Welcome to The Home Grone Farmstead

Welcome to The Home Grone Farmstead blog! I have a confession to make. I am not a blogger, nor do I live on a farm. But, I do wish it were true.  I am a stay at home mom of three boys and my husband and I have been married a little over twelve years! We live in sunny California in a sweet little suburb. Back to farm talk...I live a pretty simple life, so imagine my surprise when my friends and family tell me that I should start a blog. I will start by saying my husband comes from a line of farmers and it's true what they say...often times it skips a generation. My mother in law is a fantastic woman, but just talk compost with my husband and he will swoon;) He's got it, the farmer gene! We are by no means experts. We just love what we do and we are learning as we go. We want to share our journey with you and encourage you to join in on  the "urban homestead' revival:)

Last summer we planted a garden in our side yard, Our side yard was a big eye sore and wasted space. So what better way to make use out of all of that space. 

We used some scrap lumber we had laying around to build a shallow raised bed. We planted 38 different kinds of peppers and strawberries.

We planted a small herb garden and eight different types of  tomatoes. 

It all went in pretty easily. It was an exciting challenge to grow an totally "organic" garden.

 My husband researched the web and found a recipe for  a special compost tea or what I like to call 'poo slurry'. It was brewed and sprayed on all plants once a week. I will post pics and recipe for tea soon. 

The compost tea helped with the growth of our vegetables and the size! It was pretty amazing!

Our garden nine weeks later.

We added a large bed towards the back where we added more tomatoes, cucumbers, zuccini, eggplants, carrots, swiss chard, and sweet peas. 

My tiny herb garden didn't get babied as much as the other plants did. It was pretty much water and sun. That's really all that they need. Pinching off the blooms helps them to last longer as well. Who knew herbs had flowers! Beautiful vase fillers;)

My husband researched and found this method of growing tomatoes up a string. The Stringing method. This method strengthens the tomato plant and boosts it's production.  The variety of tomato has to be an indeterminate variety.  The label on the tomato plant will tell you, then you can save seeds and have tomatoes for the next planting season.  We are still getting tomatoes from this crop! Mind you it's a Southern California winter at 80 degrees. We will definitely grow our tomatoes using this method from now on! Did I mention I hated tomatoes until we started growing our own!  It's worth the try! 

There is no wrong way to plant your garden. Just plant what you will use! Just make sure that you are keeping into account the amount of water your garden plants will need as well as sunlight.