Animal Guides
Chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, quail, rabbits, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle and bees: getting started, housing, feeding, care and health.
Raising Chickens →How-To Guides
Step-by-step guides for every animal, the garden, orchard, pasture and compost: getting started, housing, feeding, daily care, breeding, health and harvest.
Garden and Land Guides
The vegetable garden, orchard, pasture and compost — with the key numbers and links to the trackers that keep your records.
Growing a Garden →Growing a Vegetable Garden
A good garden starts with soil, timing and a plan for what your family actually eats. Start smaller than you think, and grow from there.
- Water
- about 1 inch a week
- Start tomatoes and peppers
- 6–8 weeks before last frost
- Harden off
- 7–10 days
- Rotate crop families
- every year, 3–4 year cycle
1Planning
- Pick the sunniest spot you have — most vegetables need 6–8 hours of direct sun.
- Grow what you eat. Use the garden size planner to work out how much to plant for your family.
- Learn your frost dates; the planting calendar times everything from them.
2Soil
- Get a soil test (your extension office offers them) before adding lime or fertilizer.
- Add 1–3 in of compost every year; it feeds the soil and holds water.
- Don’t work wet soil — if a squeezed handful stays in a sticky ball, wait.
- Raised beds help with heavy clay or poor drainage.
3Planting
- Cool crops (peas, lettuce, spinach, brassicas) go in before the last frost; warm crops (tomatoes, beans, squash) after it.
- Start transplants indoors under lights; harden them off outdoors a little more each day for a week or more.
- Sow small amounts every 2–3 weeks (succession planting) for a steady harvest.
- Keep crop families moving to new beds each year to cut pests and disease.
4Care
- Water deeply once or twice a week rather than a little every day; water the soil, not the leaves.
- Mulch with straw, leaves or grass clippings to hold water and stop weeds.
- Walk the garden every day or two: pests and disease are easiest to stop early.
- Hand-pick large pests; use row cover against cabbage worms and squash bugs.
5Harvest and saving
- Pick often — beans, squash and cucumbers keep producing when you keep picking.
- Harvest in the cool of the morning for the best flavor and storage.
- Save seed from open-pollinated (not hybrid) plants; keep the best fruit from the best plants.
- Can, freeze, dry or cellar the extra — the preserving calculators tell you how.
Put it to work
These free tools keep the records for you once you’ve made an account:
These are rules of thumb from university extension guidance. Breed, climate and your state’s rules change the details — your county extension office is the best place to ask, and you can find it on the selling rules page by ZIP code.