The Rusted Garden Blog — Homestead

Starting garden plants indoors is rewarding on so many levels. It gives you something to do during the cold months and opens the door to  transplants of 1000s of varieties of plants you would never find at nurseries or your big box stores.  Not only that, it will save you a lot of money.  Even with the initial start up costs of buying lights, shelves and starting supplies, you save money. You can get a good 10 years out of lights now-a-days. The money you save starting you own plants will pay for itself in the first year. Instead of...

Bagged manures and composts are not always 100% fully composted or broken down. Many bagged products contain manures and compost that are still actively being broken down by soil microbes. This is important because we tend to assume these products are ready to be used in our garden beds and therefore we can immediately put plants into the freshly manured and amended beds. Company's are allowed to label just about anything as manure, compost or compost and manure. They are not regulated for quantity of the said product being put in the bags.  Nor are they regulated on how far...

The Rusted Garden Seed and Garden Shop Vegetables need 4 to 8 hours of direct sun. It is important to know how much sun falls onto your proposed areas for garden beds. The best way to accomplish this is to track the sun's movement across your homestead. On a sunny day go out into your yard at 8 A.M., 10 A.M., 12 P.M., 2 P.M. and 4 P.M. and take notes on the parts of your yard that are getting direct sun.  If the sun is hitting your proposed garden spots, jot down the estimated amount of time the direct...