Garden & Homestead
A Unique DIY Tomato Trellis Design
Over the years I've grown a lot of tomatoes. In the process, you can imagine I've developed my own way of doing things and stumbled upon "what works for me." This year we are building a DIY tomato trellis that checks all the boxes and I can't wait to take it for a...
Get an Early Start on Dahlias With Pots
Sure, it's a little more work to start dahlias early, but these flowers are worth it! This little potting up technique I'm sharing today is a great way to get a head start on the season and makes sense for gardeners who are trying to use their space intensively too....
My Garage Indoor Seed Starting Setup~ 2022
It has been hard to resist starting Summer seeds, but it's finally time to prepare and get going! This year, the biggest change is going to be growing seeds under grow lights for the very first time. Due to space constraints in my home, this will be a garage seed...
Shade Cloth vs Row Cover ~ A Garden Update for Fall
To set the stage: it's mid-October 2021. The weather has been all over the place. In the last few weeks it was 100 degrees, followed by sudden rainstorms (and hail!), and has recently settled into "ideal" Fall gardening temperatures with chilly mornings and day temps...
Propagating Passion Fruit To Create More Vines
Some big transformations are about to happen in our backyard homestead. The passion fruit vines we have had for over four years overtook a weak trellis to the point that it is falling over---creating an unmanageable jungle---and need to be completely re-designed. To...
Protecting Fruit in an Backyard Garden
It's the beginning of July, and the garden is rewarding me for months, arguably years, of planning and hard work. All the fruits we planted in the last few years are finally producing and giving us a taste of how our backyard homestead will be in the coming years. The...
A Native Garden Designed for Pollinators
Bring on the pollinators! Six years of gardening in this space and we FINALLY got around to this empty patch of grass in our backyard. For the last few years I've been interested in CA native plants, so when the opportunity came to create a new garden space in our...
How to Test Seed Viability & Germinate Seeds Quickly
It's seed starting season! What an exciting time of year for gardeners! Today I'm going to share a quick and easy way to kickstart the germination process using a paper towel or coffee filter. This is also a simple test for seed viability if you aren't sure your seeds...
Meet Randi
