I was sent a copy of The Modern Homestead Garden by Gary Pilarchik by Quarto Publishing. Any opinions are my own.

About The Modern Homestead Garden:

Growing Self-sufficiency in Any Size Backyard 

If concerns about the environment and the health and wellness of yourself and your family leave you longing to make a change, start growing and preserving your own organic foods. With the guidance found in The Modern Homestead Garden, you’ll discover how little land and effort it takes to start growing healthy, nutritious food.

Modern homesteading is a lifestyle focused on living lightly on the land and increasing self-sufficiency. It doesn’t matter whether “home” is 50 acres in the country, a suburban corner lot, or an apartment in the city; all you need is a desire to reduce your footprint on the earth and live a more sustainable life. To be a modern homesteader, you don’t have to live off-grid and you don’t have to give up contemporary conveniences.

For most modern homesteaders, it all starts with making the conscious decision to reduce your reliance on the commercial food supply chain. In The Modern Homestead Garden, author and YouTube gardening star Gary Pilarchik of The Rusted Garden walks you step-by-step through the process of building a homestead garden. From laying out the planting beds, nurturing the soil, and starting seeds, straight through to cooking and preserving the harvest, Gary serves as your warm and accessible guide, no matter how large or how small your homestead is. With the guidance found here, you’ll move at your own pace, learn, share, and enjoy the journey as you slowly transform your home into an edible landscape.

• Practical advice to site and build your very first homestead garden
• Crop profiles to get you growing quickly 
• Cost-effective ways to source seeds and plants 
• The low-down on feeding plants in an earth-friendly way
• Methods for preparing planting beds and containers
• Soil prep advice every homesteader can use 
• All natural trouble-shooting solutions 

• How to include berries, cane fruits, vine crops, and fruit trees in your homestead plans
• Food preservation advice that’s easy and delicious

Modern homesteading is as much an attitude as it is an action. It’s not dependent on how much land you have or even how much food you can grow; it’s about cultivating self-sufficiency and self-reliance, no matter its level. Welcome to The Modern Homestead Garden.

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About the Author:

Gary Pilarchik has been gardening for most of his life. His grandfather taught him about vegetable gardening in first grade, and it ignited a passion that has been with him for 52 years. Gary started his YouTube channel, The Rusted Garden, in 2011 as a way to enjoy himself and teach others about gardening. He has since grown his following to over 425,000 dedicated subscribers, and started a second channel, My First Vegetable Garden, a few years later to cater to first-time vegetable growers. His belief is that a garden wants to give, vegetables want to grow, and everyone can have a successful garden. Providing information and options in his videos, Gary’s goal is to educate viewers so they can make informed choices about their gardens.

By day, Gary is a clinical mental health therapist who has been working for Johns Hopkins for 15 years. Gardening is a way for him to reduce stress, ground himself, and focus on the beauty of life found in Nature. Gary enjoys meeting gardeners from around the world through his social media reach; he responds to every question and comment people leave for him. He sees vegetable gardening as a global hobby that brings people together across cultures and geographical boundaries. 

Our Homestead

Our little piece of paradise is a constant work in progress. This year we are making some big changes. Next week I will share about one of the biggest – we added solar!

We have wanted to do it for a while but it took a while to gather the money. There was a nice tax break but we are not taking on debt these days so, we waited ’til we could pay for it. As soon as it’s hooked into the grid we will start adding what we generate to it. Woo hoo!

The husband is also building raised beds for his garden to make things easier for him. I believe the blueberries are going in the first box but I am not sure about the others. He is the gardener. I do the processing.

I will share in a post next week about the solar installation.

Happy Earth Day everyone!