Written by Katie on March 6, 2019

Heritage Homestead 2019 Garden

This is the second year that Heritage Homestead has existed. Heritage Homestead began when we bought our current house with little over 5 acres. It is our dream to use our property to provide our family with healthy food. Produce, eggs, milk and meat. We also hope to help our friends and community in whatever ways YHVH shows us. There are all kinds of possibilities when you trust YHVH to guide. Since I am the one in charge of the gardens, I thought I’d share with you the gardening goals I have for Heritage Homestead this year.

Last year we spent most the spring and summer cleaning up our overgrown yard. I planted a small vegetable garden that was not successful due to lack of time and attention. Plus, the goats ate anything that did come up, including my pumpkins. I was ready to try eating goat meat that day. They made up for it with their cute kids so, I guess its ok now. In short we had a great year working on the yard and a poor year in produce. We still have work to do on the yard, especially in the orchard. But, we have enough done that I hope to plant a nice sized garden this year. I’ll be sure to keep the goats out this time too.

The main gardening focus for this spring is to plant the strawberry bed(s).

Eventually, we want to make fruit our main selling product along with eggs. The previous owners of our house had huge flower beds surrounding the house and throughout the yard. Unfortunately, like the orchard the flowerbeds were also overgrown with gnarly bushes, weed trees, tall grasses, and prickly plant. I salvaged the plants I wanted and killed the rest so we could start fresh. I spent most of last summer fixing up the flowerbeds I wanted to keep. By the end of the summer, I was so sick of flowers that I decided to make the last bed into a strawberry patch. I asked Mom if she liked the idea and she did. I have always wanted to have a yard where every plant is edible or serves a purpose and now I can do that. So the flowerbeds are actually going to be our strawberry patch. We may also put a second patch in the backyard.

The second focus this year is the pumpkin patch.

I started my pumpkin patch last year and it went great until the goats ate everything that is. I’m hoping the pumpkins will do well again this year. I think if we can keep the goats from getting them they will pretty much take care of themselves.

Lastly is the vegetable garden.

We plan to only grow veggies for our own family at this point. We aren’t planning to sell from our veggie garden unless we get excess. Here is the list of the veggies I plan to plant this year.

Tomatoes (for canning)

peppers (spicy and sweet)

Zucchini for mom

Cucumbers for chickens (grandma makes us pickles, so we don’t have to do that)

Green beans

Peas

varieties of Lettuce (Paris island Romaine is my favorite)

Spinach

Carrots ( I usually end up eating them before they make it to the house)

Radishes (again I munch on these while I work outside)

Green onion chives

Other than these I will plant herbs and flowers throughout the gardens that benefit the plants.

Such as marigolds, basil, dill, thyme, sunflowers, and possibly more depending on my budget and what I have in stock.

Plans for the orchard.

First we need to get the three pine trees out of our yard. I have no idea why the previous owners planted the orchard behind the pines. The apple trees are in poor shape because they haven’t had enough sunlight. We hope once the pines are out of the way that the apple trees will have enough sunlight to produce fruit. The pear trees are not in the same place as the mini orchard and they have been doing well since we trimmed them way down last year. I think the two peach trees we planted when we moved in were killed by the goats. If you can’t tell the goats and I have a love/hate relationship. I think this year we will still be focused on cleaning up the orchard. Maybe by fall we will have enough done to plant some new trees. We will see.

Other than those main areas we also have Raspberries, Blackberries, and grapes in our yard that need tending. We hope to build a hoopa type structure for our main grape Vines to grow on. The fence they are on now is falling apart. We also hope to add blueberries and more raspberries to the yard. I will continue to add to the huge flowerbeds in hopes that they start to look full. We will see what happens.

What are you planning for this year’s garden?

Tyler

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