Southern California Homestead stories

Now that the food forest garden and the backyard raised bed garden are finished, I decided to move my stories to a different thread. This will be where I share homesteading stories both good and bad, but probably mostly good 😉.
When you farm, garden or manage a homestead, there are always things that don’t work out and things that do overwhelmingly well. I good example would be that the trellis under our passion fruit vines, collapsed under the weight. It means that we will have to figure out how to remove the old trellis, and put a new one in. We have two growing, and in the month, since this happened, it has started to use my prickly pear to climb on. I have to admit that the job is little overwhelming, but we will get there eventually.
As for good stories, the squirrels, rabbits and birds, are now to used to me in the forest garden, that they come up to me and sniff my toes when I work or medicate there. We are also seeing a lot of new insects. Monarch butterflies, crickets and prayer mantis to nam a few. The lizards are also benefiting. We used to only see very small ones, but I am now seeing foot long lizards.
I’m the fountain our mosquito fish has had babies and I spotted a few tadpoles as well. The lotus leaves are now big enough that we see our bees land on the pads and take a drink of water.
A few days ago in the morning, I witnessed two gold finches doing the mating dance, and a hawk crossing the sky above like a jet plane. I have installed several lights in and around the garden, and it looks beautiful in the dark.
My summer project is gluten free grains. I have 8 test beds growing with Amaranth, sorghum, millet, flax, teff and sesame. Right now, it looks like Amaranth and Sorghum will be the winners, but we will see.
I am harvesting raspberries every few days, and harvested 44 pounds of storage onions. Our garlic is done too, and we got 15 pounds of that. My soft necks was a bit of a failure, since they never made heads, but stayed in a leek shape. They haven’t been wasted though. We cleaned them up, chopped and ground them, and then froze 1/3 in ice cube trays and freeze dried the rest. The garlic powder we got are so strong it makes my eyes water.
Very soon I will have to harvest my mullein trees. 🌲 I call them that before their size and shape reminds me of Christmas trees. They are well over 6 feet high and almost done flowering.
At the end of the year, I will post a list of what and how much we have harvested, from the two gardens.
I hope you will love these stories as much as we love experimenting them.

Good stuff Ulla. Maybe even more water features, for more life. Do you eat those flowers? I have eaten a lot of beer battered dandelion flowers this year and have wondered about freeze drying them and if that was possible. Hope your garden produces even more this season.

Carmelo Panucci wrote:Good stuff Ulla. Maybe even more water features, for more life. Do you eat those flowers? I have eaten a lot of beer battered dandelion flowers this year and have wondered about freeze drying them and if that was possible. Hope your garden produces even more this season.

Thank you. We do eat some of the flowers, like borage, nasturtium and radish flowers. The rose petals will be used to make natural makeup, like blush and colored lip balm.
The calendula we sometimes use in tea, but mostly to infuse into oil and then make it a salve for my hands and for my son’s psoriasis. The mullein flowers will be used for an oil, to loosen up ear wax. My kids and I have small ear canals so they clog up easily.  
Here we don’t really have a growing season. We grow food all year round. The food forest garden gives us collard greens, walking onions, fruit and or berries all year, since things ripen at different times. It’s different with my raised beds. Right now it’s very hot, and it’s going to get even hotter (118F) once we hit August. This means that a lot of things won’t grow right now. The things I grow in my beds right now are all plants that like it very hot. It’s plants like pumpkins, squash, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, cassava, gluten free grains and tomatoes.

I'm so glad its going so well!

Here on the homestead we have entered the hot season, and are harvesting lots of produce. I am at 40 pounds of peaches, 50 cucumbers and 40 pounds of summer squash. I would have had more peaches, if I had started harvesting them earlier but we all went down with a cold virus, which gave the June bugs time to eat a lot. I am okay with it though. These things happen, and it’s my own fault for not doing it sooner. I know that if I don’t get them in before the end of July, I won’t get them all.
Today I harvested the first two pumpkins and a butternut squash. It’s less work this year, since I figured out how to avoid gophers and rats from eating them.
All of my pumpkins, melons and winter squash has been placed in soft mesh like gopher bags closed in top with a plant tie. I am also growing larger types of pumpkins and winter squash, otherwise I would need a hundred bags.
For the first time we were able to harvest asparagus and rhubarb. Only 1 pound of asparagus but that’s mostly because we didn’t think we would get any, so we didn’t keep a close enough eye in them.
As for food preservation, we made peach pie filling and mixed berry pie filling. I also freeze dried some of the peaches and we have been eating a lot of them. We made tzatziki that we freeze dried, plus we have freeze dried a lot of squash and cucumbers. We eat a lot of cabbages, it’s a cultural things, since many European dishes contains it. It has always been a problem preserving them, but we tried freeze drying them and they turned out great.
This year is also the first time for us to grow grains. We are 100% gluten free do to celiac. Up until now I have only grown Cassava for flour, but I wanted to see if I would be able to grow some other types. I tested out teff, amaranth, sorghum and millet. Only the Amaranth and the sorghum sprouted. Both of those are growing great and are setting seeds, the amaranth though got too top heavy, so some stems has broken.
On the bird parts, we got 24 baby chicks, 8 are egg layers and the rest for meat. As we always do we put them in a brooder in the garage, but this year that was a disaster. Rats got into the brooder, so we got up to a horror show. We lost 6 of the meat birds. We moved them into our living room, and now they are older to the outside pen. From now on, we will keep them in the living room. I don’t ever want this to happen again.

"Your journey through homesteading is truly inspiring! It’s amazing to see how much you’ve accomplished with your food forest and backyard garden, and the way you’ve embraced both the challenges and the rewards. The story of your passion fruit vines is a perfect example of how nature can surprise us, but your determination to figure it out and move forward shines through.

I love how connected you are to the wildlife in your garden—the image of squirrels, rabbits, and birds coming up to you while you work is just magical. And those glimpses of monarch butterflies, praying mantises, and even foot-long lizards show how your garden has become a thriving ecosystem.

Your summer project with gluten-free grains sounds fascinating, and I can’t wait to hear which ones end up thriving. And wow, 44 pounds of storage onions and 15 pounds of garlic—what a harvest! Even the soft-neck garlic that didn’t form heads found a new purpose, which is such a great reminder that nothing in nature goes to waste.

I’m really looking forward to following your stories and seeing how your homestead continues to grow and evolve. Thank you for sharing these beautiful moments with us!"

Rowan Delaney wrote:"Your journey through homesteading is truly inspiring! It’s amazing to see how much you’ve accomplished with your food forest and backyard garden, and the way you’ve embraced both the challenges and the rewards. The story of your passion fruit vines is a perfect example of how nature can surprise us, but your determination to figure it out and move forward shines through..

I’m really looking forward to following your stories and seeing how your homestead continues to grow and evolve. Thank you for sharing these beautiful moments with us!"

Thank you, and congratulations on your first post. I have gone hungry many times through my life, so food security, both our own and to teach to our children, has always been important to me. Being where we are now, I know that we never will go hungry and not have a roof over our heads. It’s hard work, but important work too. Plus as a bonus I am leaving 1/2 acre in a much better state than when we got here. It brings me peace.

September 2024
With September, fall has arrived here on the homestead. Where most homesteaders can start to see an end on food preservation and gardening, for us it signals the start of our cold weather growing season.
We still have more pumpkins and butternut squash to harvest, and maybe a few more melons, unless one of the critters takes them. We have harvested the grains we seeded in June. I got a total of 20 pounds of sorghum out of this little experiment. As for Amaranth, they are going to be critters feed. It’s too little a yield compared to the space used. In spring I am going to try millet again, it didn’t germinate at all, during the hot season.
The sorghum are in the freezer waiting for the freeze dryer to finish what’s in it.
My tomatoes are almost done, at least the determinate ones in the back yard beds. The wild ones in the forest garden, have just started to go red.
I am very pleased with how the strawberries have spread out, and my asparagus will give us plenty next year. We are leaving them all, to get stronger plants.
Otherwise, my cucumbers are done for the year, I need to harvest parsley, nasturtiums, carrots, celery, sweet potatoes and cassava, but are leaving the last to until just before we get frost.
As for food preservation, the freeze dryer is running constantly, I bought a dicing machine since my sons and my hands hurt. It broke down on day two sigh, so back it goes to Amazon. I messed up my water glasses eggs, but it just goes to show, that I shouldn’t do it, when I am tired. I am glad I freeze dried some from last year, since ours are molding right now. I have canned and dehydrated/freeze dried around 60 pounds of peaches this year. We are at 140 pounds of pumpkins so far, with a few more coming. I have at least 12 butternut squash left, each around 15 pounds. I won’t have to grow it next year. I think I grew enough for the whole street. Summer squash and zucchini also gave us a lot, and are still giving. We have canned, pickled, frozen and freeze dried so much, that the rest of the pumpkins will be made into powder.
Along side the food projects, I have started on our cold season crops. I am attaching a photo of my white board. I use my computer for most garden planning, but since I do crop rotations every year, it usually takes some fiddling to figure out where to plant my annuals. I have to take harvesting into consideration, since cold weather crops will start to be transplanted before the last crops have been harvested. I am glad I have the flexibility of an indoor nursery.
Cassava is one of my main flour crops, and it takes a full year from planting to harvest. To do that you pull the plant, and cut off the roots, which is the edible part of the plant. The rest have the leaves cut off and the stem divided into 12” sticks. Those sticks are then planted right away in pots or in the ground. We have to use pots, since my test crops couldn’t handle even the small to almost nothing frost we get here. This means that they spend their first 4 months in the indoor nursery. Then they are transplanted into one of the deeper beds together with turmeric and ginger. As for sweet potatoes, they stay fresh longer (in our 10b grow zone), and often also grow larger if we leave them and only harvest about 20 pounds at a time. Because of this we also don’t start cutting the vines until they start to go brown. At that point they go to the chickens.
There are also a few things we grow all year rounds as perennials, so those are only harvested as needed. Spinach is one of them, spring onions, collards, peppers and kale are others plus of course some of our herbs.
At new years, I will post a copy of my excel sheet so you can see how much food we have produced in 2024. So far we are at 1299 pounds of produce. About 500 pounds of that is pumpkins and squash.
As things go we have also had our disasters. The arbor collapsed under our passion fruit vines, it then got tired of waiting for a new one are now using my prickly pear. We lost one of our orange trees, and I have some dead parts in our elderberry patch, and one of my avocados are looking unhappy and dropping leaves. As a gardener you have to take the bad with the good. Just like you do in life. All in all we have already passed last years numbers, in all things except for eggs. We lost too many this winter and I lost 60 eggs from water glassing. We have 8 new laying hens but they are only 3 months old, so it will be a while still before they start laying. At least I still have freeze dried eggs, from last fall.

I'd love to hear about what you're growing for your colder weather season, I imagine in your zone you can grow all year long!  I live in zone 8 so things slow way down in winter, even if we bring them in when it freezes, some things can survive if we do that or protect them in the freezes, as it isn't always freezing here in the winter, but what I learnt last year when I wintered over lettuce and raddishes they didn't really grow, it was like they were in stasis.

Riona Abhainn wrote:I'd love to hear about what you're growing for your colder weather season, I imagine in your zone you can grow all year long!  I live in zone 8 so things slow way down in winter, even if we bring them in when it freezes, some things can survive if we do that or protect them in the freezes, as it isn't always freezing here in the winter, but what I learnt last year when I wintered over lettuce and raddishes they didn't really grow, it was like they were in stasis.

You can see the full list, if you look at the white board. Here we can’t grow lettuce during the summer/hot season, since it gets too hot. 100+F days run from July to end of September usually, but this year we are still having degrees between 98 and 80F. Here I start lettuce indoors (indoor nursery with grow lights and fans), no later than mid September. At Halloween I start planting, by planting bulbs like garlic, tulips, crocus etc.
during November I transplant most of my seedlings, except for onions and leeks, which I don’t plant out until after new years. All brassicas grow well even through frost. Look for cold hardy types of plants like broccoli, and cabbages. I also plant a lot of root vegetables, and do succession planting, by planting seeds the same time I do the transplanting.
As for carrots, I tend to leave them in the ground until I need them. Like you said they will go into stasis, but that doesn’t means they aren’t eatable. I grow Danvers half length because they grow to final size fast, and then stay like that unless I put them in the sun. I always grow my carrots in the same to prevent them from flowering.
I grow them the same way I do other root vegetables, by sprinkling more seeds in, when I have thinned them out, and they have finished growing. This keeps us in fresh carrots all year round.
Right now a lot of my summer crops are not done growing, so I am glad I have the indoor nursery.
To figure out what to plant, look at their cold hardiness and grab some that can handle more cold than you get. You can also use things like cold frames, or tunnels to extend the season.

Hello Ulla. Truly you are a food garden titan. So well organized and productive. Thank you for sharing your "operation". A constant flow that must leave you always feeling a little behind. Holy smokes, from nursery to freeze dry. Do you wonder what people did before freeze driers?  I don't have one but you make me want to get one though my garden productivity doesn't really call for it. Pear cider? Must be delicious. Do you grow Amish style Brandywine tomatoes?  A favorite of mine that I miss growing and eating.  So. . . When do you and your garden rest?  Carrots don't need a break?  I enjoy the pictures and look forward to seeing and learning more of what you do.  Have an excellent remaining harvest!

Carmelo Panucci wrote:Hello Ulla. Truly you are a food garden titan. So well organized and productive. Thank you for sharing your "operation". A constant flow that must leave you always feeling a little behind. Holy smokes, from nursery to freeze dry. Do you wonder what people did before freeze driers?  I don't have one but you make me want to get one though my garden productivity doesn't really call for it. Pear cider? Must be delicious. Do you grow Amish style Brandywine tomatoes?  A favorite of mine that I miss growing and eating.  So. . . When do you and your garden rest?  Carrots don't need a break?  I enjoy the pictures and look forward to seeing and learning more of what you do.  Have an excellent remaining harvest!

I only got my freeze dryer last November. Before we got it, I would can, ferment, salt, candy and or freeze what I could and dehydrate outside in the sun or in my dehydrator.
The cider is super easy to make, I just add kefir grains to defrosted fresh pear or apple juice and let it ferment for a couple of days. Once it’s sparkling I put it in the fridge and we drink it.
As for us and the garden. Thank you for the compliments, we do what we can. The garden and us, never gets a break. Only the forest garden has plants go dormant, plus my rhubarb and asparagus bed also goes dormant. All other beds are cleared, topped up with compost and rabbit manure, and are then replanted.
Things slows during December and January where the only thing I need to do is plant onions and leeks. Then February arrives and spring seeds go in, sweet potatoes are started, followed by seeds going into the nursery for planting in April/May. I don’t grow brandyvine tomatoes, but I will check them out. I mainly grow determined tomatoes since they are less work. Semi and indeterminate tomatoes need a lot of pruning, which I don’t have time to do. I am usually good at keeping up with the garden. Last winter though, I got sick, and didn’t have the energy to grow from seeds, and that’s okay too. If life happens, I am not against buying my seedlings.
I also get help from my family. My daughters help me in the garden, my son with food preservation and my husband with digging and building things like trellises.

Today we processed our first meat birds, here on the homestead. We had 8 birds with an average weight of 10 pounds each after processing. The one in the picture is one of the smaller ones, it’s “only” 8 pounds. 5-8 pounds are the normal weight for these when processed.
The size was because of mistakes we made, and it gave them a lot of problems. They got leg and heart problems, because we didn’t know that this breed are healthier if you remove food at night and process them at 8-10 weeks instead of 12, like we did. We lost 2, because rats got into our brooder, and we lost another 6 to heat stroke/heart attacks.
We have learned from our mistakes, so we will change things next year so everything goes better. I think this is a big part of homesteading. There is a lot of skills you need to learn, and I clearly didn’t do enough research before I ordered these.

Yesterday Andreas and I finally got to tackling the herbal bed that was overgrown with mint. Earlier this year we transplanted a lot of the mint to the forest garden, where we don’t mind it spreading. Since then it has kept growing in the herbal bed until it started to invade the bed next to it.
So yesterday we finally got to removing about 2/3 of the mint in the bed. Once we had it cleared out, we prepped and planted winecap mushrooms where the mint was. I am looking forward to getting mushrooms in spring.
We also started picking pecan nuts from under the pecan tree, and we prepped the corn and sunflowers the critters planted in the forest garden. After prepping them, we put them into the bird and critters feeder in the forest garden.

Sometimes nature can surprise you, with things you didn’t think it could do, and this is what this October post is about.
Last weekend, we were clearing beds out to get them ready for cold season crops. We harvested the last of our summer and winter squash, tomatoes and things like that. First we took down the cucumber plants and ended up with 6 extra cucumbers we hadn’t seen before we removed the plants. I also got 60 extra pounds of pumpkins and squash compared to what I thought we had left. This was partly because those extras was hidden below the plants. The biggest surprise though was when we emptied the only 1 foot tall bed, I had dumped the last of my sweet potato slips in. It next to the chickens, and they love the greens, so it was practical to do this. I never expected to harvest 25 pounds of sweet potatoes as well. I actually had a bet going with my husband, that I happily lost.
In the front yard, I found more strawberries, again something I didn’t think we would get more out of this season.
The surprises are one of the things I always look forward to in my gardens, and because my gardening methods is a little wild I get them a lot.
I am not the kind of person to sow or plant in rows, I never check the spacing between plants, and toss extra seeds into the beds, so avoid having to do any weeding. I do check my beds almost daily and pull any weeds that’s annoying and if needed I do thin out my plants. That said, I mostly just leave my plants to do their thing. It’s kind of survival of the fittest when it comes to the plants. From the time I start my seeds indoors, only the strongest plants make it into my gardens, and once the seeds I direct sow are big enough, I usually remove any weaklings.
The reason is that is many. The biggest being that strong plants get fever diseases and bug problems. They also grow larger and produce more.
It also means that, if the wildlife eats some, I don’t really care. The only exception being rats, since those will take 2 bites of a vegetable and then move onto the next one. It has become a lot better though, since Gawain moves in.
Gawain is a feral my husband domesticated. He spends the nights outside patrolling the back and front yard, and the days playing or sleeping in the couch. Arthur, who was the first feral my husband domesticated, patrols the two gardens during the day, and sleeps most of the night.
Feral cats are tough, and once you have dealt with their health/nutrition issues they are even stronger. I have seen our cats take on everything from rats, to raccoons and coyotes. My husband takes them hunting for rats and raccoons every night, and they love it. Once the time comes, they will come and get it, while meowing to have him hurry up. Those two cats were also a big surprise. We didn’t think that it was possible to teach feral to love and trust, but it’s very possible.
But, I am getting off the topic of wild gardening. Wild gardening is when you just toss out some seeds, and then leave it alone. I have found that every time I see bare soil, I get Hellen A. in my head (from the garden master course) saying NO BARE SOIL. 😆  It has become a habit of mine to toss out some seeds, every time I see bare soil and it means that when I get weeds now, it’s often lettuce or tomato plants. Especially lettuce can outcompete most weeds, because it grow so fast. It means that, except for the hot season, we always have a lot of lettuce in the garden. It’s too much for us to eat, but our poultry and rabbits love it.
So, if you are a lazy gardener like me, think about wild gardening.

Hi Ulla, also located in SoCal, I have a bit of a question for you regarding wild gardening & weeds, I have a huge issue with the oxalis/wood sorrel variety out here (at least that's what I believe it to be) creeping up in my beds & pots constantly. I don't like to crowd my beds or pots so I tend to leave a bit of extra space - could this be counter intuitive? Should I be lessening the amount of space by just throwing some extra seeds around like lettuce? Or is there some other good method in preventing the weeds besides individually pulling up each one?

Richi Boyamian wrote:Hi Ulla, also located in SoCal, I have a bit of a question for you regarding wild gardening & weeds, I have a huge issue with the oxalis/wood sorrel variety out here (at least that's what I believe it to be) creeping up in my beds & pots constantly. I don't like to crowd my beds or pots so I tend to leave a bit of extra space - could this be counter intuitive? Should I be lessening the amount of space by just throwing some extra seeds around like lettuce? Or is there some other good method in preventing the weeds besides individually pulling up each one?

There are many things you can do, without the use of extra seeds. I know that some plants don’t like to be crowded. A thick layer of sterile mulch or cut straw between the plants, helps a lot, so does any other thing that keeps out light. This can be unprinted cardboard, landscape fabric with holes for your plants or landscape paper. This year I am using straw instead of seeds in most of my raised beds, because a large amount of birds arrived and keep stealing the seeds, even though I have a very large feeding station for them. That said, I was also late in spreading seeds out, since we had an extra large harvest this year, so I am struggling with getting all of my preserving done before my harvest expires.
If I have a persistent weed, I don’t want to grow, I cut it down and pour boiling water over it. This will kill off most of it, but be careful you don’t get it too close to the plants you want to keep.
You can also eat the sorrel if you are sure that’s what it is. Find someone to help you identify it. If it’s sorrel, this video shows how to prepare the sorrel so you get most of the oxalis out.
Sorrel video

As for using seeds to keep out weeds, it’s important that you use varieties that sprouts and mature fast. I started out using seed mixes meant to make edible sprouts. This year, I just looked through seed catalogs to find the fastest sprouting and maturing seeds. I have attached a page from Johnny’s 2024 seed catalog. You will want seeds that sprouts in days and matures in 30 days or less. I just started these greens in my nursery, so they will have spouted before planting, since the birds then will leave them alone.
Good luck with it all. I will be posting some updates later today.

October and November came and went in a blur, and now it’s already December. It has been a good year for us, but also a hard month of working to get the last crops harvested and new crops planted. I am finally done with the transition from the hot season to the cold season. We harvested the last of our sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. I have transplanted spring seedlings into larger pots, and planted all of the winter crops I started months ago.
I did one crazy thing though and I blame stress messing with my brain. It’s the only reason I can find, to justify starting 200 basil plants in November. They are all very healthy, so I guess friends and neighbors will get Basil for Christmas LOL.
In general our harvest has been fantastic this year. In total we harvested 2206 pounds (aka a metric ton) of fruit, vegetables, herbs and grains this year. Looking at calories we got over 570k out of our crops. Our biggest crops was pumpkins and squash where we got 800 pounds, and sweet potatoes where we ended up with 418 pounds. I have added my spreadsheets so you can take a closer look at all that we have grown.
There has been some ups and downs, but that’s life on a homestead. We got no plums or apples this season due to some unpredictable weather. Instead these trees went on a growth spurt. My plum trees tripled in size and my apple trees added 1/3 to their height. We also lost our Cara Cara orange tree, but have decided to get another and plant in the same spot.
We got no passion fruit, because the tallish collapsed and we only now have gotten to the bottom of it. The plan is to put a new trellis in, during the Christmas break.
I am still not very good at growing cassava, but at least we got 4 pounds instead of last year’s 1 pounds LOL. I also think I have figured out the reason for it, and since we got 39 cuttings out of the plants, it’s not a total waste.
The same can’t she said about my elderberries. There were so many berries on them, but then we got a hot spell and it shocked the plants. All of the berries dried out from one day to another.
We did get some positive surprises from the garden as well. We were able to pick strawberries until thanksgiving. Not a lot, but still nice. We are still picking raspberries, since those plants went through another set of flowers and fruit, two months after the first. It’s still not a lot, but I am not complaining.
Once I am done planting, I will have to do some serious pruning of the trees in our food forest. I usually don’t prune trees and bushes until the second year of planting, and that’s where we are now.
I also gave several tours talking with people about how it’s possible to grow large amount of food, without taking shortcuts, like herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
When I haven’t been in the garden, my son and I have been busy preserving our harvest.
We canned 10 gallons of poultry broth, 2 gallons of pomegranate juice, and a lot of pie filling. The freeze dryer is running constantly, while we try to keep up with the produce. I am so happy we got one. I don’t know how we would have processed the amounts we have, without it.
As for new things, I made sweet potato starch for the first time and there was a lot of work to it, it is definitely worth it. I use it a lot on baking, especially for things like bagels, and my gluten free baking mix. I will post a tutorial once I am done making starch. It’s something we have to do now, before the starch transfer into sugar. Since sweet potatoes only contain 10 to 20% starch, you need a lot of it. What’s left over in the end, are fed to our ducks and chickens, though it can also be mixed with eggs and spices, and fried up for dinners.
We have split the sweet potatoes into to batches. The nice and whole ones are curing in the garage. The not so nice ones, are going to be either cut into fries, cubes or shredded. A lot are also going to be used to make more starch. I still have about 100 pounds of winter squash to process. I have a 100 pounds stores fresh, but some didn’t cure, so they need to be processed. The plan is to freeze some for dinners, and freeze dry the rest for flour and/or starch. There is no rush though, so we will get it all done eventually, and i am ecstatic that my pantries, buckets, fridges and freezers are full of food. What I am most excited about, is all the different flours and starches I get to play with in the kitchen.
Next garden deadline was not until January 6, when I get onions and leek starts delivered. I messed up my own starters, and ran out of time to start some more. Well my leeks and shallots arrived yesterday, so on top of making pie filling and other types of preservation, I have a bed to prepare. At least the kids are done with school, so I have helpers.

Hello, Hope you're well.  Checking in.  Got our overgrown fallow, excess biomass, full raintanks in hand in time to seed winter crops (alliums, greens, pulses).  For lack of rain to start it all up I had to tap into our dry season water storage (12,000 gals).  Now have lots of nettle, mustard, arugula, but alliums & pulses didn't come up well.  Good harvest of guava.  Everything else just hanging on, even gophers desperate in collapsing tunnels.  Half way through this wet season I've used ½ of next dry season water.  The dry soil all round & at depth is wicking it away.  Starting to think of abandoning this season's attempt to go rain-water only + just mulching & fallowing.  Brought forward plans to finish whole house gray-water (just enough, intermittent filling but relentless batching & even poorer quality than conveyed-water) to keep Subsistence Hedge/ Edible Plantscape alive.  What's up with y'all?

We finally got rain. We have prayed for rain this last months. We are in Southern California southeast of San Diego. These last weeks has been hard. We were constantly on fire watch, and the air quality has been very bad. Today we finally got rain, and we should get more over the next 2-3 days.
Rain for me also means, that it’s time to direct seed annual herbs, vegetables and flowers in the forest garden. Eventually I won’t have to do this, but the forest garden isn’t mature enough to self seed all of it, plus I had some flowers from last year, I didn’t like.
I planted nasturtium on the small hill, where we also grow roses, sunflowers, bulb flowers and annual vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower. It’s still too early to seed my sunflowers, but the rest went in. I like being able to forage in the forest garden, so I mix up a lot of seeds to spread out. To name a few, that I planted, there are calendula, 4 types of mint including mountain mint and wild mint, the veggie mix is a mix of rutabaga, radishes, early broccoli and turnips. Plus I spread out a lot of amaranth seeds, because they are pretty and the birds love them.
I also planted and/or seeded rams aka wild leeks/onions, regular onions, welsh onions, cherry & small grape tomatoes and skirrets, which is a type of carrot. This garden also gifted me with 3 strawberries and 4 raspberries.
If the raised bed garden, we are drowning in collards and other greens, so this week I am going to juice a lot of them, together with turmeric and ginger. This will then be the base of my daily vitamin drink. Our Chinese cabbages are ready for harvest, and our peppers are still producing, so it’s the perfect time to make kimchi, except the diacon still isn’t large enough to harvest. Our lettuce, kale, green and red cabbages are doing great too. My root vegetables are coming along nicely, and it’s time to thin out my diacon radishes, and my regular radishes.
My yoga and meditation deck are finally done, but I will have to wait until the rain lets up, before I can start using it again. Indoors, the basil are taking over so we are going to make a mega batch of pesto, to clear up more room. I need the space, so I can start our warm season (April to June). If I start them too late, my plants will have trouble as the hot season (July to October).
Lots of new things are happening. We have an arborist coming in March to remove the trees we lost this year, plus two that’s just not working out. New additions are artichokes, pineapple, cashew, exotic cherry, coffee, peppercorns, cardamom, and a few other things. I am still considering tea plants, so we will see how things goes.
I am building 2 tipis, to act as frost protection during the cold season, and hot dry weather protection during the hot season. I am using adjustable tent poles, and will then use black landscape fabric for frost protection and shade cloths for that.
I hope it works, since I am very frustrated about not getting any bananas, because the flower is sensitive to even light frost. It should also help my coffee trees, since they like a higher humidity than we have right now. If it works for the coffee, I am going to try planting tea again.
Unfortunately we also lost our two passion fruits, so once we have a trellis up, I am getting new ones. I also want a coconut tree, but my husband has vetoed it, and he is right that we probably don’t have the room. Last thing, is that I got a wishing well for Christmas. I am looking forward to planting alpine strawberries in the large part and succulents in the bucket.
Now on to planning the warm and hot season raised bed crops, for the year.

Ulla, in a different thread you mentioned you do soil test very year. What kind of test did you do? Basic macronutrients and pH or a more complete one with micronutrients, CEC, OM, base saturation, etc? Do you find the tests helpful or use them to guide your soil management?

May Lotito wrote:Ulla, in a different thread you mentioned you do soil test very year. What kind of test did you do? Basic macronutrients and pH or a more complete one with micronutrients, CEC, OM, base saturation, etc? Do you find the tests helpful or use them to guide your soil management?

Unfortunately the company I used Rxsoil has gone bankrupt, so I can’t show you what testing I had done, and my memory sucks. For now, I just use a regular probe that checks humidity, PH and standard minerals like phosphorus.

Ulla that all looks great!  At 1¼" over two-three stretches we had just enough rain to fill the small tanks (only 1200gals) but not enough to wet the soil deep.  Seeded more carrot, beet, onions, chickpea, asparagus, fava, but nothing up yet.  On the other side mustard flowering, more nettle, some fava & peas but no sign of the other undercrops.  Just reached seed & water disappointment again & turned to find Eric Toensmeier, his new online resource on perennial edible leaf trees + his old book on perennial vegetables.  Peaches & apple flowered, grapes & mulberry leafing, figs budding, apricots resting.  Enjoying last of the guavas & first of the mustard gomen with Ethiopian berebere.  Getting ready for some wet & green relief on my chainsaw vacation in NY, developing individual tree precision forestry from GIS/ LIDAR to release thinning & selection harvest & shifting forest composition for better future across real acreage, though family won't be able to keep up the watering & growing efforts much here in San Diego.  

Patrik Schumann wrote:Ulla that all looks great!  At 1¼" over two-three stretches we had just enough rain to fill the small tanks (only 1200gals) but not enough to wet the soil deep.  Seeded more carrot, beet, onions, chickpea, asparagus, fava, but nothing up yet.  On the other side mustard flowering, more nettle, some fava & peas but no sign of the other undercrops.  Just reached seed & water disappointment again & turned to find Eric Toensmeier, his new online resource on perennial edible leaf trees + his old book on perennial vegetables.  Peaches & apple flowered, grapes & mulberry leafing, figs budding, apricots resting.  Enjoying last of the guavas & first of the mustard gomen with Ethiopian berebere.  Getting ready for some wet & green relief on my chainsaw vacation in NY, developing individual tree precision forestry from GIS/ LIDAR to release thinning & selection harvest & shifting forest composition for better future across real acreage, though family won't be able to keep up the watering & growing efforts much here in San Diego.  

It sounds like you have some challenges to deal with. We all have those. I lost 2 trees to temperature fluctuations and 2 passion fruits to a storm. It’s okay though. I have ordered some more trees, and I have propagated two more mulberry trees.
We actually don’t have that large of a water bill, even though we don’t have a water collection system yet. Including regular water need for humans like for baths, cleaning and cooking, plus water for our chickens and ducks,  we only pay $300 a month for water.
What we do, is several things, to maximize water use. Our drip lines and below the soil, and all beds are covered with cut straw mulch. It prevents evaporation and weeds, and functions as a backup food source for the insects in the soil.
I also cramp as much into the beds as I can, and try not to have bare soil.
As for the beans. It’s a little early for beans yet. Beans, for me at least, grow better during the warm season.
I haven’t posted my February update yet, since we have all been sick, but it will come soon.
Until then, I can tell you what we have harvested so far in 2025.
75 pounds of collard greens, 12 pounds of cauliflower (with more to come), 5 pounds of broccoli, 70 pounds of Chinese cabbages, around 50 pounds of green cabbages, 21 pounds of kale, 20 pounds of lettuce, 42 pounds of tangerines, 100 pounds of oranges, around 50 pounds of lemons and  1 pound of strawberries. My celery are ready for harvest too, and my asparagus has just started to pop up. Tip for asparagus, they need a ton of water until established. Both my red radishes and my diakon are ready for harvest, and I have carrots again, after a 2 month break. I have more carrots I need to thin out. We are also at 720 eggs from chickens and ducks. They are piling up and my freeze dryer has broken down, with either a pump failure or sensor failure. My strawberry guava didn’t produce any this year, but probably because it needed a good pruning. I am almost done pruning the trees in the food forest. On the forest floor, flowers and herbs are popping up. Once we hit April, we will see blooms. Today I transplanted my cassava, transplanted artichokes and planted the last flower bulbs. I am trying to get as much done before April, so all of my spring crops are now in the grow room. The reason for my deadline, is that we are getting meat bird chicks delivered around April 9 and I ordered some trees and shrubs, that’s also going to be delivered in April. Inside we still have lots of fresh winter squash and sweet potatoes.
I am already close to 100k in calories, just 2 months in, so I am not complaining.
Good luck with your garden adventures, and thanks for reading my blog.

February work on the homestead
February started with all of us going down with a virus, that has taken over 14 days to get over. I am not completely over it yet, but are getting there.
This is also why I am late with my monthly update. I also have a lot to write about, so I have divided the post up. Everything about the many changes to the food forest garden, have been posted here. Building a food forest on the edge of the desert
I love spring, even though it brings a lot of work with it. Birds are back from migrations and building nests in the trees. Every morning I am greeted with a concert of bird songs, combined with the rooster calling out and the chickens singing about eggs. It’s especially precious, because I finally got hearing aids 2 years ago. I haven’t been able to hear birds songs in over 10 years. Now I can even hear the cats purring.
Spring food preservation season has definitely started. On average we are getting 2 dozen eggs a day, and my freeze dryer has broken down. This means we are eating a lot of egg dishes, and my plan is to do a lot of baking and prep for breakfast to put in the freezer for later.
At least most of our spring harvest can be fermented or frozen, so we are keeping up with the work. We harvested 70 pounds of Chinese cabbages last week, about 40 pounds of green cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, lots of collards and radishes. We are enjoying having tangerines, oranges and fresh lemons again, and are harvesting avocados for the first time in the forest garden. The strawberries we planted last year, are really taking off now, and has a lot of flowers and small fruits already.
Andreas made 2 gallons of red kimchi and 1/2 gallon of white kimchi with most of the Chinese cabbages, and the rest was freeze dried, before the machine broke down. Celery is also ready for harvesting again, plus lots of lettuce and kale. We also picked the first beets this week.
We still have winter squash and sweet potatoes to process, but it’s a good feeling, filling my shelves with food. It’s a busy time, since it’s already time to start new crops. Last week we made 57 pints and 12 quarts of chicken broth. We use a lot of broth in the kitchen.
I planted way too many collards this year. Even though we have juiced some, and are eating it with dinner every day, we still have too much of them. It’s not a big problem though, since the chickens love brassicas, and feeding them cabbages are cheaper than regular feed.
In the grow room, I have started seedlings for transplanting in April and June. This year we are growing tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, summer squash, beans, sorghum, melons, huckleberries, sweet potatoes, sunflowers and other flowers, extra dill, basil and catnip. This on top of our perennials.
This was all from the raised bed garden. The story continues here Building a food forest on the edge of the desert

Andreas made 2 gallons of red kimchi and 1/2 gallon of white kimchi with most of the Chinese cabbages

Once fermented, how and where do you store it?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

Andreas made 2 gallons of red kimchi and 1/2 gallon of white kimchi with most of the Chinese cabbages

Once fermented, how and where do you store it?

They can easily stay fresh for 9 months, but make sure everything you use to make including the jar, are sterile. If not, you risk ending up with bad mold. Sometimes you will also see white stuff on the top. That’s yeast, so safe.
We store all of our fermented vegetables and fruits in a fridge, we keep in the garage for that purpose.

March & April on our homestead
Spring has arrived with another harvest and planting time. For me this is always a stressful time, due to planting deadlines and the logistics of it all. My biggest harvesting and processing project right now, are my albino sugar beets. There is a lot to harvest, juice and cook down for sugar. This will also be my first time making sugar, which will be fun.
There are also so many things I love about spring. The floor of the food forest garden, are booming with an abundance of herbs, medicinal and regular flowers, root vegetables like diakon radishes, spinach, lettuce and dandelions. It is chaotic and beautiful, exactly what I have planned it to be. I want the food forest garden, to be a place for foraging. It’s not the most practical way to grow, but I love finding new things every time I am out there.
We are getting so many eggs right now, which is great, since we didn’t get a lot last year. I have already saved 300 eggs to get us through the hot months, when egg production drops.
All of my regular beets are also ready for harvest. Most of them will be used for Nomato sauce. This year, I am going to try and freeze dry it, since I lack freezer space. I am also going to FD the rest of the juice I canned last year, to free up some pantry space. Now that the homestead are really producing, storage space has become a problem.
We do have some extra space, since we almost are out of fresh sweet potatoes. The ones we have left, are pretty dry now, and small. I am going to plant them, to see if I can get some slips out of it. We still have sweet potatoes in the freezer, and we have instant mash in the pantry.
We are harvesting avocados for the first time, and it looks like we will get plums later this year. We are harvesting strawberries, which has surprised me a lot. So far we have picked 5 pounds, and we have plenty of tangerines, lemons and oranges.
April has always been the time when you debate when to harvest the last cold season crops and when to plants the warm season crops. I think that while March are when my vegetables really grow in put in weight and mature, April is the time when the temperatures fluctuate so much, that you have to play a game of chance, about when to harvest and plant.
2025 has turned out to be a good cabbage year, I don’t have the final numbers yet, but I won’t have to buy any cabbages this year, for sure. All of our beets also look great. We have plenty of red beets for kraut and Nomato sauce, and huge sugar beets. It will be interesting to see just how much sugar/syrup I get, once they are processed. My carrots, onions and garlic also look good, so everything is on time for once. As for medicine, it’s time to harvest mallow roots, and nettles. Borage is something that grows all year round, which is great for our bees.
It’s also funny to see all the places where we are getting sunflowers this year, they are popping up everywhere. I also have cilantro, mint, echinacea, calendula, yarrow, mustard and dandelions growing on the floor of the forest garden. It has always been my wish, for this garden to be a place of foraging and exploration, which I think I also wrote further up LOL. This will be even more so, once I have the new plants and trees in the ground. So far I have planted gooseberries, more currants, coffee, pigeon peas, and grains of paradise. In the raised bed garden, I have harvested the first 3 pounds of wine cap mushrooms. They taste great, and have, so far, been easy to grow. I am going to take another of my raised beds, and dedicate it to mushrooms too.
My freeze dryer and canners run almost every day, with eggs, herbs and vegetables. Today I am canning some of our homegrown mushrooms.
This  we also got the first meat birds, of this year. They are now comfortable in our living room. We got chicks now, are getting ducks in June, and then more chicks in October. Our rabbits (both the wild and the domesticated) have also had the first litters of kits, and the birds are building nests.
Last week I saw two hawks doing the mating dance, right over my head. Both of them were singing. I am pretty sure we have 2 mating pairs close by. Each year, we get more wild animals in our gardens, especially birds, and it shows. So far I haven’t seen a single worm in my brassicas. The only pest I am dealing with are aphids. Unless you count the orange stray who keeps coming, fighting with our cats and stealing food. We can’t take in more cats, and we need the fights to stop, so we have set up a trap, so we can take it to a no kill shelter.
There are so much to do right now, but we soldier through and get it done. At least we will have less work in fall, since I am not growing any pumpkins or winter squash this year. Last year we grew 800 pounds, so my freezers and pantry shelves are still full. Instead I am growing more grains this year, and I am going to try my hand at the three sisters planting method. It’s something I have wanted to do for a while.
We are also getting a lot of eggs, that I am mostly freeze drying. The plan is to make bread/roll mix, so we can get back to baking. I restarted my sour dough starter, and are looking forward to eating sour dough again.
I am growing Japanese mustard greens this year, and are using the Asian method for preserving them to make the condiment Hinyoko. They are first wilted outside after harvest and cleaning. Then they are pounded and fermented with salt. After they are done fermenting, they are dried completely and used as a condiment. Here is a video I found that shows the method. https://youtu.be/RUw9rUBpqws?si=bhskoDKBdJqGAPXD
I think I am going to try and freeze dry some of the other vegetables I have fermented, to see how they will taste, and to extend their shelf life. We have fermented a lot this year, since we love kimchi, krauts and fermented citrus.
That’s it for now, happy spring to everyone.

April and May are always busy times here on the homestead. While others return rested from winter, we’re harvesting, processing, preparing garden beds, seeding, and planting. As usual, I scattered a mix of flower, herb, and vegetable seeds across the food forest floor, in February, creating a vibrant riot of colors and an unexpected variety of vegetables. I keep a mason jar for seeds—ones I’ve dried and saved, old seeds, free seeds, wildflowers, and plenty of herbs.
Currently, I can harvest daikon radishes, regular radishes, broccoli, cilantro, viola, borage, mustard, calendula, and lettuce by foraging in my front yard. It’s chaotic, beautiful, and requires very little work.
There are also plenty of work to do in the raised bed garden. We’ve harvested red cabbages, beets, and the first 7 pounds of garlic. The garlic beds yielded 6 pounds of garlic scapes as well.
Last year, we decided to stop curing alliums. We grew tired of onions and garlic spoiling before we could use them, and processing them immediately is much less work. The 7 pounds of garlic I harvested became 2½ pints of garlic powder. These were from plants I grew as bug deterrents among other vegetables. I still have two beds of garlic, two beds of leeks, and three beds of onions. The remaining garlic will be minced and frozen into small pucks. The onions will be frozen, either sliced or chopped, since I still have a quart of onion powder from last year. We also made borscht, which we freeze-dried, and pickled some red cabbages.
Our chickens and ducks are providing an abundance of eggs—between 20 and 30 per day. This will slow down in July when the hot season begins. By October, egg production usually picks up again until March. So far, I’ve preserved 340 eggs, nearly halfway to my goal of 800. That may sound like a lot, but we use eggs heavily, and our chickens stop laying twice a year due to the intense heat, despite our efforts to keep them cool. We bake most of our goods and often enjoy egg dishes for breakfast.
As busy as we are, we make time for breaks, so next weekend we are going to a fair. We all have our limits, so some tasks get delayed, but that’s okay. For example, bottling my homemade apple cider vinegar is still pending—the mother has grown so large it’ll be tricky to remove. However, I completed a project I’d been eager to finish: we added the rest of the deck, laid an outdoor rug, and decorated with pillows and my collection of small sculptures. It’s now a lovely spot for meditation and exercise, helping to keep stress at bay.
My May to-do list includes:
* Building a trellis for black pepper and long pepper, then planting tea beneath it.
* Creating a small hügelkultur bed for medicinal herbs in the forest garden.
* Painting the wishing well with sun-protective paint and filling it with strawberry plants.
* Harvesting and processing onions, leeks, and garlic.
* Harvesting sugar beets and attempting to make sugar.
* Preparing beds with mulch, rabbit manure, and mushroom spawn.
* Planting a bed with melons and direct-seeding corn, beans, peas, and sorghum.
* Weeding the asparagus and rhubarb bed, then adding mulch and fertilizer.
* Finishing all beds with a layer of straw.
* Making nomato sauce and Victorian rhubarb BBQ sauce.
It won’t all happen quickly, but with help from Peter and the kids, we’ll get it done eventually.