Over the years we have grown a wide range of edible staple roots, both tropical and temperate. Thus far, we’ve cultivated the following yam species: Air potato yam (D. bulbifera) Chinese yam (D. polystachya) Fiveleaf yam (D. pentaphylla) Greater yam (D. alata) Lesser yam (D. esculenta) Name yam (D. cayenensis subsp. rotundata) And we’ve grown: Arrowroot Canna Carrot Cassava (Yuca) Celeriac Daikon Eddoes Groundnut (Apios americana) Jerusalem artichoke Jicama Parsnip Potato Potato mint Rutabaga Sweet potato Tannia Taro Turnip Yacon …and a few more I’m sure I’ve missed. Yet the other day, I found ..read more

It’s nice to have flat land – but what about when you don’t? And you don’t have the cash to hire a backhoe to terrace it? @allnaturalhomesteaders comments on YT: “Dude I’ve been watching you for a hot min now, a few years. I just purchased a new property, your videos were perfect for my old property, but now I own a piece of the Appalachian mountains, and I have a huge mountain for a yard, meaning boulders, and a huge hill for a yard with a stream at the bottom, how would you garden this? We’ve thought about terracing it , like the Chinese do their gardens. But there’s Soo many boulders and it ..read more

We are growing cassava in zone 8b, which is far from its preferred tropical climate! Yet we’ve found it to be quite possible to grow it here, with a little extra work. Yesterday three of my sons and I cut down all the cassava plants growing in our gardens, taking the canes to the greenhouse and leaving the stumps and roots in the ground. The canes will be turned into cuttings, some of which we’ll sell, and others of which we’ll plant out in the spring. The stumps left behind in the garden were then covered with old hay to keep them from freezing. In the spring, we’ll uncover them and they’ll g ..read more

If you shop on Amazon and would like to support our work this Christmas season, I have created a list of books and tools we really like. If you purchase anything through those links, we get a small commission which doesn’t cost you anything. This is the slow season here, as book sales drop and video views fall. It’s also the time we use to get book projects finished and new garden beds created, and to clean up all the weeds that ate the gardens in summer. It looks like a frost may be incoming, so today we’ll be doing some frost protection and bringing in cuttings from tender plants that aren’t ..read more

It’s really important to “make do” and not complain about what you don’t have. As the old saying goes, “I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” Stop complaining and use what you have! Joe Bob makes a good point in this recent comment: I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s true. “I wish I had time to garden…” “I wish I had space…” “I wish I could get out of debt…” “I wish I could work on my book idea…” “Sigh…” That’s pathetic. Especially when applied in a spirit of envy. Envy is ugly and gross. When something nice happens to someone, often there’s some self ..read more

There is a misconception that a compost pile must be made directly on the ground. Though we have done that many times, we have also composted in barrels, in large enclosed bins, in an old refrigerator, and on concrete slabs. In our latest video I explain why composting in a pile with a bottom on it is just fine: The main issue with composting directly on the ground is the power of tree roots. If you are anywhere near a tree, it will happily fill your pile with roots. From the Comments Chet writes: “We had our first compost bin under a very large maple tree in our chicken run. I think it was t ..read more

There is a lot to be thankful for. We finally got some good rain The greenhouse is finished The new compost pile is done We had a support pillar on our porch start to fail and friends helped us fix it before it did serious damage to the house We have wonderful friends We have a good church The children are safe and healthy The garden gave us over a ton of food Scrubfest II went off without a hitch We have my mother here for Thanksgiving The Grocery Row Gardening system continues to prove itself We own our own home (via a mortgage, but ’tis better than renting!) We have a working vehicle We hav ..read more

It’s been a good year! That’s 2297lbs of produce, plus 2330 eggs and 5 roosters! This is even better than we did when we rented a small farm in Grenada. There we already had multiple mature fruit trees and pineapples and bananas and plantains that really stacked the deck, giving us a yield of 2008.5lbs. This time, we managed more than that from scratch within a year. …and we haven’t even dug all the yams yet. I’ve only dug about 8′ of them and have roughly another 100′ of trellis to go. There’s no way we’ll be able to eat them all over the next few months so we’ll probably just leave a lot of ..read more

Earlier this year I posted a video on how to start a food forest the easy way: This morning I received this comment: “David, for some of us we only have a city lot 50×140 and that lot contains the house, a shed or garage or both, a place to park a car or two before you know it there is not a lot of space left to put in what you would like and still have room to get around and work what you are growing, and heaven forbid there happen to be a low spot in the yard that floods when it rains. Trying to find an affordable acre or two of workable land for sale is not so easy everywhere. Even as a si ..read more

Though the tomatoes and peppers and melons are gone, and the gloriously abundant roots of summer are now stored in the mud room, there is still food in the garden. At this time of year we’re harvesting the daikons, pak choi, mustard and mizuna we planted two months ago. We’re also bringing in oregano and rosemary, as well as the African blue basil which somehow managed to dodge the first frost of the year. We planted an assortment of brassicas in the two test beds we used to see if mimosa leaves could be used as a fertilizer, and those have been bringing us a consistent supply of greens. Some ..read more