Humble Garden

I wrote previously about our cold frames. I thought I would show you a few shots from around the garden showing those raised beds as well as the others.

Its been VERY cold here and very overcast so the garden has been in stasis. Today its sunnier and I expect our bush beans to explode this weekend!

Cabbage with companion dill

Baby kale, bok choy, chamomile, and mesclun lettuces

Sprouting organic open pollinated soybean plant

Tomatoes and peppers

Some of our tomatoes

If you have ever delved into the homesteading “how to” book world, you will find that the best of this genre is able to expose you to enough information so that you have a sense for how to go deeper into any one subject. This is because homesteading can encompass a broad spectrum of skills that each require some good amount of book reading and a whole lot of practical experience.

Today I have an opportunity to review one such book, The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan and published by Storey Publishing, LLC.

Carleen was born into a self sufficiency oriented family and had the opportunity to grow up eating homegrown foods. She lives this way now and brings a comfortable even keeled passion to the subject in this book.

The book has a beautiful cover, graced by some neo-primitive design that welcomes you in. The book is information dense but not difficult to read and you can quickly glean what you were after when you opened it. The illustrations are a perfect fit, filled with little details but all relevant and simple. As an artist, I tend to focus on these sorts of things and I find these pen and ink vignettes a perfect pairing with the text.

One of the premises of the book, expressed on the front cover, is that you can “produce all the food you need on a 1/4 acre”. Obviously, this completely depends on what zone you live in and what sort of diet you eat.

The back cover says that on that 1/4 acre you can yield:

(Early cabbage and spinach)

Today I am going to share an update of the few things that are growing out in the garden. Its been cold here until recently so only the brassicas and very well protected tomatoes have gone out!

Ages ago I started the early cabbage, kale and bok choi as seedlings inside the house.

(Cabbage seedlings)

(Cabbages transplanted to larger potlets)

Then they were transplanted outside to endure freezing temps, snow, ice, freezing rain, really cold rain, smothering under plastic.

(Tiny seedlings in bed)

(Temporary cold frames)