HAPPY EASTER AND HAPPY SPRING!

Daffodils and tulips have popped up all around town. Our dogwood and redbud trees are blooming in their white and purple splendor all through the forest! The homestead is greening up and looking so pretty! Spring is truly in the air. It’s that special time of year when we get to play in the dirt again! Are you as excited to get out there as I am?!

WHO IS A HOMESTEADER?

A Quote from the Homesteaders of America Organization: “A homesteader can be anyone who wants to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle—whether it’s in a high rise apartment, or on a 100-acre ranch.” 

I love that! AND do you know what that means? You can be one too! Right where you live, right now! There’s one way you can join us in being homesteaders! Become more aware of the quality of food you are sustaining YOUR family with! You can start with just 1 or 2 large pots of soil and a few tomato, cucumber & pepper plants in them or some fresh herbs growing right outside your back door — or even your front door! 🪴🫑🍅🥒 

SPRING IS Garden Time! THERE ARE SO MANY CHOICES OF WHAT YOU CAN GROW!

MY FAVORITE HERBS!

The herbs I like to grow most are chives, mint, curly parsley, basil, oregano and rosemary.
You have time to get your supplies! Pick up some seeds or little plants, a couple of containers & a big bag of potting soil and get ready to dig in with us! You could even use inexpensive plastic buckets from your local big box store. Just drill a few holes in the bottoms for drainage.

NEW CONTAINERS OF FLOWERS TO BRIGHTEN THE ENTRANCE

I recently shared some tips for planting flowers in containers in this SMH YouTube Video! I was planting pansies that day but the tips I shared will also apply to planting veggies and herbs! I picked up a few new rustic-style GALVANIZED METAL PAILS and BUSHEL BASKETS and also got a neat looking GALVANIZED CHICKEN FEEDER to plant flowers in that would work great for strawberry plants or herbs too! I’ll have to share a picture of that soon once I decide what to plant in it! I love my GALVANIZED METAL FARMHOUSE WATERING CAN that I used in the video. Check out my PLANTING SPRING FLOWERS VIDEO and give it a green thumbs up if you like it! I’d sure appreciate it!

PREPPING THE VEGGIE GARDEN SOIL

We have been busy in the vegetable garden the past couple weekends. How about you? One weekend we had lots of weeding to do, compost to work in with the pitchfork, and Martin even built a couple more raised beds so we can expand the variety of things we want to grow this year! He shows how easy it is to make them in THIS VIDEO!

Here’s some family fun from the weekend with our kids & grandkids preparing a new raised garden bed for their own veggies. These sweet little people had fun playing in the dirt! Who needs a sandbox?! lol

“Green Bean Tunnel” AND TRELLISES

It’s still too cold here in Maryland to put seedlings outside but we’ll be sharing that here in about a month! I’ll be putting some seeds in the ground soon for Green Beans, Sugar Snap Peas and 4 kinds of Cucumbers! The beans will be planted along both sides of our 8’ long green bean tunnel and peas will be planted on each side of the A-frame trellis.

Last year we left grass (and weeds) growing between the beds, and Martin weed whacked it because the riding mower we have won’t fit between. That spread the weed seeds far and wide! They were so terrible that I just couldn’t keep up, so somewhere around the end of July I said “Uncle!” and just stopped pulling them! The veggie plants were already well rooted and it really didn’t hinder them at all. Check out all the tomatoes on those plants (AND THE WEEDS! LOL) in the photo below!

Weeds AND MORE WEEDS! OH MY!

Whenever I cleaned out the chicken coop over the winter, I put the soiled wood shavings (& manure) on top of the garden beds to fertilize and smother out the weeds. Well, it didn’t work! They grew all winter anyway so we had to pull and rake them out by hand. It took both us most of a whole day!

Check out all my sweet little feathered helpers! They had the best time scratching and digging around in the dirt! It was so fun to watch them.

Our beds are 4’ wide x 16’ long. It’s just wide enough to plant a row on each side and still be able to reach your veggies at harvest time too.

EASY TO BUILD RAISED GARDEN BEDS

Update: Check out this YouTube Video of Martin showing how he built these simple raised beds for our garden. It’s a project you can do with a few simple carpentry tools like a circular saw, tape measure and a hammer or cordless impact driver.

PLANS FOR WEED CONTROL IN 2021

Then we installed weed block fabric on top of each raised bed and keep the weeds from getting anywhere near our planting beds, we are going to put mulch in the aisles this year! Yay! 🎉 I’m so excited about this addition! It’s looking really sharp and should be so much easier to maintain! The water soaks right through very easily, in case you’re wondering about that!

I found some beautiful summer squash and zucchini plants at an Amish farm the other day for only $2 each! I couldn’t wait to plant them, but I know if have more frost we’ll need to cover them to try and protect them. I hope they’ll be ok! Our kale, cabbage and brussels sprouts are already planted too, but a mild frost shouldn’t hurt them since they are fairly cold hardy.

I LOVE MULCH!

I can’t even tell you how much I love mulch! lol Isn’t it pretty?! We had a load of hardwood mulch delivered to put in between the garden beds. First I raked the wood chips off the garden beds and they’ll be the base for under the mulch. I hope this will help to naturally kill some of the weeds and grass because I don’t want to spray any grass killer near our veggie garden and it’s too cold for chemicals right now anyway. Let’s get spreading!

I’ll also use a handful or two of mulch in each plant hole we make to keep weeds down, keep moisture in the soil for less frequent watering, and this will also improve the soil as it breaks down over time.

STURDY TRELLISES MAKE GARDENING SO MUCH EASIER!

Martin made these trellises for me last year out of cattle panels! They will last a lifetime! I love the galvanized metal and they’re extremely sturdy to hold the heaviest plants! Is the 3rd year I use them and we have moved them around to different beds each year. The green bean tunnel is on the left and cucumber trellis is on the right. They are super sturdy and make harvesting the beans and peas very easy. I’ll be planting our cucumber seeds along each side of this 4’ tall x 16” cattle panel in a few weeks.

HANDY LINKS FOR YOU!

Here’s the WHAT WE USE in the GARDEN link. Check it out if you need some supplies to get going! I’ve included things like the WEED BLOCK FABRIC and LONG METAL STAPLES we used for this project. The GALVANIZED METAL BUSHEL BASKET and a GALVANIZED METAL FARMHOUSE WATERING CAN and hand tools like mine are there too! Check out the pretty gardening HAND TOOL & BAG SET! There is also a beautiful GARDEN GIFT SET I would recommend with a beautiful carry bag for your Mom or Wife (or Yourself!) for Mother’s Day!

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HOLIDAYS MAKE LIFE SPECIAL

We are so blessed to have all three of our kids and all six of our grandkids coming to visit us for Easter this year! We have a nice dinner planned with a small spiral-sliced ham and a turkey breast and some veggie sides. Our son-in-law who is a great cook will be helping me put it all together! I’m so thankful for my wonderful family, but I’ll definitely be missing my parents, brothers and niece this year.

Of course we will also host our big Egg Hunt for all the kiddos! This should be really fun because this will be the first year they are all together for the Egg Hunt. This is also the first time that ALL six of the grandbabies are together ever! Thanks to Covid for keeping us apart since the two newest members of the clan were just born in 2020!

Each year Easter reminds us that we are loved beyond measure. I like to take time to reflect on all the wonderful blessings I have to be grateful for. I hope you too feel blessed in this time of rejuvenation and renewal. I hope you feel loved and have sweet people in your life to love as well. That’s the best feeling!

Spring is here and there are so many beautiful reasons to be happy! Thanks for joining me today here on the Blog! I hope your week and your holiday will be wonderful. See you again soon!

Truly,

“Always believe something beautiful is about to happen.” Author Unknown