Our Homestead Gardens: Inspiration, Techniques, Challenges & More!

in #gardening7 years ago

Gardening is a big part of my job on the homestead. We try our best to grow as much of our own food as possible. With this goal in mind, we've adopted various strategies to make our life easier. Perennial food is are essential for our success and our ultimate goal is to develop a permaculture food garden.

I haven't had a chance to share much of our gardens with you (we still have 5FT snow drifts in the garden), so I thought I would share some of the more interesting things we've been working on. Spring is a great time to share garden ideas don't you think?

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The Main Garden

The main garden comprises of raised beds and containers. It is surrounded by a fence that has wire around it, to keep rabbits and other wildlife out. I really enjoying growing food in raised beds. I think as we get older we'll appreciate it even more.

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This garden is what one would call a polyculture design. This basically means that instead of planting a whole bed of carrots, we mix things up creating crop diversity. Each bed contains a variety of different plants. With the carrots I'll plant some lettuce early in the season and when that's done something else such as peas will go in. I might tuck some onions around the edges of the bed and might intersperse some tomato plants with the carrots as well.

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There's always some flowers growing in each bed as well. Nasturtiums are nice because you can grow them on a trellis to add shade or let them trail over the edges of the beds.

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Most of the features: garden frames, trellises, garden stakes etc are made from sticks, twigs and logs. It's all stuff from the woods surrounding the house.

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Highlights of The Main Garden

  • Containers growing perennial mint, herbs & horseradish which are all great at repelling bad insects
  • Barrels for potatoes (potato bugs have never been an issue).
  • Flowers such as nasturtiums and borage help attract pollinators and make the garden colourful (plus they are edible)
  • Sunflowers can be used as a trellis for cucumbers
  • Grape vines can create a nice shade wall if you have too much sun
  • Sticks/logs and twigs are a fun way to create dimension in the garden. Grow things upwards!
  • Polyculture planting helps create a more natural and healthy environment
  • Cold frames to get an early start on growing
  • Bug netting where needed to create physical barriers rather than chemical ones.

The Second Garden

The second garden is "in ground" and we've really just started developing this area. We have heavy clay soil which has been challenging to amend. Last year I planted thing like squash, beans. pumpkins and a huge patch of sunflowers. It did "ok" but wasn't the quality of crop I am used to.

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There are some fruit trees planted around this garden as well. I am hoping to build it up to more of a lush garden with paths. At the moment it looks like a barren in ground garden surrounded by lawn. I am so eager to get planting this spring and start transforming this!

We were able to amend some of the garden beds over the summer and have planted hard neck garlic in these patches. I am eager to see how it does. Last spring we had non stop rain for a month and our garlic was flooded. The ground was a swampy, soupy mess and the crop was a failure. Fortunately we like to plant in various areas to increase our odds of success. We still ended up with plenty of garlic.

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We made some bean teepees which worked out nicely. We mulched heavily with straw to try to fight off the weeds. It's been a struggle.

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This trellis was built using material scrounged up in the woods. I did this so that the grape vine from the main garden can continue across to the new garden. It was still being constructed in this photo. It's not pretty but it's sturdy and won't be visible beneath the canopy of vines. We'll plant more grapes as well to try and tie the two gardens together over time.

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We have an herb spiral. When we pick rocks from the field, they go here. We haven't planted in it yet so I am excited to get this filled with herbs. The spiral basically creates a bunch of micro climates. Some areas will be more shaded, others get more sun, some get more water, other areas less. It's a neat way to grow herbs with varying needs all in one location.

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The Back Field

The back field has also been used for cover crops. We had a disastrous (and back breaking) potato & corn growing effort two years ago that made me want to abandon the idea of growing here entirely. This paired with the deer flies made the whole project miserable from beginning to end. Not one to give up, we tried garlic the year after and that was a bit disappointing but better than potatoes.

Since then we've been growing buckwheat as a cover crop and tilling everything in to help amend the soil. Things were looking much better in the autumn so we planted over a hundred raspberry plants (suckers) that came from an investment of nine raspberry plants a few years earlier. We heavily mulched them with straw and crossed our fingers. I am really eager to see how they did over winter.

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We are planning to propagate blackberries in the spring and plant a row of those as well. We will also start a new rhubarb, horseradish & Jerusalem artichoke patch back here. Eventually it should be filled with perennial plants.

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Flower gardens & More

In addition to this, there are flower gardens, herb patches, rose bushes, lavender patches and all kinds of other things growing. A lot of the flowers we grow are also useful for making skincare, soap and even culinary items.

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We have a grove of young apple trees that we hope will survive and thrive (fruit trees are something I have very little experience with).

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I grow herbs in the garden boxes on our porch, and basically shove food all over the place. Some people find this odd but it works well for us.

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One day we'll have ourselves a food forest, I just have to remember to be patient. We have a lot of ground to cover and there's just the two of us to do it all. Bit by bit we are replacing lawn with plants.

You might also like reading this series on Seeds!

Happy Gardening! I would love to hear about what you have planned this year!


[@walkerland ]
Building a greener, more beautiful world one seed at a time.
Homesteading | Gardening | Frugal Living | Preserving Food| From Scratch Cooking|

You can also find me at: walkerland.ca

Photo copyright: @walkerland

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I am just starting out on my garden and it is a small patch to see what will happen and seeing how the things we like to eat will work in the area we live in. I think I am going to also use some buckets if I can find some to use.

What an incredibly inspiring post!

I, too, am buried under a mountain of snow, but this time of year I am rearing at the bit to get my hands in some compost, lol!

Your garden is so lovely, I totally enjoy how it is like a living organism itself, with its myriad of different containers, growth methods, and interspersed crops. Reminds me a lot of my own spread, however, yours is far more gorgeous. I always jokingly tell people that I practice "randoculture" LOL! You never know what I am going to do when it comes to cultivating any given section of my area of tilth!

Thank you so much for sharing your food realm with us, I would wax poetic more about its magnificent, but I have an 80th birthday party to attend! Hope you are having a fantastic weekend:o)

Oh wow, I can sense we are kindred spirits in the garden. I draw up very detailed plans each spring, but when I get out there .... I often say to heck with my plans and start planting based on "how I feel". It just makes me so happy to be out there doing it. I love your term "randoculture".

Enjoy the birthday party! Thanks for your cheerful words, they made me smile. ❀

Thanks so much for the tour of your gardens. At our current location, we use mostly raised methods such as 4x8 foot beds constructed of lumber, as well as some containers such as 5-gallon buckets. This seems to be less work for me than tilling. At the homestead we are building, we will have to garden above ground due to the hard, rocky nature of the mountain land.

I would love to learn more about perennials suited for our area, and must make that a priority over the next few years.

To be honest, I love raised beds. I think they have a lot going for them. They are certainly thriving ecosystems, full of worms etc. I find them much easier to maintain and it seems like everything grows well in them. I know they are not typically part of the permaculture landscape but ...whatever works I guess!

Mountain land ...sounds like you are living in my dream setting!

this is such a motivating thing to read today! i too am dealing with clay soil, and it's hard to even consider being patient & plan for 3+ years of a cover crop in some areas, when i just want to GET IT ALL DONE YESTERDAY.

but - as with so many things, patience and good timing is rewarded with quality. there's no point in getting back something that's half done & half enjoyed. buckwheat is also supposed to have amazing flowers, right? i have a little packet of seeds that a friend gave me!

Clay soil is backbreaking work in my experience. It is nutrient rich though so there is always a plus side! Patience is HARD! lol. I am terrible at being patient.

I'll look for a photo of the buckwheat ewe grew. I think it is pretty. Ours has white flowers. We used it because it dies off in winter so we wont have to deal with a cover crop that comes back to compete with whatever we plant (clover for example). The bees LOVE buckwheat. I planted a cover crop in a raised bed last year and It had like 50 bees buzzing around it all day long.

a cover crop with a die-off, no maintenance plan? i am sold! the flowers are pretty & delicate too, i love it :)

Here is the article that sold me on buckwheat. Its full of good info: https://tendingmygarden.com/cover-crops-buckwheat-is-one-of-the-easiest/

awesome - thanks so much!

You have a beautiful garden. Where about’s in Canada are you?

We are out in the Maritimes, New Brunswick. How about you?

I do love your posts! Your gardens are beautiful, especially the rustic ones...makes me smile! :)

well this place sure makes rustic easy to do :) Luckily things are good at growing without too much help from me. I just plant and feed, and eat.

That is some epic gardens you have there!!!
I look forward to seeing your harvest and general up dates.
Happy gardening :-)

Thanks! I'll be checking out your posts as well. Nice to meet you!

I hope you avoid Monsanto and their modified poison!! If you do, I run a creative group called Artists Against Monsanto... We make tools for people who want to help save the food chain... We are like Food-Anon, we do not forgive Monsanto, we do not forget...

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We grow heirloom/open pollinated plants and use no chemicals on our property. Here at Wakerland we believe that seeds should be free to save, replant and share. We don't buy GMO/patented seeds and we never will. I'll check out your group. Thanks for sharing.

Oh so many ideas! I am really looking forward to starting out on our patch, once we find it.

Raised beds are so the way to go. Why would they not work in a permaculture plan?

Oh, and I am stealing your herb spirals, such a beautiful idea.

I can't wait to get in the garden. It's going to be ages yet with all the snow but I always think that and it rapidly melts.

I never read about "raised beds" in any of the permaculture books but they are working well for us so that's what matters most! A friend of mine has raised beds that are really tall. She can sit on the edge and work comfortably. She did this so when she gets elderly it will be easy for her to continue. So smart! I think one day we'll work towards that too.

I am so excited about the herb spiral. I just need to map out where everything is supposed to go but there are plenty of charts online that share this info!

That was our idea for raised beds as well. Just wide enough so you can reach the middle from either side without straining. I wonder if I could do a triscel herb spiral?

I don't see why not! I am sure I saw a photo of a spiral designed that way when I was reading about them last year. It would basically be like having three spirals ...so it makes sense that it would work just fine. Some spirals even have a small pond integrated into the design.

Oh wow it just gets better! I now have a plan for my kitchen door with a triscel herb garden on each side with ponds in the middle. Awsome:!

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