Your Manure Pile — For Fuel, Fertilizer, and Maybe Even Improved Water Quality, You...
By Rev. J.D. Hooker
Issue #87 • May/June, 2004
It's been well over a decade now since I first heard my friend Pete voice his amazement at my practice of spreading animal manure as a fertilizer....
The Home Citrus Orchard
By Anita Evangelista
Issue #81 • May/June, 2003
It may seem like an impossible dream if you live outside of southern Florida, California, or Texas, but you can grow a home "backyard" orchard of oranges, lemons,...
Gardening Tips and Tricks
By Charles Sanders
Issue #99 • May/June, 2006
Gardeners are an ingenious lot. Trial and error, time, study, observation, and experience all help us to come up with ideas that result in better gardens, more produce,...
Caring for your chickens in winter
By Jackie Clay-Atkinson
As winter approaches, we all are thinking of ways to make our livestock and poultry as comfortable as possible when the cold weather hits. Visions of blowing and drifting snow swirl in...
Secure and Economical Livestock Feed
By Sherry Willis
Issue #145 • January/February, 2014
The recent droughts in the midwest have meant hard times for many livestock owners. Areas without irrigation saw parched earth without a scrap of green anywhere. Corn withered...
Build a Composter
By Charles Sanders
Issue #170 • March/April, 2018
As with most of the other facets of homesteading, composting can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish to make it. One of the easiest ways...
Testing Soil
By Tom Kovach
Issue #119 • September/October, 2009
Testing the soil content of a garden is very important and is quite easy to do. Soil tests are needed because some plants prefer slightly acidic soil, while...
No Worrying About Fire Blight with Orient and Kieffer Pears
By Alice B. Yeager
Issue #52 • July/August, 1998
Everyone likes a good success story, and if I were called upon to name the most successful tree in our small orchard I'd have to say it's...
Grow Your Own Dishrags
By Alice B. Yeager
Photos by James O. Yeager
Issue #85 • January/February, 2004
Some of us are thrifty beyond measure, even growing our own dishrags. None of those flimsy, store bought cotton things for us. Our...
Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever
By Lisa LaFreniere
Issue #62 • March/April, 2000
Bush Beans, or snap beans as they're sometimes referred to, are a growing favorite among many gardeners, and with good reason. Beans are high in vitamins A, C...
Build an Old-Fashioned Hotbed and Start Your Seeds in Style
By Roy Martin
Issue #104 • March/April, 2007
A hotbed is a miniature greenhouse that is heated to protect new seedlings from cold. The hotbed differs from a cold frame in that it has an internal...
Sweet Potato Greens
By Tim Scullen
Issue #168 • November/December, 2017
By now, you’ve no doubt figured out how good chard, spinach, and kale are for you. But did you know that sweet potato leaves are loaded with vitamins...
Mid-season planting
By Jackie Clay-Atkinson
As the saying goes “Life happens…” Maybe events have kept you from getting your garden planted early in the spring. When we moved to New Mexico, it was in late June and...
Tracing a bean
By Wren Everett
The beans came to me as an accident.
In the early spring of 2023, I was scouring The Exchange (exchange.seedsavers.org/home) — an online seed-savers trading post of sorts — looking for squash seeds....
Raised Bed Gardening — Neat and Productive
By Alice B. Yeager
Issue #74 • March/April, 2002
Are you tired of raising a big row crop gardenone that keeps you busy from dawn until dusk? Do you really need to raise enough vegetables to...
Grow Garlic and Reap Health Benefits
By Alice B. Yeager
Photos by James O. Yeager
Issue #98 • March/April, 2006
Garlic is one of our oldest herbs on record. Anyone can grow garlic without having to hover over it, hoping that it produces....
