a backyard journal · est. 2019, Tennessee
Grow what you eat. Keep what you grow.
Seasonal notes from half an acre: what to plant, how to put it by, and what I learned by losing crops first.
a backyard journal · est. 2019, Tennessee
Seasonal notes from half an acre: what to plant, how to put it by, and what I learned by losing crops first.
Nº 01 — Autumn issue
Plain, tested ways to raise food in a small backyard, and the quiet craft of making it last until spring.
↳ start with the potatoes. trust me.
Oct. harvest — 60 lbs!The Feature · The Harvest
How to store potatoes for winter: cure them two weeks, keep them dark at 40 to 50°F with high humidity, and check the bin weekly. A Tennessee homesteader's method.
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Spring
A year in the garden
Peas in by Valentine's, potatoes by St. Patrick's. Onion sets, lettuce under row cover, and too many tomato seedlings on the kitchen table.
Water at dawn, pick every other day, and can whatever you can't eat. Beans, squash, peppers, and the first sun-warm tomato.
Cure the potatoes and squash, plant garlic, sow cover crops, and fill the freezer before the first frost warning.
Frost cloth on the kale, herbs on the windowsill, seed catalogs on the table. The pantry does the work now.
Putting By · 4 min
How many jars to can for a year: multiply how often you eat a food each week by 52, then divide by servings per jar. Canning math…
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The Garden · 4 min
Succession planting for fall and winter greens: stagger sowings 7 to 10 days apart and time them to reach most of their size…
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Cold Nights · 3 min
Does a cold frame work in winter? In zones 6 and 7 it can keep spinach, kale and mache harvestable through most of winter. What…
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The Garden · 3 min
When is it too late to plant fall greens? Watch day length as well as frost. Count back from your first frost date, and get…
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Cold Nights · 4 min
How to protect plants from frost: cover them before sunset with cloth that reaches the ground, water dry soil that morning, and…
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Putting By · 3 min
The last few weeks of the harvest always feel like a race. Green tomatoes, a pile of peppers, the last winter squash. I don't try…
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Kitchen Window · 3 min
People ask how I keep herbs alive all winter. I bring three pots inside and put them by the brightest window. That's it. No fancy…
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The Pantry · 3 min
We don't have a basement. Most folks around here don't. But I still eat our own potatoes into March. Here's how.
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Cold Nights · 3 min
The first frost warning always seems to come on a school night. So I keep everything I need in one tote by the back door.
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Putting By · 3 min
Every October somebody at church asks me if I close up the garden for winter. I do, but not the way most folks think. I don't…
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Pick your USDA zone and month. A rough guide from my own notebook; always check your local frost dates.
About Joyce
I'm Joyce. I grow most of what my family eats behind a small house in rural Tennessee. I'm not a farmer and I never trained as one. Everything here I learned the slow way, usually by losing a crop first.
— Joyce
The Sunday Letter
What to plant, what to put by, and what went wrong this week. No noise.