This Yanmar tractor is our main workhorse here at the yardstead.  This has been a great little tractor.  We have had a lot of interest in our Yanmar tractor articles, so I thought I would post this  [ ... ]

Powdery mildew is a fungal disease which affects many types of plants.  Cucurbits like zucchini, squash, pumpkins, melons and gourds are all succeptable to powdery mildew.  It usually appears on l [ ... ]

Powdery mildew is a disease caused by fungus that affects a wide variety of plants.   Plants of the family known as Cucurbits, which includes cucumbers, squash, zucchini, gourds, melons and pumpkin [ ... ]

Raising ducks at the yardstead is a very new venture. We've only had our ducklings for one week now. But, I've spent the last six months reading about ducks. We have talked about having a few at the  [ ... ]

The winter melon also called wax gourd, white gourd or ash gourd is grown on a vine for its very large fruit that is eaten as a vegetable.  Winter Melons originated in southeast asia but now the w [ ... ]

Kathleen sent me this article today from Time.com about a man who has ripped up his lawn and planted a garden in its place.  It is really a good idea and Kathleen has been trying to do the same thin [ ... ]

Well, we had a very good spring garden this year at the yardstead.  We had bountiful harvests of squash, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, onions and cucumbers.  Basically everything we pl [ ... ]

This is the second article in our beginner beekeeping series.  In the first article we talked about what you need to get started in beekeeping, including the hive and sources for bees.  This article [ ... ]

Now is the time to plant edible bulbs such as onions, garlic and shallots.  Get your bulbs planted now and you should have a delicious harvest early next summer.  There is a wide variety of edible b [ ... ]

On March 12-13th, the UF Honey Bee Research and Extension lab will be offering the 3rd annual Bee College at UF Whitney Marine labs in St. Augustine, FL. The Bee College is Florida’s largest educati [ ... ]

We use our hand tools everyday here at the Yardstead.  Because we are a small scale urban homestead, we don't really need to use power tools that often.  Sure we use a small tractor to till the gard [ ... ]

Our spring garden vegetables have been planted about 1 month now and we are starting to see some flowering and fruiting.  We planted tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, straight neck squash,& [ ... ]

Gourds make great birdhouses for several varieties of birds; bluebirds, wrens, woodpeckers, flycatchers, titmice, screech owls (think large gourds), kestrels, nuthatches and many more. Most commonly  [ ... ]

     Portland Oregon has one of the premier Community Garden programs in the country.  They offer garden plots to residents for a small fee, and donate fresh garden produce to [ ... ]

With spring just around the corner we are getting things ready for our garden here at the Yardstead.  Currently the garden is bare with the exception of a strip of onions sticking up in the middle. [ ... ]

The text and illustrations of this article are from
Organic Gardening and Farming October, 1973
Philip Mahan demonstrates how a fish is
transferred from the fry tank to the barrel.A biological fo [ ... ]

With springtime just around the corner we are in full preperation mode here at the Yardstead.  We have a few veggies in the garden already with plans for many more.  Kathleen has a stack a s [ ... ]