What Can I Help You With?
As a homesteader and/or gardener there is a lot that you need to do. Sometimes it is nice to have some help. While I can't go to your garden or homestead and help you in person I can help you online.
But what can I do that would help you the most? Is there something you would like to learn more about?
I run the website Wild Homesteading which is a blog focused on helping you to work with nature to start/build your homestead and grow your own food.
Every week on Monday I publish a new blog post along with a companion post on the steem blockchain and on permies.com. Each blog post also comes with a free and easy-to-print companion doc that either expands on the blog post or gives you a nice summary to add to your digital library.
I have a list of post ideas but I would like to know what would help you the most. What is a question you have about homestead, permaculture, gardening, and working with nature that you would like answered? Or what is a topic you would like to learn more about?
As you are thinking about what question you would like answered keep in mind that my site is focused on 3 categories:
I don't currently have any domesticated animals so I don't write about topics that focus on them at this point. I should add that the Start Your Homestead category covers any topic that could help someone who is relatively new to homesteading that does not fit in the other 2 categories.
So what questions do you have? Please leave a reply with your questions and upvote other people's questions if you also have that question.
There might just be a blog post in the future focused on your question!
Thank you!
This Week's New Blog Post
- 3 Things Your Garden Needs to Attract Birds
- Companion Post on Steemit - What You Can Do to Attract Birds to Your Garden
List of All My Past Blog Posts
Follow me for more posts all about homesteading, working with nature, and growing your own food: @wildhomesteading
And check out my blog - www.wildhomesteading.com for weekly in-depth posts on working with nature to grow your own food and start/build your homestead.
great postings thank you for sharing, I guess a lot of people would love to know about how they could build very small gardend on there tarrace that dont require to much space:-) maybe that would be an interesting blogpost:-) thank you shakkei
Thank you! :) Yeah, I have thought about that. I was renting a small place before my wife and I got our land. At the rental I had a very small in ground garden but I also built 2 wicking beds that I setup on a small balcony and I had a small herb garden in a hidden corner of the apartment lot. I managed to get a fair bit of food from those beds.
Here is an article about wicking beds: http://www.goodshomedesign.com/diy-wicking-bed-container-gardening/
wow so interesting thanks for sharing
You're welcome! :)
You've been here a couple of months, but I will say, "Welcome to the Steem blockchain" anyway! Nice to see you in the "Steem Terminal" Discord server! Be sure to let us know if we can help you!
Thank you! :) I will take a look at the server tonight!
Food forests and herb medicine are what I'm focusing on lately. Loving your posts on food forests, and I'm about to toss out some branches in mine today to get that other layer started!
Nice! Great to hear! :) Is there any thing specific about food forests that you would he interested in learning more about?
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Wife says to mow and I say heck no. There's plants EVERYWHERE in there, and swales and berms. Not mowing, but what do I do about the grass and weeds? I don't wanna kill em cause they're doing a job and protecting soil. Chooks are helping a little, but they're not tackling the super tall stuff. Wood chips are a traditional answer, but I haven't found any near me yet and the companies can't dump here cause they'd have to back their trailers up onto the highway and risk damaging their dump beds on my big oak trees. I'm about to just go in with a machete and chop and drop the jungle.
(There's my dead tree I just planted too)
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Thanks for the reply... you have given me some ideas for a blog post about food forests that I think might also give you some ideas.
But in regards to what you shared... you might think about what type of food forest you want. In a full natural forest you are unlikely to find much of any grass. But in an open savanna type food forest grass will be a major component. Kinda depends on what you are going for.
If you want to remove the grass from certain areas you could try fencing your chickens in and concentrating their efforts in those areas for say a week or two or even just a few days depending on how many chickens you have and how big of an area. It does not have to be a long term setup just to help prep the site.
Once the chickens clear out the grass/weeds you could spread seeds for a cover crop or green mulch and potentially add chop-and-drop material from other areas on top of it all. Fall leaves could be a good option too if you can get a bunch. You could also plant shrubs and other smallish plants in the cleared area.
You might want to see what sort of native lupines grow in your area and see about getting seeds for them. They should establish quickly and are a nitrogen fixing plant plus they tend to get a deep tap root. They also get nice flowers. I'm growing a lot of lupines around my property using varieties that are native here.
You can buy lupine seeds in bulk--I just ordered one pound of riverbank lupine (native to my area) which is about 16,000 seeds and with shipping it only cost me around $20.00. Should be enough for my entire food forest and some other areas.
With this approach it is likely grass will come back but if you get enough other plants going it will be minimal. Adding chop-and-drop material and/or fall leaves will help keep the grass from coming in too strongly while the new plants get established.
If you do use seeds just make sure to keep the mulch layer thin or even wait until the new plants get established and then mulch around them.
Down the road once the lupines or other cover crop / living mulch is established you can chop-and-drop them and make room for new plants that say provide you a harvest.
Hope that helps and thanks for sharing!
Never heard of lupines, I'll take a look, thanks! Yay for ideas!!
For today I just hit it with the trimming shears to knock it down. Full food forest is the goal, but I'm moving kinda slow. Eventually I'd like to have the chickens living in there full time, but we'll see. That could take a while.
So far in this part I've only got one goji, two blueberries, and I think five blackberries. Along with some comfrey and a bunch of strawberries. That oak in the picture is what I'm adopting as my high canopy, and I'm wanting to add a couple locusts, a pine, and god knows how many fruit trees. It's a pretty small area, probably 50x60 feet that's available to work with.
Moving so slow because of funds, and as I transition, I don't want to kill all the grass that's holding and protecting the soil. I've seeded with clover, and there's a good mix of other forage, green mulch, and other weeds in there too.
Fall leaves? I've only got about 150 bags left that I stole from my neighborhood every trash day this last fall. Again, I am hesitant to flat out mulch the whole thing yet, as I don't want the green stuff dead til I can ecologically replace it. Wouldn't that be dangerous? All those weeds and things are holding soil together, holding it in place, holding moisture, and feeding bugs.
The wife hates having a wild looking part of the yard, but I told her it's never gonna look more tame than it does now. 🤣 Actually I just added some dead branches along one of the swale berms.
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Hey Nate, just want to mention... if you knew for sure you could plant an area in the fall or next spring it might not be a bad idea to use sheet mulch now. The cardboard should breakdown by then making it great for planting.
I do that a lot on my property. I sheet mulch in spring/summer so that I can then plant during the following fall/winter/spring. In the mean time the mulch protects the soil and I find I get a ton of little critters moving in to help everything breakdown.
But I would make sure it was an area you could plant within a year.
Awesome! I'll go ahead and start planning that kind of thing now.
Is fall a good time to plant fruit trees?
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Depends on how cold your winters are. In my area the ground never really freezes (especially with mulch!) so I prefer fall plantings. But I think if it gets too cold spring planting might be better.
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