Backyard Homesteading

A Back-to-Basics Guide to Self-Sufficiency

David Toht

• Publisher: Creative Homeowner
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781607654414
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Sustainable Agriculture
• Index: Technology & Engineering

A simple guide to growing fruits, vegetables, nuts & berries, raising chickens, goats, & bees, and making beer, wine, & cider from your backyard. If you want to take control of the food you eat and the products you use, Backyard Homesteading will help you learn how to do it—even if you live in an urban or suburban house on a typical-size lot. Inside, you'll discover how to turn a yard into a productive and wholesome "homestead" that allows you to grow your own fruits and vegetables and raise farm animals, including chickens and goats. You'll also find the laws and regulations of raising livestock in populated areas, as well as ways to use and preserve the bounty your land produces. GETTING STARTED

• Benefits of pure food
• Family recreation
• Local regulations
• Potential yields and savings

RAISING VEGETABLES AND HERBS

• Garden planning/layout
• Structures/irrigation
• Vegetable profiles
• Planting techniques
• Composting/healthy soil
• Seasonal gardening

GROWING FRUITS, BERRIES, AND NUTS

• Planting fruit trees and bushes
• Fruit profiles
• Organic pest control
• Grafting and pruning
• Harvesting methods

RAISING CHICKENS

• The joy of chickens
• Collecting eggs
• Care and feeding tips
• Other small animals

RAISING GOATS

• Benefits of goat milk
• Structures/fencing
• Care and feeding tips
• Other large animals

BEEKEEPING

• Benefits of beekeeping
• Care and harvesting
• Building hives
• Collecting honey

HARVEST HOME

• Canning/drying/freezing
• Making beer, wine, cider
• Making jerky, sausage
• Making jams, jellies
• Pickling/salting/smoking
• Building root cellars

2
Raising Vegetables and Herbs

Deciding What to Grow

Timing

Preparing the Ground

Improving Your Soil

Testing Your Soil

Planting Your Vegetable Plots

Hardiness/Heat-Zone Maps

Saving Seed

Preventing Weeds, Pests, Diseases

Vegetables, Plant by Plant

Gardening through the Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall

Herbs

Common Herbs, Plant by Plant

A VEGETABLE PATCH WILL BE THE CENTERPIECE of your farmstead, producing bushels of fresh, wholesome food with only a modest amount of effort on your part. By growing your own, you know exactly what went into your food, and you get to enjoy a degree of freshness and variety almost unattainable otherwise. You’ll also find that you have saved a bundle compared with what you’d pay at the grocery store or farmers’ market. Added to that, you’ll find gardening is great exercise and an ideal antidote to the computer screen many of us are chained to in our working life.

Deciding What to Grow

Begin choosing what to grow by making a list of the vegetables that your family eats most frequently and the approximate number of heads or pounds that you use each week. The table “How Much Should You Plant?” (on page 36) lists approximate amounts of each vegetable that the average adult eats each year and the space required to produce that quantity, figured on both a row-foot and a bed-foot basis.

Next, order some seed catalogs. You can find all the information you need on-line. (See Resources, page 238 for seed suppliers.), However, you might enjoy engaging in the fine old tradition of perusing seed catalogs on cold winter nights. Make a point of including catalogs from seed suppliers located in your region. As you read, note disease resistance and seasonal or cultural recommendations. Try to steer clear of plant varieties that are said to “ripen uniformly.” This means that the crop has been bred for the convenience of commercial growers; it may taste good, but the flavor is secondary to the harvest characteristics. Good seed catalogs guide you by letting you know what cultivars perform best in your area and in the different parts of the season. Make a list of your favorites, but hold off on ordering until you’ve made a garden plan. It’s easy to get carried away.

Growing your own vegetables allows you to be nearly as choosy as you want to be. However, if you grow exactly the same thing in the same spot every year, certain weeds, pests, and diseases will build up. So if you want to grow nothing but Brussels sprouts (or sweet corn), you’ll need to find four different places to grow your favorite crop so that you can “rotate,” or change its location, each year for four years. If you grow a more varied assortment of crops, however, you can set up a rotation system that puts each crop in a different part of the garden over a four-year cycle.

Mapping the Garden

Map your vegetable garden so that you can place plants that are good companions adjacent to each other and keep poor companions far apart from each other. Consider successive plantings of each crop so that you’ll have enough space in the right place when you need it. Make notes about planting depth and distances between plants to aid in planting. Save your maps from year to year so that you’ll be able to rotate crops every year for at least four years.

How Much Should You Plant?

Companion Planting

Plants exert strong influences over each other. They release chemical compounds from their roots and aboveground tissues that affect other plants as well as insects and microorganisms. Some of these effects are directly beneficial, as in the case of a substance exuded by the root that stimulates the growth or flavor of a nearby plant. Other companion planting effects are indirectly beneficial, as in the case of a flower that serves as a nectar source for an insect that preys on the pest insects of neighboring plants. Still other companion planting effects are negative, as in the case of a root exudant that inhibits the growth or flavor of another plant. The table “Companion Plant Influences,” on page 38, lists the effects of combining vegetables with each other as well as some weeds, herbs, and flowering plants.

Succession Planting

Plan successive plantings right from the beginning. Short-season crops, such as lettuce, can follow other short-season crops. If the soil is very fertile, you can simply replant the area. But it’s often best to apply at least ½ inch of compost, a light dusting of alfalfa or soybean meal, or a balanced organic bagged fertilizer for the second crop. Work the material into the top couple of inches of soil a week or so before direct-seeding or a few days before transplanting.

An alternative to composting is to grow a green manure (frost-tolerant annual grasses, grains, or legumes such as oats or fava beans, which can be planted in the early spring) until it is time to plant the crop. If you are planting later in the summer, use a tender crop such as buckwheat. Two weeks before planting the vegetables, till in the green manure.

Crop Rotation

Certain crops deplete or replenish particular nutrients in the soil, and some pests and diseases are drawn to soils where their favorite hosts have recently grown. By rotating your crops you can vary the soil nutrient requirements as well as minimize potential pests and diseases. It boils down to two essential principles. First, leave at least four years between planting members of the same plant family in the same spot. Second, follow heavy feeders, such as corn and squash, with light feeders like beets, beans, or peas. Specifically, here is a proven plant-by-plant rotation:

■ Follow deep-rooted crops, such as broccoli, with shallow-rooted crops, such as onions.

■ Potatoes follow sweet corn.

■ Sweet corn follows the cabbage family.

■ Cabbage family crops, undersown with legumes, follow peas.

■ Peas follow tomatoes.

■ Tomatoes, undersown with a nonhardy green oat manure, follow beans.

■ Beans follow root crops.

■ Root crops follow squash or potatoes.

■ Squashes follow potatoes.

Timing

If you plant all of your lettuce in the first week of April, it will all mature at the same time. Rather than plant everything at once, experienced growers plant small amounts of each of the short-season crops all through the season. Most people take a few years to develop a “starting schedule” appropriate to their climate and chosen cultivars...