Weekend Homesteader: May
Welcome
to the resources page for the May installment of Weekend
Homesteader! In addition to perusing the resources below, I hope
you'll leave a comment to let us know about your experiences with the
projects in our ebook.
Planning your summer garden
Good seed
companies.
Before you buy your seeds, check out this post about what makes a seed
company good for the backyard gardener and which ones are recommended.
Finding
space to homestead in the city. These tips, excerpted
from Rachel Kaplan and K. Ruby Blume's Urban
Homesteading, will
help even apartment dwellers find a bit of earth.
How to make a pea
trellis. You
can use my pea trellis technique to make a low cost and easy to move
trellis for your pole beans.
Square Foot Gardening
by Mel Bartholomew has a lot of good information for beginning
gardeners working on a small scale. Bartholomew's system is a bit
different from mine, but is beloved by many beginners with little space.
Kill mulch
What's
living in your soil?
This series of posts will introduce you to the world of useful critters
in your dirt.
How to plan permanent paths. Are you sick of your
dog running
straight through your tomato plants? Plan permanent paths that
are so
intuitive that people (and animals) follow them without thinking about
it.
Hugelkultur. Learn to add rotting wood to your kill mulch to increase the organic matter, drainage, and water holding capacity.
Teaming
with Microbes
by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. This easy to read book is a
great way to learn more about your soil microorganisms. As usual,
the link will give you my rundown on the top tips from the book.
Weedless Gardening
by Lee Reich. This book is very much worth reading for more
information on the whys and hows of no-till gardening. Or just
follow the link to see my summary of the most important information in
the book.
Planting your summer garden
Frost free
date. Look up
your last frost date by zip code.
Cooperative extension
service offices.
Find your local extension agent.
Pruning
tomatoes for blight prevention. The title says it all.
Summer planting chart.
If you want to branch out beyond the
simple vegetables and herbs listed in my ebook, you'll want to check
planting dates against this chart.
Turn off the TV
Television
addiction and identification self-help guide. A fascinating peek
into the psychology of television.
Kill your television. More anti-TV
commentary.
Rain barrel
Rutger's
Extension Service.
More information on rain barrels.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Thank you so much for your kind words! I can still get bogged down in that overwhelming planning stages sometimes --- the farm just has so many potential projects that it's hard to know where to start.
Mulching should definitely give your fruit trees a hand, although you might want to water around them once before laying the mulch down if it's that dry. Otherwise, the mulch could soak up any rain that does fall and extend the drought.