Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness

With 40 years of off-grid homesteading under our belts, we can sincerely say that one of the keys to self-reliance is a successful vegetable garden. A well thought out, well planned garden can save time, effort and aggravation come spring and summer so why not spend some time this winter while the cold north winds are howling planning your vegetable garden for this coming season.

Hockley Lake Garden

Factors to Consider

If you’re a seasoned gardener, begin by looking back and assessing the previous year’s garden. This is where record keeping can be of real value. Refer to your notes to see what worked and what didn’t. What would you like to do differently? Would you like to try a new technique – maybe trying to grow cukes or melons vertically for instance? Perhaps you want to try a new variety of something or maybe even a completely new vegetable you’ve never grown before such as Witloof chicory or mache. Did you have a shortfall of any item and if so is the shortfall consistent from year to year? It’s normal in any given year to have an over abundance of an item while the next year it may not do as well but if you consistently run short of an item you may want to plant more this year. On the other hand, do you consistently have too much of something. So much that it goes to waste. If so, reducing the amount planted may be called for. Continue reading →

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Establishing an orchard is a big investment not only in money but in time and effort as well. At our new Nova Scotia homestead, getting an orchard underway was a priority last spring and continued this spring. Selecting what varieties to plant can be overwhelming especially when it come to apples as there are so many from which to choose. Factors we considered when selecting varieties included plant hardiness, the growing zone in which we reside, disease resistance, our intended end use of any fruit we harvest as well as our desire to have some Heirloom varieties in our orchard. See our post of Jan 29, 2018, Order Now for Spring Planting  for details on all these factors.

Mulched Orchard Trees Just Coming to Life

We live in Canadian growing zone 5b, so to increase our chances of success, we tried to select varieties that are hardy to zone 5 or less. Because we want to keep our spray program to a minimum, disease resistance, particularly in regards to fireblight, was a major consideration so many of the varieties we selected take this into account. We also wanted the apple season to extend as long as possible by selecting a few “summer” apple varieties, “fall” apples and “winter” apples. Summer apples are supposed to ripen the end of August/beginning of September but are not long term keepers. Winter apples ripen in October, are meant to be stored for months and may even need time in storage to reach peak flavor. Fall apples ripen somewhere in between and have varying long term storage characteristics. Continue reading →

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Building a new homestead from scratch means establishing new gardens.

Seed Catalogs

Not just a vegetable garden but an herb garden as well as an orchard. Now is the time of the year to get seed and nursery stock on order whether you are getting started for the first time, you already have gardens established or you are starting over as we are. A good use of these drab winter days is perusing seed and nursery catalogs – order now for spring planting.

Some companies may offer a discount as an incentive to order early and avoid the last minute rush. Ordering early also ensures availability is not an issue due to shortages or outages of stock or seeds. Frustration is studying the catalogs, making selections, then placing the order only to discover said choice is sold out. Ordering early minimizes the chances of that happening. Continue reading →

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