Problems in a Garden

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This extremely inspiring, 5-minute video demonstrates how Permaculture gardening practices can be used to desalinate soils just a mile away from the Dead Sea in the Jordanian desert—restoring the very desert to life and food productivity without the use of chemical fertilizers, heavy irrigation or tilling. If we can heal the land and bring life [...]

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Fresh Figs on a Hot Summer Night

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Figs are coming into season here in Southern California, and trees all over the neighborhood are absolutely loaded with them. Here are two fresh fig recipes to help you enjoy the bounty of these special fruits.

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How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies Naturally

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If you have been seeing small flies or gnats in your kitchen, they’re probably fruit flies. In the high heat of summer, with a bounty of fresh summer produce in your kitchen, fruit flies can quickly become pesky invaders because they are attracted to ripened or fermenting fruits and vegetables. Here’s how to get rid [...]

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100 Things You Can (and Should) Compost

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For your soil, there is no better ingredient than compost, whether you till it into your garden beds or use it as mulch around shrubs and trees, it is considered essential to organic and sustainable food production.

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