Our Garden: Building Soil, Growing Food

Our relatively small garden using old trampoline parts and ladders as a trellis structure

Our garden is another part of feeding our household and working toward greater self-reliance. Like the animals we raise, what we grow is primarily for our own use.

We’re learning what grows well here and working to improve the ground beneath it. Peppers have become a particular success, while tomatoes, herbs, and squash bring seasonal variety to the garden.

Starting with the Soil

Our soil starts as red clay. Building it into useful, fertile garden soil is an ongoing part of the work, not something we consider finished.

We try to follow a no-till approach, keeping soil disturbance to a minimum. We don’t use pesticides or commercial fertilizer. Instead, we use rabbit manure and other composted material as part of our soil-building approach.

This connects the garden with the rest of the homestead. Our rabbits help feed our household, and their manure contributes to the soil where we grow our plants.

Building the soil is part of growing the food.

Peppers: What Grows Best for Us

Carolina Reaper still in green stage

We grow peppers well, sometimes better than we need to. Hot varieties are a regular part of our garden, and they’ve become one of the crops we have the most to share about.

We often grow jalapeños, serranos, cayenne peppers, Asian red chilies, and habaneros. That gives our pepper patch a range of varieties rather than just one kind of heat.

A large variety of sweet to hot and even superhot are regular harvests

Peppers are a good example of finding what works on our own land. As we continue gardening, they remain a strong part of what we grow.

Tomatoes and Other Seasonal Crops

Some tomatoes growing in green stage

We grow tomatoes seasonally, alongside herbs and squash. These crops add variety to what comes out of the garden through the growing season.

We’re not trying to present a finished gardening formula. This is a look at what we grow, the approach we take, and the ground we’re continuing to improve.

Sharing What We’re Learning

Some of our short videos introduce the garden side of the homestead, including rabbit manure and its place in our soil-building approach. The videos are a starting point; this website gives us room to share the details behind them. 

As the garden develops, we’ll continue sharing what works for us, what we change, and what we learn along the way.