Don’t plant sunflowers near your squashes. At least here in the south, sunflowers attract bugs that love to eat squash, tomatoes, and cucumber. We avoid planting them near each other. Your garden is absolutely amazing! 💗
Just started watching some of your videos and I love that you and your husband laugh, chuckle and giggle when things go wrong or you make a mistake. It’s a good lesson for your kids to see. There’s an old saying “It will all be funny eventually so why not laugh now”.
Thanks for sharing all the info about your trouble with different pests! It's good to see the good and the bad, I'm sure its way more frustrating than you are letting on! Those sunflowers are just magical!
We appreciate your comment. It's good to see some "real" reality in all this, and not just the unicorn fluff of perfect posts that really doesn't exist, right?!? Thank you for tuning in!
I just discovered your channel and I just wanted to thank you for making these videos! Your my inspiration! Truly! I did not grow up with gardening or even eating fresh food, my family was a big fan of fast food and microwaves, but now that I'm married and we have our own home, my husband and I have been researching more and more into being self sustaining and growing our own food. This has really inspired me and helped me map out kind of what I want our home to be like!
Start smaller than you think you want. It can get discouraging fast. Grow it a little every year. Especially with disease and pests. Gardening is a learning curve.
Wow, what a garden. it must be a full time job to manage, cultivate and preserve something of this size and obviously very satisfying for you both. Wanting to start a vegi garden and fruit orchard this year with full height fencing and netting to keep deer, kangaroos, and birds out to achieve some level of self-sufficiency. Mine is planned to be only 300 square meters (900 square feet) so just a fraction on yours and thinking of raised beds.....still not sure if raised beds is a good direction to take :) Always had "token" vegi patches, but for me this is the next level and yours is something I'm likely not to venture down....would like to but are very time-poor. Looking forward to seeing your progress.
I've had friends ask if they get a pet kangaroo could they "store it" at our place, lol!! Sounds like you already have enough of them down in your neck of the woods.
Good morning I am watching your video this morning i love how you talk and laugh your place looks beautiful I have very small Allatment and things never grow like the us in the uk the weather doesn’t help a lot all the best for you and your family
Do you have a cookbook or episodes relating to how you use your preserved foods? I eat a great deal of raw vegetables but very little meat so I'd like to learn how to use items like the dehydrated bell peppers or apple slices in my everyday cooking.
Beautiful garden!!! Have you ever tried planting marigolds by your cucumbers to ward off the beetles? They don’t like the smell of marigolds. Would be interesting if it worked for you. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for making such beautiful, inspiring videos. I just started my vegetable garden this year (only two raised beds a few feet wide) so seeing your amazing garden blows my mind (in a good way!). Best wishes from Yorkshire, in the North of England. 💚
I stumbled upon your channel yesterday and I'm so glad I did! Serious life goals here. We are on 2 acres and are year 3 into our homesteading journey. I love learning from others. You are doing so well with raising your beautiful family and amazing homestead. Can I ask what zone you are growing in? We are in eastern Idaho and our zone 5a is quite the challenge!
We are in Zone 6b Arkansas. You may need an extra greenhouse to prolong the growing season, but be grateful for the soft soil and lack of pesky bugs up there in Idaho!!! Cheers
This is so inspiring. Imagine the world if everyone tended to the earth this way and lived in such closeness with nature. Imagine the health and wellness benefits. Imagine how we could restore our soil from erosion and regreen our world 🌎 compost helps a lot with that too!
I love your channel. I garden in the Midwest on a similar scale and I love seeing how you turn over beds and deal with pests and problems. You’re garden looks great, but not so perfect that’s it’s unrealistic to me, which is so refreshing.
Thank you for sharing all that you do! Your videos keep me motivated to say the least. I thought I might share as well in case you find this useful. Even though you have a tremendous yield of tomatoes and nothing goes to waste, I just heard that catnip deters the tomato horn worm. Even though I haven’t tested this out myself just yet I thought I would share this info. Happy Harvests!!!
You can eat the sweet potato tops (leaves). Either you mix them as vegetable in the soup or blanch them, iced bath then make it a salad like spinach or like our local salad (mix with tomatoes, onions, vinegar, sugar and salt to taste). The sweet potatoes, you can fry them as is like fries, or fry and sugarcoated (search kamote que) you can also make a dessert using them like boiling it, mash them, then cook them like a sauce by mixing with milk and sugar until they thicken like paste. (Looks like a jam) . For the bellpepper or chili pepper leaves, we also use them to soup based cooking like (search) Chicken Tinola (ginger or lemongrass based chicken soup with chili pepper leaves). As for the corn, you can cook them with beef, cabbage and potatoes,. Soup based tender beef (search beef bulalo). 😊😊😊 We are really enjoying your videos! 😊 You have. A big land, it would also be more great to see you guys plant fruit trees and strawberrries, other berries and grapes 😍 I wished we can send you seeds from our local vegetables here too! 😊
you should consider growing your own mushrooms. It can grow on compost or downed trees, can be low maintenance and provides a nice hybrid of the nutrients available between plants vs animal. Plus they are delicious flavor vessels.
A video around that is in the works. As a quickie, we made Asian stir fry last night 100% fr5om our garden(well, minus the rice, I guess). Carrots, Cabbage, ginger, onions, and sliced pork from our pasture pigs this summer! Yum yum!!
You're obviously becoming an expert and I don't mean to patronage you by my suggestion but I just happened to stumble on the fact that marigold flowers are probably the best guard against bugs you don't want in your garden. I planted them here in Colorado around my garden because they were easy to grow and very attractive. They attracted the honey bees for pollination and even some very non-aggressive Hornets that would eat a lot of the bad bugs in our garden. No one in my family ever got stung. We live next to a large field with a ton of grasshoppers and they wouldn't get near the marigold border. And they are a volunteer plant so if you plant them once they'll keep coming back but it's easy to pull them out if you don't want them
Thanks for the tip. We have planted marigolds around our garden, but perhaps we don't have quite enough!! Bugs are still definitely winning the fight right now, lol. We'll see about putting a more marigolds next spring!
Hard for sure. We are hoping that nature is in our favor and that over the next year or so it kind of takes care of itself... or at least isn't as bad of a bug problem... squash bugs have to have a predator, right?!?
Just discovered your channel. Love it and learning lots. Would love to know what you do with your turnips. Ours grew Hugh but not keen on the taste. Debs from Australia
This current crop is our first planting from saves seeds from last year. We tagged the largest ears last year, saved their seeds, and planted them this year. We will continue to do this, with hopes that the corn continues to get large...but not oo large :)
We rest very little, but it's enough for us :) We get so much time with the kids, cause they are at home all day. After school, we work together, play together, eat together, laugh together. This lifestyle allows us ample time with our kids. Real time too, not screen time.
I'm wondering if the watermelon was too close to another plant that the vine borer was getting in. Sad about your watermelon! I have to ask, what state is this...just started following this blog. Looks like a perfect spot for a farm, guessing maybe Virginia Kentucky or Tennessee? You could maybe blanch your potatoes chopped, and freeze for homefries. #theseasonalhomestead
Whew! I wish I had a better answer, but we haven't figured out how to stop blossom end rot. We just take it as it comes and cut the ends off of the tomatoes. 90% of the tomato is still good to use.
@The Seasonal Homestead thank you!! honestly we kinda thought that the whole tomato wasn’t any good if it had rot so that’s good to know that the rest is good to use! 😆
@@kal.salmon Yes! It usually is good. Sometimes if the rot is really bad it is moldy and we toss it. I'll also add to Cam's comment above, putting plants on a drip system would help with blossom end rot and also a soil test to make sure everything is as it should be with the soil. Hope that helps! -Becky
When you see it happening remove the few tomatoes hit and hit it with a water + powdered milk drink and get it that quick calcium to save the remaining tomatoes to form. Also inconsistent watering. Measure and have a watering schedule. Can plant them with tums in the holes for a little Jump at the beginning as well and set up for success down the road.
Not sure if you'll see this anytime soon, but I'm curious about how you grew potatoes. How far down did you start your trench and how many times did you mound dirt on them? I've watched all your tours and can't see much of the process besides the hay. Thank you!
Just ❤❤❤ your farm! You're such an Inspiration! So much so, I've got a 🤓 nerdy gardener question for you: Can you tell me what brand your garden/farm boots are?! Clearly you do a lot of gardening/farming & comfy feet are important, so I'd say great boots are an important tool to have! I'm going from a traditional suburban home/garden to a couple of acres & I'd ❤ to get a great pair of boots 👩🌾 Thanks again for sharing your videos!!! 😊
Yes!!! And doubles as a bird deterrent while the seeds are sprouting. Had our entire corn planting last year go to the birds cause we didn't cover it. That was fun to replant, lol!
Can you explain why the cover crop i have seen alot of people plant them does it put nutrients back in the soil ? I have a very short grow season i am in the far north of British Columbia Canada and when it freezes here the frost if 4 or 6 feet into the ground by mid winter And then you are in permafrost after 6 feet that never goes away I just found your channel and i am binge watching it and really enjoying it thank you for sharing
Wonderful Garden & Good Work :D Can you do a video maybe a two parter, video on canning. The whole shabang, the kitten and kaboodle lol :P Pretty Please :D
Yep...cucumber beetles got me as well 😔 ALL watermelon and cucumber plants are dead. I have replanted the cucumbers last week, hopefull there is enough time 🤞 Any tips for voles?
Good luck! For voles, we set a few traps and it seemed to keep them under control in winter when they are really bad. Here is a link to what we used (it's an affiliate link) amzn.to/3ALcXnf .You can also find the same traps at any hardware store. We've used both the kind for rats and for mice. Stuck them in the tunnel with peanut butter on it. It's not perfect, but works well enough!
@@TheSeasonalHomestead It does! Go out at night with the black light (bonus if it’s a headlamp) and you’ll see them light straight up! Even the little ones. Super helpful and it saves so much time!!
The burlap cover serves multiple purposes: retains moisture when we water, so it doesn't evaporate as quickly in the hot summer, and protects against birds from stealing the seeds. Birds seem to have a sixth sense for when certain seeds are freshly planted :)
We scatter chicken poops when we have it, but other than that, not much really. We do use a lot of mulch, which breaks down and provides it's own natural nutrients, carbon, etc...
Love the question Jacob! Husband eats well, but does not count calories at all. Eats until satisfied, then perhaps a tiny bit more ontop of that ;) Works it all off chasing cows and pigs, lol!
@@TheSeasonalHomestead Thank you very much! Would you also share what kinds of foods are eaten? Like rough/gut-feel of proportion for food? Something like: veggies 20% fruits 10% grains 30% legumes 5% fats (oil/butter) 15% meat 10% dairy 10% Annnnnnd could you also share eating windows? Like 4 hours a day from 8am-12pm or 12 hours a day -- something like that? Have been looking into diets, food consumption, whether calories matter, and eating windows for a while trying to better understand how we react to what we ingest. Super curious about all these things haha. Thanks! :D
