How I Optimize My Homestead Garden for Self Sustainably

You can be self sufficient on small acreage and provide your family with healthy produce from your garden and orchard. In this video, we explore how to optimize your homestead garden for maximum yield and preserve your harvest to enjoy year-round. Discover practical tips for maximizing your growing space and boosting production, even in hot desert conditions. Learn how to get the most out of each crop, from planting strategies to effective garden care techniques. We’ll also cover essential methods for preserving your bountiful harvest, ensuring nothing goes to waste. Whether you’re new to homesteading or a seasoned gardener, these insights will help you make the most of your garden and enjoy the fruits of your labor longer.
**Key topics covered:**
– Maximizing growing space for increased production
– Strategies for getting the most out of your crops
– Tips for preserving your garden harvest
– Caring for vegetables in the garden
– Growing successfully in hot desert conditions
Join us on this journey to a more productive and sustainable homestead garden!

Hortiskech Digital Garden Planner Link:
https://gardensavvy.com/hortisketch/
Use Discount Code: Ali5 at check out and receive a $5.00 discount.

Want to learn more about gardening? Check our websites blog out for more information on gardening, pest management, weed control, disease control and other organic gardening methods.

Our Website:
https://www.alisorganics.com

Our Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AlisOrganics/

Our Etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandCraftFromTheFarm

Mailing Address:
760 Red Rock Road
St. George, Utah 84770

I also write a blog geared for our zone 8, which I would love to write more often, but life is busy! however, you may find some good resources here.
http://outstanding-in-the-garden.com

Our CSA, where we provide food for families on a weekly basis and we also donate a portion of our produce to Elders or Someone in need in our community to provide healthy fresh organic veggies.
https://desertsagecsa.com
00:00 Get the most of the garden
00:41 Bean production & storing
02:54 Store a variety
03:27 Tomato production & tips
05:50 Onion growing tips
08:07 Pepper growing tips and storage
09:10 Cucumbers growing & storing tips
10:13 Out with the old, in with the new
10:42 Beets for bare space
11:15 Malabar spinach
11:31 Storing cherries & fruit

do you want to get the most out of your garden to have enough to eat fresh in season and have some for preserving I’m Ally if we haven’t met before a garden and Homestead on 1/2 acre in southern Utah’s desert which is a Zone 8 I’ll take you on a tour of by vegetable garden and show you how I get the most out of my garden along the way I’ll share with you some simple ideas on how to preserve for winter use how to make the most out of your space no matter the size and plenty of tips you may never have thought before when it comes to providing enough food for fresh consumption and preserving you want to look for high yielding plants that do well in your area and foods that you use the most beans are the perfect high yielding crop for eating fresh and storing for winter use I plant several patches throughout the garden both pole beans and Bush Beans as soon as spring crops come out this section here had broccoli growing in it once all the broccoli was done producing I pulled it out fed it to The Ghost and tossed it to the compost pile nothing goes to waste here it all gets turned back into the soil making the garden more sustainable I like to plant secessions of beans about every 2 weeks this staggers the Harvest Time and makes it more manageable for me to be able to harvest in process a 3×5 patch of beans harvested regularly and harvesting regularly keeps those beans in high production will give me a nice colander full of beans every single week if not a little bit more a colander this size I can feel 14 pints of beans I I can prepare them process them in a small amount of time and this is manageable for me especially when I’m busy bush beans are determinate and they’ll start to slow up in production and the plants will actually start to decline after several Harvest that’s why planting every few weeks is a good idea to keep you in Bean production all the way up until you have your first Frost pole beans are perfect for increasing your growing Space by growing them vertically and growing crops below by planting crops below and around your pole beans that helps keep the soil moist which will actually help keep those pole beans producing well during the summer heat and you’re getting two crops in a small amount of space that’s a great thing to do for small gardens green beans can be blanched and Frozen and bottled and even freeze-dried for winter use when you dry or freeze dry your beans you don’t need a lot you can just do small batches a little bit goes a long way when freeze dry in your green beans you don’t even have to BL lch them you can just freeze dry them just as they are and if you sprinkle a little bit of sea salt over them those make an excellent snack and kids love them I always plant one large patch of dry beans I only do one secession because they take a lot longer to mature I always plant a wide variety of different types of dry beans because I love the different colors and the textures they’re super easy to store and they’re packed full of protein always Preserve in many different methods this gives you variety and a back backup plan if the power were to go out for a long time and you were to lose your Frozen Foods you would at least have a backup of dried bottled and freeze-dried foods part of being prepared is having a wide variety of options to rely on when using up your bottle Foods you have empty jars that take up space no matter what you do but if you fill up those jars with water you’re adding to your self-reliance in empty jar is just an empty jar but a Jar full of water is valuable tomatoes are a favorite crop of mine to grow and preserve because they’re so versatile you can make salsa stewed tomatoes tomato paste tomato sauce and you can even dry the little cherry tomatoes they’re excellent when they’re freeze-dried they’re so sweet and they can be put into many different winter dishes sundried tomatoes are excellent and they’re easy to do you can lay them out in the sun until they’re completely dry or even use a freeze dryer once all the moisture is gone you can submerge them in olive oil and store them in the fridge if you like Capri salad and you want it during the winter time but don’t have any fresh tomatoes then you can use these sundried tomatoes in replacement of them and it’s excellent one of my favorite things to do is to dry or freeze dry Tomatoes then powder it down with some dry basil then add that to some bread and it makes the most delicious tomato basil sandwich bread be creative there’s so many ways to store food for winter use it’s so good for you and nutritious when it comes straight from your garden I feel like this is a way to eat in season eat what’s fresh in season and store what was fresh from the garden for winter use Tomatoes can be a little bit of a trick to get them to produce in hot dry climates when temperatures are above 90° for several hours and the humidity is low this can cause the tomatoes to drop their blossoms and heirlooms which are some of my favorites are more susceptible to this to help keep your Tomatoes productive then you can use a floating row cover or a shap cover to help keep the sun off of them humidity in and keep those temperatures just a little bit lower and molch around your tomato plants heavily this will help keep that moisture in and that soil cooler which is extremely essential in the desert tomatoes are another crop that you can grow up vertically and it’s actually a good thing for them I like to keep the suckers pruned and I come out here every single week and tie them up to the trellis this allows me to have more space underneath to grow another crop maximizing my growing space a good example of some crops that can grow nearby or underneath your tomato plants are carrots and even broccoli broccoli is a spring crop but you can actually trick it by planting it on the north side of your tomato plants at the same time that you plant your Tomatoes the shade that it gets from the tomatoes on that North Side will allow it to develop a fairly decent head onions are super easy to grow and store I really love the sweet onions like wala wala or Vidalia but they don’t keep as long as onions that have a high sulfur content however chiellini onions even though they’re small are really sweet and they store really well for me if you’ve ever grown chalini onions let me know in the comments if they’ve stored well for you as well if you want a red onion that keeps fairly well and is sweet try red long of tropea I love this one because it’s very unusual it’s a very long sweet onion and I like to grow just a few little different things in my garden I grow onions on the edges of my raised beds throughout the garden this allows for merace for other crops in the middle of the beds they help disrupt pest flight patterns making them a great companion plant if you let a few of your onions go to seed then you’re providing a nice amount of pollen for the bees and they’re absolutely beautiful if you let the flower head fully mature and produce seed and save that seed for planting next year that plant will be more acclimated to your area and do much better than it would from a seed packet each seed head can produce hundreds of seed seeds once your multiflower head starts to dry like this one here then it’s time to cut it off and you can put it in a brown paper bag once it completely dries you can shake those seeds out of the rest of that flower head and go ahead and collect them green onions are great to go in the ground just about anytime during the warm growing season to fill in those bare spots it’s tough during the hottest parts of the summer months because you absolutely have to keep that soil moist in order for those onions to thrive but you can help this along by adding some burlap over the top or some floating row cover to keep the soil moist you can dry the green onions the tops of them or the whole onion and then powder it down and use this as a replacement for onion powder and it’s excellent dehydrating onions is a really good way to store onions that don’t keep well or even ones that have just started to sprout these are great added to chilies or other dishes that you can use during the winter time that require onions and you don’t have to worry about them rotting dehydrated onions that are reconstituted are wonderful when you add them to picascia sourdough bread peppers in my garden don’t get planted until June they absolutely love warm weather and if I plant them too early when the weather’s a little bit cooler they can get stressed out and stunted and if they’re stunted they don’t produce well by planting later when it’s warmer they take off faster and they’re much healthier once my pepper plants start to produce Peppers then I’ll put a floating row cover on them this protects them from the intense Sun otherwise those pepper plants will get sunburnt that’s that sunken white part that gets on the south facing or the most sunniest side and the tops of your peppers Anaheim and anchos or also known as Panos are great fire roasted and Frozen for winter use as well jalapenos make great refrigerator pickles I grow a lot of cayenne peppers because I love to powder it so that I have the cayenne pepper and and the hot chili flakes chickens benefit from the cayenne peppers as well I’ll sprinkle it over their food during the winter months this helps keep them warm and it keeps their production going I trellis all of my cucumbers because they produce better and give me higher yields I also feed them a liquid fish fertilizer on a weekly basis because they’re heavy feeders and this keeps their production up all the way through the growing season harvesting all of your vegetables on a regular basis including cucumbers will ensure that the plant continues to to produce if the vegetables get too mature then the plant is basically sent a message saying don’t produce anymore we got to put our energy into that seed once our temperatures are in the ’90s then our peas start to decline so I’ll pull these peas out because they’re not producing anymore and I’ll plant more cucumber plants using this space and this PE fence something comes out something goes in its place no time wasted you can use regular slicing pickles and make fermented pickles out of them just make sure that you slice off or scrub off the blossom end that way you get crispier pickles I make a lot of bread and butter pickles dill pickles and relishes this just adds to the balance and the diversity for our winter stores the last of my garlic is coming out and of course I’m going to be amending with lots of compost to replenish the nutrients that were used up before I plant in a new crop this keeps the soil healthy that way the plants produce better and they’ll stay healthier in this area I’ll be planting new New Zealand spinach that’s a variety that tolerates the heat loves the sun and it makes a nice hearty salad of course the soil is going to be bare for a little while but in no time at all it’ll be green and Lush with new vegetation beets can be crammed into a small place and be planted very closely I’ve never worried about how close I plant my beads because they pop up out of the ground and form a nice ball regardless of how close they are they’re great sewn in little patches throughout the garden if you have little bare spots this the is just more food in a small space the beet greens are also edible giving you a dual crop I love beads and the best way to preserve them is actually bottling them freeze drying makes great little chips though I love pickled beets and just the plain bottled beets Malibar spinach is another summer green that loves the heat it’s perfect for the desert hot climates it’s a climber so growing on a trellis will save space I like to grow this with winter squash they make great companions take up less space and they look really cool together when we talk about diversifying that means fruit as well fruits loaded with vitamin C and other nutrients that help us with a well balanced diet fruit can be made into fruit leather which kids love it can be made with little or no sugar at all which is far better than anything that you can buy in the grocery store our cherries are on right now one of the things that we really love to do is freeze dry them and then powder them down then we can use that powder and put it in lemonade it’s absolutely delicious you can do this with any fruit it’s delicious and nutritious dry it freeze it bottle it think in different ways that you can preserve your food so that you don’t get bored with the same thing over and over be creative grow up grow beneath grow more densely and never leave a bare spot and you’ll reap the rewards may God bless you with a productive Garden this year Luna you want to pee catch [Music]