Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living

As more and more households move toward self-sufficiency, there’s a pressure to be able to grow it all, right in your own backyard. If you live in a particularly warm or cold hardiness zone, though, there are certain things that ...

It’s intriguing to watch a small group of deer prance through the yard, until they decide to stay. I remember planting a small orchard of mixed fruit trees — apples, pears and peaches. They were saplings with a trunk about ...

Also known as snap beans for their distinct “snapping” sound when ripe, bush beans are the most popular home-grown beans for novice and expert gardeners alike. They also are easy to grow. As an added bonus, these plants tend to ...

Gardening season is well under way, which means it is time to think about mulching. Instead of running to your local lawn and garden store, though, consider organic mulch choices, which are readily available and provide more benefits than basic ...

We gardeners are a frugal lot. Few of us would throw out seeds that we don’t use. Whether there are too many seeds in the packages we buy (and we don’t plant them all), or whether we save our own ...

The question came during a car ride to the annual co-op tree sale, when my farm apprentice asked one of our passengers, a seasoned self-described permaculturist, for a definition of what she did. After a few halting starts describing site-planning ...

As a professional gardener and farmer, one of the questions I field most frequently from people sounds something like this: “I have XYZ in my garden … how can I kill it?” Usually, this refers to some form of insect. ...

Each growing season brings a new opportunity to create a fantastic garden, but every year also brings its own learning opportunities and challenges. The best way to make the most out of these challenges is to remember them so that ...

Most potatoes we eat today have 100 percent less vitamin A than potatoes did in the 1950s. One hundred percent. That may sound unbelievable, but it doesn’t end there. An analysis of nutritional records done by Canada’s national newspaper found ...

Self-sufficient gardeners avoid the use of pre-packaged fertilizers and soil from the store. But chances are you have plenty of items in your house that can be used to fertilize your garden, saving you money and time – and giving ...