Our adventures in micro-homesteading
Homesteading Phase 1: Establish a garden.
I didn't touch on gardens at all during the financial preparation section, because I think that not only does gardening require a chapter all of its own (if not multiple), having a garden is living situation dependent and is a lifestyle choice. In almost any situation you can have a couple container plants of peppers or spinach going, but they won't supply you with meaningful calorie intake. A meaningful garden can provide you with meaningful calories and nutrition, but gardening takes a significant initial investment of money, time, and effort. Busting up virgin soil and the initial tool investment is not trivial, at least not if you are doing a garden that has any chance of sustaining you and your family.
Managing a garden of size is a team effort. Whenever you have a spouse, you must work as a team. You plan as a team. You must both agree to a budget for the investment, and who is in charge of certain chores if they are to be divided. Be sure your spouse in on the same page, and you have the same goals. I admit, Cyndy was less than enthusiastic about a large garden, but she understood why. She is now on board with it.
The first thing to do before you ever think of putting plow to soil is proper preparation. Start with research. Research will be a common theme that I have employed constantly. Since we live in the information age, there is no reason why we should jump into something completely blind.
Perform a site survey of your property. This doesn't have to be professional, but build yourself even a crude topographical map. Look at where any trees or buildings are that would shade your garden. This may be impossible to avoid such as at our farm, but try to minimize the shade. Check the soil, and have it tested to see what it needs. Look at drainage. Consider over-spray if you are adjacent to industrial farm land. Consider how flat the area is. Take if from me, it is hard working a garden on a hill, but proper drainage is also important to avoid your garden becoming a swamp. How close are you to the house? What about irrigation water supply? Can you get your garden equipment in and out easily? Once you settle on the best area available, then consider growth. How will your homestead grow. How will you expand your garden? Are you planting fruit trees or strawberry patches or perhaps raspberries and strawberries (raspberries and strawberries are great, and produce the next year)? What about grape vines? Are you considering livestock? Do you need pasture area?
I sketched an over-head view of our property and actually drew out where I was planning on putting everything. Keep in mind that this plan is likely to change. You may get to know your property better, perhaps the tree line will change. Who knows. Don't be afraid to change things, but just keep in mind that once you plant trees, establish gardens, put in berry patches, build permanent buildings, etc., they don't move easily. If you are still confident in your garden location, then continue in the next phase of your research.
Money. Yup, you need money here too. You need to invest in tools, seed, soil testing and correction. You can get away with starting small or with used equipment, but my advise is to limit your garden to the tools you have available.
Example: We started out with nothing but our hands and a garden hoe. We borrowed my father-in-law's tiller to put the garden in. We only had the tiller out once in the spring, as it wasn't easy to just bring it over. Our garden was small, but we grew something. We had no weeding tools, no planting tools, and no money to buy any at that time.
You need to sit down with your spouse and decide how much you are able to invest in your gardening. Lets make a quick list of items you will need for successful gardening in a larger garden. Lets start with the bare necessity to get seeds in the ground.
Quick note: I am discussing “conventional” gardening practices, and assuming you are breaking up virgin soil and are not retired and/or want to spend every spare moment of an entire summer doing things by hand. There are other ways, such as double digging, hand weeding, etc., but if you are talking over a couple hundred square feet of garden bed, those hand methods become a daunting (however possible) task. Don't be afraid to pick up tools used, especially hand tools. They tend to sell for a buck or two at yard sales compared to $10 to $30 new. Keep an eye out for used tillers in the fall/winter.
Items of necessity:
Rotary tiller.
This is the biggest investment you will need to make. You can use a hand model or a larger unit you pull behind your lawn tractor. I recommend a reverse tine rotation model as the forward models tend to run up above the soil and compact the soil instead of dig down in it.
If you can, I would actually skip the tiller and go with a ground engaging garden tractor and proper attachments for your soil. Rotary tilling is hard on the soil, and gives you problems down the road, such as creating even harder soil from pulverization. We are currently using a heavily modified John Deere 316 with 3 point and Ag Bar tires, pulling mostly home build implements. Be ready to spend thousands on setting up with the garden tractor, though. Some can afford this, some cannot. To save a lot of money, and arguably get a better machine, look into the older John Deere garden tractors, such as the 317, 316, 318, 322, 420, 430 and the like. At current time, it takes a brand new John Deere 700 series to do the same as the older mini-tractors, and the new 700 series start at $10,000! Also, there are the old Wheel Horse, IH Cub Cadet and a few others. Some of these old garden tractors are bought/sold more as collectors than equipment, and the John Deere models tend to hold their value especially well. Notice I say ground engaging garden tractor, NOT a riding lawn mower. Big difference. Check the owners manual for what you plan on using or buying to see if it is meant to work the soil. I would advise looking for something with hydraulics if possible, as hydraulics make attachments easier and more productive. I can tell you from experience, the old John Deere garden tractors are truly mini tractors. They are made to work.
If a cheap, used rotary tiller is all you can afford, I would advise adding composted manure (horse manure is great for this) yearly. Make sure you compost your manure before adding it to the soil. The added manure will help negate the pulverizing effect the rotary tiller has on the soil. You should be able to get horse manure from someone local with horses for the cost of going and loading your trailer.
Long handled garden hoe.
Long handled weeding tool.
Wheel barrow or some sort of garden cart.
Enough hose to reach every corner of your garden.
Hand watering wand (the low pressure high volume variety that simulates rain).
Sighting string
Hand weeding tool.
Hand shovel.
Large straw hat.
Work gloves.
Multiply hand tools by the number of workers for the garden.
Items that will make gardening much more productive and less time consuming:
Single or double wheel hoe and appropriate weeding attachments.
Seeder or seeding attachment for wheel hoe.
Automated irrigation (grass sprinklers will do, but I like drip irrigation or soaker hoses as appripriate).
More hose and Y valves for them. On this note, bigger diameter hose.
Trellis materials. Cattle panels are a bit expensive, but will last decades.
Garden tractor (ground engaging grade) and appropriate attachments. If you have this, skip the tiller. Rotary tilling is hard on the soil.
Kids that are excited to help Mommy and Daddy!
There are perhaps other items or systems that you may need to consider that are specific to your area. Talk to other gardeners, particularly try to find people that have a large garden for private use. If you have certain pest problems, there may be locally adapted procedures in place for dealing with them, or certain seed varieties to avoid or seek out. Hit up the local gardening online chat rooms and see what others are having issues with. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to a garden.
I am not going to name prices on any of those items here. Prices fluctuate from year to year, region to region, and what time of year you buy. You can buy clearance gardening stuff in late summer and fall and yard sales are good source as well. You can find a tiller used. You can choose to buy it all new. This is something to talk with your spouse about and decide if you have more time to hunt it down or money to invest.
Which garden method are you going to use? Yup, you need to research this too. What are your priorities with gardening? Are you striving for a 100% organic approach? Are you planning on using hybrid seeds and weed killer like industrial farms? For us, one of the reasons we wanted a large garden was to provide high quality organic produce for our family. Are you going to save seeds? Are you going to use hybrid seeds for maximum yield and pest/disease resistance (but you are dependent on buying seeds every year). Again, lots of decisions that are up to you.
I suggest you at start out with a large variety of heirloom variety seeds. See what you like, what works, what didn't. It can take gardeners years to pick out the perfect varieties. Move ½ mile and the soil changes and what worked before doesn't work well now. Just remember that if you can create your own hybrids un-intentionally by having many varieties of compatible plants. Seed saving is not something I have yet reliably perfected for all varieties (such as carrots, cabbage, broccoli, onions), so I suggest you seek other literature on the subject. One thing I will advise is that during your beginning years when you plant multiple varieties of the same veggie, if you save seeds you will have hybrids. Don't bother saving seeds until you are settled on the varieties you want to grow long term.
I also highly suggest the false bed technique. This is a weed prevention technique that dramatically reduces the amount of work you put into keeping the weeds down. Most people till the garden, and plant in one weekend. This is a mistake for the organic gardener. If you want to raise a small garden as a hobby, sure it works. If you are wanting to spend as little time as possible on a large sustenance garden, I would advise the false bed technique. More information can be had online, but I will outline how the system works.
You till/plow (From here on it, I will likely use tilling/plowing interchangeably. Use whatever means of soil prep you have available) the soil in the spring, as soon as it can be worked. You are mixing in all the leaves, mulch, fertilizer, etc that was added during winter plus whatever supplements your soil needed nutrient wise. Once you till in your garden, put away your tiller until fall, as you won't use it again. The strategy here is no not turn your soil again until fall (unless you decide to use a no till method, but I am no expert in that as I have not used it. Our ground gets too hard here to work it by hand.) Every time you till the soil, you bring seeds to the surface that have been dormant for possibly decades. Those seeds have been waiting for just the right conditions to sprout. Now is when we WANT your weeds to grow, not later in the year. At this point, you are literally going to grow weeds. After you till your garden for the spring, go and find something else to do for a week or so.
The waiting is hard. You watch all the neighbors putting in seeds with nicely marked rows and you look at a patch of nothing. A beautiful spring week passes by. Nice warm long sunny days. Within a week, you should see weeds popping up. The first “leaves” you see of a plant are called cotyledon. There are generally two types of weeds and garden plants: Plants with 1 cotyledon leaf (called monocotyledons, or monocots) and plants with 2 cotyledon “leaves” (called dicotyledons or dicots). These are not the true plant leaves. Anyway, once these first embronic leaves appear, the plant is at its most vulnerable stage. The seed has spent all its reserve energy to reach the sun to start photosynthesis, and its reserves are empty. It is not able to regrow roots, a stem or a cotyledon leaf. Now it the time to act!
STOP!!! Do NOT till your garden again!!!!!! You have two options here. First option is to work the soil with a stirrup hoe or weeding sweeps to cut the small plants off from the roots. A stirrip hoe is basically just a blade that is run just within the first 1/2 inch of soil, and not disturb any deeper. It kills the young weeds by cutting the roots off the stems without working up dormant seeds. This works great if the soil is dry enough to work. If it is not dry enough to work, a propane garden torch is the best bet. You should not wait any longer than now, so use the propane if you must. If you wait longer, you risk the plant building its energy reserves back up in its root system since it now has access to the sun's energy. If that happens, you will be battling that plant until it is pulled out by hand. Right now either weed sweep the entire garden or use a propane torch to singe the plants. It is not neccesary to torch them into oblivion, just hitting them with the torch quickly will kill them.
After you have killed all the weeks, put away your weeding tool and (you guessed it) wait some more. Wait another week for the next crop of weeds. Agonizing, isn't it? Don't worry. It is worth it in the end.
After your second week of weed crops, you once again kill the weeds either by cutting them with a stirrip hoe or porpane torch depending on how wet the soil is. Now is when you have a choice. Ideally, you would wait another week and raise the last bit of weeds that took a while to germinate. However, if you got a late start this could put you behind. If you had a nice early spring, I would wait the third week. If it is getting too far into late spring and you had significantly less weeds in your second weed crop, I would consider planting your crops now. Either way, once you kill your last crop of weeds, IMMEDIATELY plant your food crops. They should be about the only plants germinating when they are coming up, and you should have a nice garden with few weeds. You now start weeding as normal, but NEVER till your garden mid-season. Instead, use your stirrup hoe or weed sweeps. More on those devices later.
Here is a quick time table for the false bed technique, assuming 3 weeks for weed germination:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Rest of the growing season
Till your garden.
DO NOT till the soil again until fall.
Kill weeds with either propane torch or stirrup hoe.
Kill weeds with either propane or stirrup hoe.
Continue weeding as normal. Do not EVER till your garden mid season, or you will bring new weed seeds close enough to the sun to germinate.
DO NOT PLANT
Put your tiller away until fall.
Wait for another week of weeds to grow.
Plant your crops.
Till garden in fall if you choose. Some people do, some people don't.
Fall tilling: Some do, some don't. There are arguments for both. I like to turn in the garden after adding compost or chicken bedding. I also find the garden dries faster in the spring if it is tilled. There again, a lot depends on your climate and soil conditions. Experiment! Perhaps you find that you are better off NOT tilling in the fall.
Mulching: Mulch is great. Basically, mulch is anything that prevents light from getting to the soil, reduces water loss from evaporation, and allows water to reach the soil. Straw, wood chips, leaves, grass are all used as mulch, some having significant drawbacks over others.
Straw. Straw mulch can be great in that there are little to no weed seeds. The problem is that you usually have to buy it. Currently, staw bales are going for as much as alfalfa, or about 3 times what grass hay bales are going for. They may also contain traces of farming chemical sprays, which you would introduce to your soil from leeching from watering or rain. If you are striving for organic gardening, consider organically raised straw or use another mulch. I've used straw, and it works well, but I can get it from an organic farmer.
Wood chips. These can be a good option if you have, or are willing to buy, a wood chipper and you have a lot of trees on your property. Since trees are constantly producing dead branches (and dead trees), a few acres of well established trees should provide you with plenty of material. Wood chips can make a mess, and a landscape rake is needed to rake up all the wood chips as the end of the year, as they take a while to decompose. They can be washed and re-used next year.
Grass clippings. This can be a great option if you have a weed free yard to mow. The biggest problem is that when you mow your yard, you pick up weed seeds as well (especially if your yard isn't suburban picture perfect). I've not yet tried this method personally because our yard is literally mowed down weeds.
Leaves. Leaves present the same risk for weeds as grass clippings. Other than that, they are a great option if available. Obviously, you would have to save your leaves over winter, so consider storage of the leaves if you choose this route.
Mulching (if you don't introduce new weed seeds) suppresses weeds to reduce or practically eliminate weeding, and conserve water by limiting evaporation. Since your plants aren't competing with weeds and have more constant moisture, increased yields and reduced garden laboring hours can be expected. Mulching is great when practical. You may just mulch certain crops, such as onions, tomatoes, vine crops. 3-4 inches of mulch with soaker hoses is a great combination.
One of the very first things we did when we got our farm was to start a relatively small garden. Our first patch was about 10 feet wide by 25 feet long. Small, but we hadn't equipment for larger and we decided to start small and expand.
One of the first problems we ran into was the same problem everyone who breaks virgin ground runs into: bugs and weeds. We experienced significant losses in any freshly tilled ground from June bug grubs. They wreak havoc on our potatoes. Just this last year, when we planted our potatoes in a second year garden, we experienced a 50% loss due to June bug grubs. There are some traps you can make (and we tried some with limited success), but the best solution is to keep your garden weed free for about 3 years. After 3 years, that part of the June bug life cycle is over and June bugs don't like to lay eggs in open dirt (they prefer lawn/pasture environments for their eggs). After a few years, that particular problem will subside.
Second problem was weeds. Oh the weeds! Imagine a lawn of weeds coming up in your veggie garden. It was that bad. I must admit, it is a battle we lost a couple times. I wasn't using the false bed technique in the beginning, as I had never heard of it. I have since learned that you should take a year and till the garden, kill weeds, kill weeds, kill weeds, etc., for the entire year. I like to plow a few times during the year to keep bringing up those seeds and get them to germinate. Kill as many weeds as you can that first year. Even if you kill what was there, obviously there will always be weed seeds coming in fresh from the breeze, but you want to kill the weed seed stockpile in the soil. Another option is a large tarp (preferably the silver/black, not blue or white) or black plastic sheeting. Let the weeds come up and smother them with the cover for a couple weeks. Then allow the soil to re-grow its weeds (possibly turning the earth to encourage this), and then smother again. You can let the weeds get a bit bigger than the initial leaves, as you will cut off all light. Don't let them get too big though, as the roots will store enough energy to come back.
We quickly found out that weeding by hand is darn near impossible for anything other than a small urban sized garden, unless you literally have nothing better to do. You need mechanization to handle a garden of size. I tried to avoid this, but we had the decision either downsize the garden or gain a mechanical advantage over the weeds. Since downsizing the garden simply isn't an option, I started researching (see, there that word is again!) what is the best way to gain that mechanical advantage. I found it in a 2 wheel hoe, as they would have used late 19th and early 20th century. I purchased a complete 2 wheel hoe, accessories and even a seeding attachment for our garden. I purchased it new, and I will admit I spent about $500 on everything, including the seeder. Seems like a lot for a simple machine, but it is built with a quality that is reminiscent of the time period when the device thrived across America. The unit was purchased from http://www.easydigging.com/ and delivered promptly. Excitedly, I assembled the unit and took it to the garden. Safe to say, I was happy with my purchase. The wheel hoe has accessories available, including different sized stirrup hoes, weed sweeps, cultivator teeth, miniature disc (how neat is that!) and a seeder attachment. I advise you go to their website and check it out. As a note, I have no affiliation, nor do I receive any type of incentive for any review. I purchased my wheel hoe and accessories as a private person at the normal retail price of the time.
The seeder attachment was purchased separately, as I wanted to wait to see the quality and durability of the base unit first. The seeder is also a quality built item. There are a few plastic pieces, but they are low stress parts and I feel they should withstand the test of time. Best thing for me is that the seeder will plant carrot seeds, which I absolutely loathe planting by hand. Last year, I gave up dropping those tiny seeds with my huge fingers and decided to try solid seeding carrots in small beds akin to spreading grass seed. That was a dismal failure. Not only does it waste a lot of seed because of thinning, but weeding and harvesting is extremely difficult to do, and impossible to do with any type of tool. Don't solid seed carrots!
The two wheel hoe is the type of tool (depending on the attachment that is on) where its primary job is to cut the weeds off just below surface. This is the type of tool that is needed for the false bed technique, and also for weeding mid season without turning the soil or pulling weeds by hand. The unit pushes easy though even our heavy soil, and does its job well. It does NOT, however, work very well when the soil is wet. If the soil is wet enough to leave your boots with mud on them, it is too wet to use a wheel hoe. The stirrup hoe and weed sweeps depend on the soil being able to “flow” over the blade. If it clumps rather than flows, it tends to bunch up on the blade. If things were that wet, I would either use a propane torch or wait for dry weather.
Starting Seeds:
Note: You will notice that when starting seedlings early indoors, you cannot get by without artificial lights, the power grid, and a relatively expensive setup. After all, shelving and a multitude of shop lights aren't cheap. This is a choice. Even up here in Minnesota, we CAN grow a lot of veggies without starting seeds. Tomatoes CAN be directly sown in the garden. We can plant a large enough variety of vegetables to sustain us. HOWEVER, we enjoy some things that must be started early, particularly onions. Things like pumpkins, squash, melons can be started in a cold frame that is solar powered, but onions take MONTHS from seeds before you can put them in the ground this far north. As an example, I just planted 220 onion seeds in January for this summer. As long as we have the ability, I would rather grow my own vegetables. I know what is in them, how they were grown, how they were handled, and I am not subject to the half rotten onions at the grocery store. This is a decision YOU will have to make if you want to grow vegetables that require starting seedlings early.
Typically, (depending on where you live) you need to start some seeds indoors before the actual growing season. Things like celery, onions (from seeds, not sets), possibly tomatoes in the far north, etc., need more growing time from seed than the season allows. Or perhaps you want to get a jump start for better production on things like pumpkin/squash and melons. In any case, you are starting seeds early indoors.
The commercial way to start seeds is to buy trays that contain individual plastic cells (usually in a 6 pack) for each plant. You fill each cell with starting mix, plant seed, and add water to the bottom of the tray. The bottom of the individual cells have slits to allow water to soak up the soil, and a clear plastic dome to simulate a miniature green house.
The problem I have with these units is 2 fold. First, you must constantly buy these plastic sets. I have tried re-using them, but haven't had luck with reusing them more than once or so. They are also surprisingly expensive for some cheap, thin and brittle blown plastic that costs about 5 cents to produce. Second is the plants don't like them either. When you pull a plant out of a plastic pot for transplant, you will see exposed, bare roots. When you put that plant into your garden, the plant experiences transplant shock, which is a sudden change in soil characteristics that the roots are exposed to. Some of the plants may even die, and all will be stunted for a couple weeks while they attempt to adapt to the sudden change in environment. Either case, this is not ideal.
I have started using the soil blocking technique. Basically, instead of plastic cells, you make formed compacted soil cubes using a molding tool. You plant your seeds in these cubes of compressed dirt. The roots tend not to explore past the edge of the soil block because they will naturally go away from air and sunlight. If they grow too close to the outside edge of the soil block, they will generally turn and go another direction. Soil block molds come in different sizes. From 3/4” square to 4x4”. There are block spacers in the larger molds that are the size of the smaller blocks, so when you seedling is getting too big for its little bit of dirt, you place the entire block and seedling into the next size up soil block, never having to un-earth or disturb the root system. Simply search for “soil blocking kit” on your favorite web search engine, and you should be provided with many purchasing options. Once you buy the molds, you should never have to buy them again, and you can re-use the flat bottom containment trays for many years. You are going green, reducing your dependency on the system, have better plants, AND have a quality tool that will make you as many blocks as you can squeeze. I paid $60 for a kit of 2 molds and appropriate accessories. In my opinion, they are worth the investment.
Next order of business is lighting. Your plants will need light, and depending on your latitude, a lot more than the sun will give you this time of year. If you have a sun room with nice big south facing windows that are NOT Low-E glass, you are a big step ahead here. If not, you need to produce light artificially.
Your lighting system should be built when you pick out your shelving options to maximize both. Generally speaking, you use long tube fluorescent shop lights for your light source. They are held by small chains that allow you to adjust the height from the plants (you should keep them about 2 inches from the plants). I have been using “daylight” bulbs in the fixtures, and I have been happy with them. Some people use just the “cool blue” bulbs, others a combination of the blue and red (soft) light bulbs. Feel free to experiment. Just know that the blue spectrum promotes plant growth, and the red spectrum promotes flowering.
You need to match the length and depth of your lights to how long your shelving will be. If you have 4 foot shelving, you need 4 foot shop lights. Ideally, you would have longer lights than your plants take up on your shelving, so the plants grow straight. If you lights are too short, your plants will grow toward the light. Unless you frequently rotate them, you won't have very strong plants. Just keep this in mind when you are setting up your seeding area.
While still experimental as I write this, I have forgone the traditional shop lights in favor of individual CFL or LED daylight bulbs and matching bases mounted individually on the bottom of the shelves for my latest version of seed starting system. The reason I am trying this is pure cost. I figured that the cost of putting 2 shop lights per shelf, and 3 shelves of lights would run approximately $140. Insane. The shop lights do NOT come with bulbs (and if they do, they are the wrong ones), so they are a separate expense and add up quickly. Instead, by using CFL Daylight bulbs, we can save considerable money. A CFL Daylight can be had in various power outputs. For now, I am using 60 watt equivalent. The bulbs are approximately $1.50 each, and the base is approximately $1.25 each. I figured on 4 bulbs per shelf, so that works out to about $11 per shelf, or $33 for 3 shelves. Upgrading to 6 bulbs per shelf only adds an additional $16 to the project. Or one could simply use higher wattage CFL bulbs and 4 sockets. Higher watt CFL bulbs are only 50 cents to a dollar more for 100 or 125 watt equivalent. Be careful for too hot of bulbs, though. You don't want to burn your plants from the heat.
My current experimental shelves are only 2.5 feet wide of useable space, so while 4 bulbs per shelf may work fine for me, if you have wider you would need to use 6 or 8 per shelf. For the bases, you can use traditional bases that are hard wired in and secured to the shelf, but the shelf system I got on sale was plastic and not wood. I had no way to secure the bases to the plastic perforated shelf. My solution was to use “temporary light sockets”. These have piercing contacts and a twist lock. You strip back the outer-most insulation of the standard building wire, exposing the 3 wires inside. You then simply set the exposed (but still insulated) hot and common wires on the piercing contacts and twist the lock. The contacts are pushed into the wire, making contact with the copper inside, thus providing power. They were quick and easy to put up, and I simply used zip ties to secure the unit to the perforated plastic shelf. A few didn't make great contact at first, but a little twist and wiggle and they are lighting properly. Since there are exposed contacts (although you would have to attempt to deliberately touch one), make sure you completely un-plug the lights from the power outlet before working with the plants. Keep kids away as well.
Oh, one last note about lighting: they need to be on a timer. I just use a cheap mechanical timer to give the plants approximately 12 hours of light a day.