Wondering about the best place to buy vegetable seeds? Learn everything you need to know about sourcing open pollinated vs heirloom seeds here to grow yourself a successful, resilient garden.

Thinking about your fall garden? Here’s expert advice on planting and growing fall garden crops, including a fall garden planting schedule.

In this excerpt from the book Root Cellaring (1991), learn about some of the best root cellar ideas and tips to get the most out of storing your vegetables and fruits.

Choose bolt and frost-resistant late-summer vegetables for fall vegetable planting to keep your vegetable garden productive through fall.

Sow the four best summer cover crops for fast-growing, weed-suppressing soil builders in any patch possible, even during your prime gardening season.

How deep should a raised garden bed be? Raised garden bed layers less than 8 inches tall will stunt plant growth. Choose 8 inches or taller. Here’s why.

Many of us foster the dream of owning a small farm somewhere, the garden bursting with ripe vegetables and well-fed animals providing milk, eggs, and meat. The COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on people’s lifestyles may be cultivating that dream for more and more people. At the end of 2020, Gallup found in a poll that almost half of Americans (48 percent) say they would prefer to live in a small town or rural area, up significantly from 39 percent in 2018. But no matter how many people carry this dream, the realities of living in a rural area and taking care of a farm are just not practical for everyone. So what if you choose to stay in an urban or suburban area? Is your dream over?

Being a lifelong gardener means being a lifelong learner — and the learning process can be one of the most exciting aspects of growing your own food. Each year, you’ll build your knowledge bank based on experience and the gardening advice of others, and then apply new techniques as you enjoy bigger and better harvests.

Planting a seed is a sacred way for a hungry soul to walk the path back to their ancestors and reconnect with the Earth. Each seed is a gift in our hands, given to us by the generations of farmers before us who held the ancestors of that seed. As modern seed keepers, we stand upon the shoulders of those farmers, and we must ensure future generations will know these seeds. Our gardens are the legacy of those farmers — their seed song. These seeds are our ancestors’ ecological knowledge that we’re tasked with holding at this moment in time.

InThe Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner (Story Publishing, 2017) by Ann Larkin Hansen, she believes in working with natural processes and cycles rather than against them. She shows that doing activities and processes in the proper season, when it would naturally occur or when conditions make the job most efficient, is the best way to spread work evenly though the year.

Looking for a few good fruit trees for beginners? Get tips for pruning fruit trees, how to manage pests and how to plant your fruit trees.

Although some fruit trees don’t grow well in the southern U.S., growing persimmon trees in the South is relatively easy and well worth it.

Apples are ready to pick when the skin color deepens and the fruit comes away easily from the tree. The presence of windfalls is a good indication that fruits are ready to pick. Not all apples are ready at the same time, so pick regularly as individual clusters become ripe. Apples at the sides and top of the tree will usually ripen first because they receive more sunlight. If in doubt — taste one!

Discover which varieties of the American persimmon tree bear the tastiest fruit and learn how to properly plant and care for them.

Whether you’re clearing weeds from your vegetable plot, pruning perennials, or potting herbs for your kitchen window, precautions will ensure a successful experience. Any gardener with a season under their belt can attest to the importance of planning and proper protection for the variety of outdoor unknowns. I’ve learned the hard way from many hidden gardening hazards, and I’m not the only one. Avoid gardening safety hazards such as sun, poison ivy, bugs, and more with these garden safety tips.

Discover the essential gardening tools for running a small-scale farm, including walk-behind tractors, European hand tools, and the modern wheel hoe.

Anthropologists often say that humankind went “from bow to hoe” when switching from hunting and gathering to growing food. Garden hoes were probably the first gardening tools, made from sticks, antlers, bone and stone. Then as now, hoes were indispensable for shaping soil and controlling weeds. Every gardener needs at least one good hoe, and most serious gardeners use several. Hoes vary in the types of work they are designed to do, so the challenge is to choose the best hoes for the tasks that await in your garden. For a chart of which hoes work best for which tasks, check out Choose the Right Hoe for the Job.

When is it best to sow seeds indoors for transplanting outdoors later, and when is it best to sow them directly into the ground? Some crops grow better when started one way or the other. Sometimes, the weather, or even your equipment, will make all the difference. Here’s my list of pros and cons for both planting methods, based on my nearly three decades of experience growing vegetables in central Virginia.

Making inexpensive row covers and low tunnels for season extension and natural pest control can be easy and affordable.

Every visit to the garden center takes you past a wide array of new tools and gadgets that seem to be just what you need to make gardening easier. By now you should realize that we are old-fashioned; we think you need only a few tools to have a good garden. The first part of this chapter is a summary of our thoughts and those of our gardening friends as to what you really need. In compiling this we discovered that there is no real uniformity about what the various tools should be called. It seems likely that the tool manufacturers have their own set of terms. Well, they did not write this chapter, and we use terms that local gardeners know.

Hank Will, editorial director for MOTHER EARTH NEWS, has always had a place for Kershaw’s folding knives in his kit. Among the several models Hank uses, he finds the Link, with its SpeedSafe assisted opening, perfect for cutting the twine off large round hay bales while he’s feeding his sheep. “The knife holds an edge, opens and closes with ease, and clips securely in my pocket,” Hank says. “The BlackWash blade finish looks great and the works feel wonderful in my hand.” Because this knife has an aluminum handle, it’s the only folder Hank uses to process chickens.

Fiskars now offers a line of clearing implements, including a billhook, a billhook saw, a hatchet, a machete, and a machete axe — all great for clearing out and trimming up anything from brush to branches. Fiskars new garden tools’ sharp blades come with rust-resistant coating and are shaped for easy swinging, sawing, and push-pull motions, and the handle design even makes performing these actions with one hand simple.

Where would we be without our trusty gardening tools? With a little tender loving care, there’s no reason they shouldn’t last for many years. You can easily maintain your gardening tools to keep them as good as new. Keep the following tips in mind.

My husband and I volunteer with the local fire department. I noticed that the medical team was using heat-reflective emergency blankets to keep victims warm. I snagged an empty package and read, “Emergency Blanket: 52 by 82 inches; reusable; can offset hypothermic reactions; reflects sun; retains up to 90 percent of body heat; for emergencies, camping, sporting events and more!”

I just love the Fiskars company! They continue to apply their superb tool-design skills and bring us improvements to classic garden equipment. This time, they’ve hit a home run with their dual-handled Easy-Pour Watering Can. Every garden needs at least one watering can, but when a large traditional can is full, it can be a challenge to balance it while watering. Fiskars has solved this drawback by giving us a can with a traditional handle, plus a second handle that is hinged to allow you to easily tip the spout without wrestling against the weight of the water. And they didn’t stop there. The Fiskars can’s “rose” (the perforated sprinkling attachment at the end of the spout) is adjustable from sprinkling to solid stream, without removing (and potentially losing) the rose. You just turn the rose 180 degrees and it switches from sprinkling to a steady stream. Turn it another 180 and you’re back to sprinkling again. Brilliant work, folks! We look forward to more Fiskars high-quality tools in the future. The Easy Pour holds 2.6 gallons and costs about $20.

If you’re a female gardener who finds the average shovel just a little too large and awkward, you’ll appreciate the innovative HERS shovel-spade hybrid made by Green Heron Tools. This Pennsylvania-based company specializes in ergonomic tools for women, and offers a range of implements?—?from wheel hoes to hand plows?—?made to work well for those with smaller frames.

Learn how to prune like a pro with pinching and pruning to increase yield while coaxing plants into fullness or lankiness.

From growing fruits and vegetables to churning butter and raising chickens, The Backyard Homestead (Storey Publishing, 2009), edited by Carleen Madigan, has all of the how-to information that you need to make a wide array of food items. In this excerpt from Chapter 2: Backyard Fruits and Nuts, Madigan explains how to grow strawberries — the one fruit that she says every homesteader should cultivate.