Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’
Homesteading Lifestyle: Preserving Vegetables
August 28th, 2009
It is time to prepare for Preserving Vegetables during the winter months.
Are you looking for a healthy option to your daily diet? Then homesteading and gardening is your answer. For a small outlay, you can reap handsome dividends in the form of health and wellness at low cost. Your backyard provides you with ample land to cultivate a garden of vegetables and raise livestock for a constant source of nutritious sustenance.
Since we are coming up on the Fall Harvest, in this post we are going to share some thoughts on…
Keeping Your Vegetables Fresh Through Winter.
You don’t have to waste your vegetables in winter. By following a few simple steps, you can make your vegetable crop last right through the cold period, even six months after you’ve picked them from your garden. Here’s what you should do:
- Cold storage. Pack your turnips, cabbage and carrots in a freezer. Keep them in cold storage just after you’ve harvested and washed them.
- Freeze or can. Summer squash and peas can be kept in your freezer. Beans and tomatoes are better canned. Make sure you’re careful with your tomatoes as they bruise easily.
An old refrigerator will be enough for storing crops harvested from a small garden. If you have a much larger harvest, you might want to consider building a root cellar. You can convert a section of your yard to a root cellar or you might consider building it under your house. To keep the frost out, you have to insulate the door properly. Your garden produce will remain fresh in the cold cellar throughout winter.
Check your crops carefully to make sure they’re not diseased or damaged. Cure your potatoes for two weeks at 70oF and pack them in partly wet sawdust. They keep well in temperatures below 40oF. For garlic and onions, spread them out on shelves in a place that’s at least 60% humid – perhaps in a chilly basement.
Adequately storing your garden produce can provide you with fresh vegetables throughout winter. And you’ll soon be brimming with health and vigor with hardly a dent in your pocket!
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Tuesday’s Tip to Homesteading: Heirloom Seeds
April 21st, 2009
If you’ve not been homesteading long or are just beginning, it may be tempting to go to your local farmer’s market and buy some of those nice, pest-resistant, hybrid plants that are supposedly easier to grow. After all, they are ‘made’ to be more user friendly right? Well, that depends.
They are often genetically modified plants (GMO) that have had artificial genes grafted into their make up to make them resist draught or blight or bugs. That’s why some tomatoes don’t really taste like a tomato. Not only that, but by being hybrids, they are sterile or infertile for next year’s seeds. The plant you grow this year will not produce seeds for next year’s garden. You get to go spend money again on another hybrid seed.
Heirloom seeds will give you seeds to use each year from the crops they grow. Eat them this year, dry and save some for next year. Repeat. Now that’s money in the bank!
Take a look at this place that offers heirloom seeds with fast, free shipping:
Grow a Patriot Garden
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Fall Vegetable Gardening for the Homesteader
October 24th, 2008
Fall Vegetable Gardening Provides New Challenges even for the experienced homesteader with a green thumb. Many people completely ignore the Fall garden because of the challenges, and focus on preparing the bed for the Spring planting.
For most garden enthusiasts, the arrival of fall means a harvest and a long rest for the vegetable garden beds. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. With a bit of careful planning and appropriate timing, you can enjoy a second harvest of cool weather crops throughout the autumn months with fall vegetable gardening. There are a number of vegetables that will thrive in the cooler months of fall, like root vegetables and leafy greens and a variety of cabbages. To select the best fall growers, check packages for descriptions like “cold hardy” or “quick maturity”. This will ensure that the plants you select for your fall vegetable gardening will give you the harvest that you are hoping for.
Timing
Timing is truly everything when it comes to fall vegetable gardening, since you will want to beat the first hard frost to ensure that you get a good, healthy crop. Some plants don’t even survive the first fall frosts, so they would probably not be good choices for your fall vegetable gardening efforts. To find out what the frost calendar is for your area, you can contact your local extension office. They can give you the best ideas of dates to plant for fall vegetable gardening, as well as a list of potential crops that will work well this time of year. Some plants actually like the shorter days and cooler temperatures of the autumn months, and will reward you with sweeter tasting veggies than you would enjoy in the hotter summer harvest.
Protection
Some of the crops that you choose to plant in your fall vegetable gardening will require some protection to survive the frosty nights of this season. This means that you will need to keep your eye on the weather reports during the months of September and October, and be prepared to cover those vulnerable plants when the temperatures begin to threaten to drop to frost point. You can purchase protection for your plants, or you can construct your own out of old milk bottles or worn bed sheets. By protecting your plants through the colder nights, you can allow them to thrive during the warmer days, and extend your harvest by a few weeks. Some plants will even continue to grow through hard frosts if they have proper protection at night.
Fall vegetable gardening will allow you to enjoy your favorite hobby past the warm weather months, and give you a crop of sweet vegetables that you might be able to enjoy all the way to Thanksgiving with a bit of luck in some areas. Happy fall gardening.
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