Picture this: It’s a beautiful Spring morning. The sun’s shining and your seedlings, lovingly grown under the perfect conditions for weeks, are ready to make the move outside. You transplant them into the perfect spot in your garden, water generously, and walk away to let mother nature do her thing. Only to be crushed to find weak or dying plants at the end of the day. And with them your dreams of Spring salads and fresh Summer tomatoes....
Starting seeds indoors in a seed tray is a surprisingly simple process. In fact, they grow perfectly happily in an inert medium like seed starting mix that contains no available plant food. That’s because all the food they need to start life is stored in the seed itself, made available in the form of cotyledon - “false” or “seed” leaves present on the seedling at germination. When to Start Fertilizing Seedlings Cotyledons and sterile planting mediums can only take your seedlings so far....
Planting your garden from seeds is a terrific choice. Not only are seeds unbelievably less expensive than store-bought seedlings, seed packets are your portal to a world of seemingly endless plant varieties. Planting from seeds is simple to start too; a humble seed tray and a south-facing window is a surprisingly effective combination. In other words, you absolutely don’t need a dedicated system complete with grow lights, heat mats, and timers to start planting from seeds!...
Are you ready to convert that patch of unused grass to a food-producing garden? Or maybe you just moved to a new home with space to make your gardening dream a reality at last? No matter the catalyst, it’s always a great idea to grow more of your own food. Unfortunately, the goal of growing meaningful quantities of food at home has unfairly gained a reputation for being too complex. And that’s a bit of a tragedy....
Growing plants vertically is one of the absolute best ways to maximize production from a small space. And most food gardeners know it. Despite this, the humble yard fence is often left forlorn and bare or obfuscated with ornamental bushes. At Nextdoor Homestead, we’re all about lowering that food bill and leveraging an existing structure like a fence is a great way to harvest more food without spending any money....