Tour of Our Homestead Garden

We get a lot of requests for more photos of our garden, so here's a quick video tour and some information on how our garden is organized & set up, as well as some of the things we grow!

One of our goals in having our garden is to grow as much of our own food as possible. This includes canning, freezing, and preserving as much as we can to eat throughout the year. It takes time in order to determine which varieties are the most productive in your area, how much of each thing you need to grow, how to preserve the harvest, and timing everything properly (starting seeds, transplanting, harvesting before frost, successive sowings, etc).

For those of you that have asked us the types of things that we grow in our garden, I'll attempt to list everything. Although of course, most likely I'll forget a few! In no particular order: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, melons, asparagus, kale, swiss chard, collard greens, strawberries, rhubarb, lettuce, corn, garlic, onions, leeks, pole and bush beans, gourds, eggplant, ground cherries, carrots, radishes, beets, spinach, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, kohlrabi, sunberries, loofah sponges (a type of squash we use for homemade sponges), cabbage, and celery. We also grow multiple types of herbs: basil, parsley, oregano, dill, mint, thyme, lemon balm, rosemary, chives, catnip, and fennel.

Have a look at the video below to get a better idea of how our garden is set up:

Our garden is organized into raised beds, which we feel helps to make our garden more efficient. The soil stays nice and loose in the raised beds, we waste less water, have less area to weed, and we can focus more easily on building the soil in the areas that need it. All of the raised beds are constructed from cedar logs, all of which came from around our property. The pathways in between the raised beds are just plain grass. We use a push mower to cut the grass in the pathways, which takes us about 10 minutes for the entire garden. For us, this is a huge time saver as we don't have to worry about keeping the pathways free from weeds.

When we first constructed the raised beds, we used compost from property to fill them. We knew that from the beginning we were putting the best soil possible into the raised beds. Soil is what gives the plants life, don't underestimate the importance of good soil!

For those of you hoping to get started with a garden for the first time, remember to start small! Don't expect to be an expert overnight. Keep your goals realistic, and learn to grow a few things well before you try to grow everything. Start off by growing foods that you enjoy eating! From year to year your garden will grow, as will your experience.