Homegrown Liberty Podcast

Building Raised Garden Beds

Nick,

Over the years, have you made any significant modifications to your “7-layer cake” approach to building beds using

wetted cardboard

I recently moved and need to build some new beds. I also have a U-haul store’s worth of cardboard boxes at my disposal and a wet Mississippi winter to get these things built and primed for spring planting.

Thanks,

Dillon

Thanks for the question and it’s a timely one seeing as how I’m in the process of building a completely new garden space. The process you described above is closer to what I like to do for more of a broad area soil enrichment right before sheet mulching. This is what we did at Jack’s place to help build soil and make a lower pH zone for root development above the limestone slab that sits a couple inches below his soil surface. While not a bad method for starting a new garden space, not exactly what I prescribe for gardening.

For my raised beds this year I’ll be essentially doing what I describe in Episode 25 of my podcast titled “Expanding Your Garden”.  http://www.homegrownliberty.com/e0025-expanding-garden/If you follow those directions you should be well on your way to having some great soil. With that said, I’m going to be building some of my raised beds with wooden sides and set level and off contour so I can create a more flat, terraced garden space. The main reasons for this departure from my curving contour based earlier garden beds are twofold. I want to build raised beds with hardware attachment options so I can standardize on sizing for row covers and season extension. I’m setting up beds on a standard unit of 4’ wide by 8’ long. This way I can construct chicken tractors to work only a small section of garden bed, or place a similarly sized hoop structure and have a modular and standardized growing space. The other major factor is that my wife likes those straight lines, she wants it to be neat and ordered. And like I always say, “happy wife, happy life”. So I’m making straight line garden beds to make my wife happy and to make my life easier when it comes to modular gardening attachments for the raised beds.  

I’ll go into my raised garden prep ideas briefly here but if you want a write up that’s more thorough, check out episode 25 and also episode 46. http://www.homegrownliberty.com/4-steps-building-healthy-soil/

Basically all I do is this.

If you have established turf or grasses, there are a couple ways to deal with it. The best in my opinion is to solarize with clear plastic to kill the grass, roots, and weed seeds. Second best would be to flip the turf upside down and proceed, or lay down a couple layers of wet cardboard as a weed barrier. Side note, if you go with the cardboard option, you’ll need to either import more compost to make a deeper layer of growing space above the cardboard, or you’ll need to expose the cardboard, and plant your transplants into soil under the cardboard. The least desirable option is to treat the whole area with some kind of herbicide, preferably a concentrated vinegar solution over some synthetic herbicide but I think it’d probabl...

Can hay be used as a compost/mulch for the garden? Tune in to find out Nick's thoughts on the matter!

The post E0054 | 2018! Hay as Mulch for a Garden appeared first on Homegrown Liberty.

Today I'm addressing a question on propagating willows from cuttings. And since it may be easier for some people to understand all the steps easier through video, head over to my Patreon page to sign up and see a video with all the details on these methods. Much of the same info is applicable to tons of other types of plants as well. I’ll film that video this weekend and upload it next week! So go to patreon.com/homegrownliberty if you would like to see my video on how to do this!

One of the listeners has had some trouble getting black willow to root so I’ve been asked to chime in with how I would go about it!

I’ll give you two quick and easy methods you can try and then talk about the details of each.

Method #1: Stick as many cuttings as you’d like in some moist potting soil and wrap that container up in a white plastic trash bag, tie the top, and leave it in dappled shade for a couple months.

Method #2: Put all the cuttings in some water in a quart jar with an aquarium air pump blowing bubbles in the bottom of the jar.

Those are my quick answers, now here’s the details on how to take and prep the cuttings, followed by specific details on each method to make sure you have success.

To take the cuttings, get a sharp pair of pruning shears and a bucket of water or a jar if you prefer. Cut as much of the newest growth that is close to pencil diameter, no smaller than pencil lead. The smallest stuff won’t have enough embodied energy to root, the larger stems will have cells too stuck in their current role to differentiate and turn into root forming cells. So it’s best to take more young material.

To prep the cuttings, make sure all the cuttings are kept with the tip of the branch pointing up and the base of the branch pointing down. The technical term for the tip is the apical end, and the part that is closest to the roots is called the basal end. So it’s good practice to just make sure you always have the cuttings oriented correctly with the apical tip always up. Then strip all the leaves off, willows root quickly enough that you won’t need leaves, if you really want to, you can leave 1 or 2 leaves on each cutting but that likely won’t be needed. Keep the cuttings in water from the moment you take each cutting until it’s time to stick them in the rooting medium. It’s important to keep them wet or they’ll die.

For method 1, I’d go with a 3 gallon pot filled with a good loose potting mix like pro-mix, but any potting mix should work just fine. You can also use a white 5 gal bucket with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage. You’ll want a minimum of 8” of potting mix to make sure you maintain good moisture levels and so there’s enough of the wood in soil to root well.

Willows will root all along the whole stem of the cutting so for optimal success, I’d push each 8’-12” cutting ¾ into the potting mix.

After they are all stuck in the potting mix, water the whole thing well to close gaps between the cuttings and the potting mix and to ensure the mix is well moistened. Let it drain for a minute, then get a white plastic trash bag, not black or clear or anything else, white. This will allow enough light through to keep them alive but not let it heat up too much.

Tie the bag off lightly and suspend the bag above the pot or bucket so it doesn’t droop down and touch the cuttings, make it look like a teepee.

Place that whole setup in dappled shade. Direct sunlight will kill the plants, and full shade will promote rot, you want some dappled light to hit it for at least 2-4 hours of the day.

They should root in a few weeks to a month, as soon as they start putting on new growth that’s more than an inch, open the bag and check daily but leave them in the dappled light. Then after they are growing and rooted well, you can submerge the whole bucket or pot in a bucket of water to turn the potting mix into a slurry so you can remove the cuttings wi...

Welcome back to another episode of the homegrown liberty podcast! WHAAA? Yep I’m back for a special announcement. I want to extend a special opportunity to all my friends who stuck with me all last year and helped make my podcast a success. I am going to be launching my Patreon campaign soon, but I thought.. I should give you guys the first shot at this and give you all a special thank you for your support and encouragement. But before we get into all that, You’re probably wondering “What is all this? What is Nick talking about? Patrea-what?”

For several years now, my main source of income has been from traveling all over the USA doing consulting jobs. And there are lots of people who can afford to pay a professional to come and help them fix or avoid problems. Or to troubleshoot issues they’ve been having and to come up with some good solutions. Some people just need help figuring out how to start a homestead and lay things out smart, because if you don’t know enough to know what questions to ask, then it’s hard to get things going right from the start. Some of ya’ll are perfectionists like me and just need enough of a push to start doing something with the confidence gained from having someone who is supposed to know what they’re talking about, identify issues and help design a good layout. And I totally get that!  

I think I figured out a way to switch from mostly higher end and expensive consulting into giving away my time for free! But I’ll need your help to do it.

Today is the last episode of 2016 and our Year End Update!

I still haven’t bought a scale to weigh all the yield, but it really doesn’t matter, just bragging rights. What matters is that we raised her well, she lived in forest her whole life, and she got to absolutely pig out on a really nice white oak acorn drop this fall. The meat smelled fresh and clean, no odor except for a slight nuttiness. The leaf lard was so great that it was turning to liquid with body heat. It smelled slightly of acorns and pecans. Looking forward to rendering that for pastries this winter. We’re just very thankful for the harvest and the good food. I tell ya what, that stuff really fills ya up. Eating real, healthy food is amazing how it will satisfy with very little. We are realizing that unless we also have a whole beef in the freezer as well that one pig will not be enough to last us the whole year. I’m going to be experimenting with old fashioned meat preservation methods next time. I’d like to make some hams and old fashioned bacon, proscuitto, etc.. I want to be able to hang a lot of it in the pantry inside and not have so much taking up room in a freezer. A big goal is to get our electricity usage down as much as possible. One day I’d love to build us a more energy efficient home, earth bermed, with geothermal cooling and wood heat. We’ll still have an air conditioner to help on the hottest days. But My goal eventually is to become as independent of needing outside inputs as is reasonable.

Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 50, and today we’re talking about raising dairy goats for milk.

I’m doing this episode specifically at the request of one of the listeners, thanks for the suggestion Rich! I hope this info is helpful for everyone who has been considering adding some dairy goats to their small farm or homestead. It’s a lot of work but definitely worth it to have one more need met and covered by on farm production. Definitely a big thing in self-sufficiency to be able to not only keep larger animals on your property, but to meet the dairy needs of a family with on farm production. I started taking care of dairy goats when I was ten years old. My dad taught me how to drive his little white Datsun pickup truck and I would drive out to the goat barn to take care of the goats twice a day in all sorts of weather. At the time I really didn’t like the work, but I appreciate the experience and the lessons learned now that I’m older.

They convert brush and undesirable plants into a valuable product.

So those are just some of the main reasons that I could think of right off the top of my head. I’m sure I’m leaving out lots of good reasons, but I can’t just keep talking about it all day! We have specifics to cover here!

They are a powerful tool. That tool can be wielded with negligence, or care and forethought. If you can’t focus their energies to benefit you, they will do things that will make you want to cry.

We’re going to talk about lots of things today, and I hope I cover everything you need to know to get started with dairy goats. Things like infrastructure, such as a milk stanchion, housing and fencing. Equipment, like milking jars, buckets, milk filters. Milk quality and hygiene,

Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 49, and today I’m answering some listener questions on farming. There are lots of seniors in high school getting ready to graduate in the spring and they’ve been doing a lot of thinking about their future. Lots of them are wondering if going to college is worth the expense, the time, and the risk. So I’m going to throw some info at ya, talk about things from my experience. And give my thoughts on what I would do if I were to start over as a soon-to-be high school graduate.

It’s a frigid 32 degrees as I’m recording this episode but the fire is going in the wood stove so the office is at least tolerable. And tomorrow we are butchering Pigpig! It’s both a sad day and a happy one. Because an animal I raised from a baby is graduating to the freezer, I’m going to miss this one. But I will be very thankful to have not only bacon, but what I anticipate will be the best bacon I’ve ever eaten. She’s been eating very well this past month on acorns and leftover food scraps as well as fermented feed. She’s had a very comfy life, a much longer one than a normal pig, and will be treated with dignity and respect, and a whole lot of thankfulness for her service and sacrifice. And Titus who has been talking about “eating that pig” for months now will get some homemade bacon finally!

Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 48, and today I’m teaching you all about how to cold stratify seeds for planting in the spring! This is super timely right now as we are headed into winter and for some of the seeds you might want to start it could take months of cold stratification to get their germination parameters met for sprouting. So if you’re wanting to get a bunch of tree seedlings planted in the spring, then now is the time to start!

Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 47, and we’re doing something very different this week. I have some special people here sitting with me and we’re just going to have a conversation. This is thanksgiving week, and today is the day after thanksgiving. And when lots of people are out looking for good deals and shopping. We are spending time with family and thinking about what we are thankful for this year. So if you’re reading this, click on the podcast and check it out for the conversation with Nick, Catie, Titus and a few words by Asher who is 2 and a little shy of the microphone. This episode is just going to be us talking about what we are thankful for and having a little chat with the kids. We wanted to keep pretty family focused this week so we hope you are doing the same!

For questions or comments shoot me an email to [email protected] if you want to have me drop by for a couple hours and do a little bit of consulting. I’m planning on a Texas trip the beginning of December sometime.

Until next week

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always "Go Do Good Things"

The post E0047 | Thanksgiving 2016 appeared first on Homegrown Liberty.

Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 46, and we’re talking about Building Healthy Soil. This is one of those topics that always comes up and I’ve not done a great episode specifically on this topic, and gotten deep into it. I’ve done a couple episodes where I talked about building raised beds a bit, and how I do that, but never got real deep into the why for a lot of the particulars. So I figured now would be a good time to do a soils episode where I teach you a bunch about the principles and practices of good soil management.