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Dogs love fresh, aerated garden soil. While you work so hard to create a perfect environment for plants to live, canines can destroy it all in one fell swoop. Below, we provide some steps, strategies and recipes to protect your hard work, and keep your garden and puppy happy. 

Install a Fence

For vegetable gardens especially, a garden fence will serve you well to protect your garden from your pets, neighbor pets, rodents and predators.

Create Prickly Borders

If you are looking to protect your pooch from invading your flower beds and a fence is not feasible, plant prickly shrubs and hedges at entry points. Also plant along the edges to create a border, often enough that animals can’t find large spaces to dig and lay.

Roses and holly bushes are great choices to help redirect your pet.

Sprinkle Powders

Dogs don’t like to taste mustard powder or red pepper flakes. Sprinkling some of either (or both) won’t harm your garden but will deter animals from digging.

Sprinkle Coffee Grounds

Dogs don’t like the smell of coffee grounds, and using them throughout garden beds has a dual purpose. Both used and fresh coffee grounds contain nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and tons of micronutrients.

Grounds can be used in your garden as mulch or as a slow-release fertilizer. Adding coffee grounds to soil improves drainage, water retention and aeration in addition to keeping dogs out.

Make a Dog Repellant Spray

In a clean spray bottle, mix two tablespoons of distilled white vinegar and 20 drops of any citrus-scented essential oil into 1 1/2 cups of cold water. Mix well and spray in the places around your home that you want the dog to stay away from.

Dogs dislike citrus scents. Grapefruit, lemon, bergamot and even oranges deter them. 

Plant Marigolds Throughout the Bed

Marigolds emit a pungent smell pets don’t like. Planting in drifts, next to other plants or as a border to your beds will do a lot to ward off pets from entering.

Marigolds benefit your garden by attracting pollinators and deterring harmful insects.

Use an Ultrasonic Animal Deterrent

This approach is gaining popularity for repelling dogs, raccoons, rabbits, mice, rats and other rodents. In most box stores, you can find solar, waterproof stakes that emit a high frequency sound that manufacturers claim will deter nuisance animals. There’s a lot of debate about the effectiveness of these products, but you may decide to give one a try.  

Dog Poop

If you are not growing vegetables in your garden beds and if your dog has a recurring area he likes to dig up, bury some of his/her own poop in the spot. Once they dig it up, they will no longer be interested in revisiting that area. 

Redirect Them to Another Area

Create a sandbox for your dog to play in with bare soil, sand, dog toys and other items your pooch enjoys. Give positive praise and affirmation when they start to use that area instead of your garden. 

Plant Herbs…

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In my last video installment of building a new garden shed on my farm, I wrapped my new outbuilding in sheeting material. The new siding really pulled together the progress this project has undergone. Now it’s time to get to work on the rafters so I can get a roof on this building.

First, when I grab a board for a rafter, I’m going to look down the edge of it for the natural crown, which I want to put up or to the outside. Then I’ll take the board inside my farm garden shed and lay it on the top plates. This first rafter board is especially important, because it will serve as the template I’ll use to determine the cut length for all the others. So I need to make sure I get this cut right!

If you, like me, are no seasoned carpenter, plan on taking your time with these cuts. Also, I should note, I’m choosing to make cuts in my frame for the rafters to sit in rather than use hurricane straps, simply because I think it’ll make for stronger joints.

In the video you’ll see how I determine and mark my cuts on the rafter boards.

Determining Roof Pitch

Because I’m not building my farm garden shed using plans, I need to take a few minutes to determine the pitch of the roof. This requires some simple math. First I measure the height of the front wall, followed by getting the height of the back wall.

Then I’ll use the Pythagorean theory to determine the roof’s pitch or, if I want to keep things simple, find an online calculator to get that number.

Making the Cuts

As I don’t cut wood all day for a living, I need to take some extra steps to ensure I get my cuts right. For that, I created a simple “cheater board” to help me repeat accurate cuts.

Check out the video to see how I created this template board and the rest of the steps for cutting and installing rafters on my new farm garden shed.

 

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“There’s an energy and peace to keeping bees,” says Susie Goodspeed, a self-proclaimed bee nerd farmer who presides over the Farm And Hive hobby farm in Idaho. “It’s the same as working with beeswax: It’s calming, it’s grounding, it’s happy.”

Along with keeping bees for their pollinator benefits, Goodspeed has also expanded Farm And Hive to offer a range of bee-based products. These include beeswax candles and festive ornaments plus propolis tinctures.

Taking time out from overseeing the hives, Goodspeed spoke to us about the emotional benefit of keeping bees and how they communicate among themselves. We also got into how burning beeswax candles can help to clean your air.

Getting Into Bees

Goodspeed’s first steps toward becoming a beekeeper were inspired by a mix of factors.

“I’d worked at a little garden center farm, and I’d done a lot with the produce and the farm and the garden. I started to realize that in my own garden I needed more pollinators,” recalls Goodspeed. “So I looked into that and beekeeping was a natural choice. Next, I found a couple of great mentors and jumped into beekeeping with both feet.”

How Many Hives?

“Beekeeping is never a business. It’s always a hobby!” says Goodspeed. “There’s no such thing as success or being able to know it all and there’s no such thing as enough hives.

“Sometimes people ask me, ‘How many hives do you save?’ And I usually say, ‘Too many and never enough.’ But there’s so much you can get from bees and not just honey-wise. It’s emotional and you get so much peace. There’s such an amount of education on life that they give you.”

Learning from Bee Behavior

When it comes to observing bee behavior, Goodspeed says that you can learn a lot from their social structure and ability to communicate. “The way they work together, whether it’s fending off a foe or telling each other where to go for pollen, they talk a lot,” she explains.

The Properties of Beeswax

At Farm And Hive, Goodspeed offers a range of beeswax products that have proved popular due to the natural substance’s inherent properties.

“The light that comes off beeswax is the closest to natural sunlight,” says Goodspeed. “When you burn beeswax, there’s a chemical reaction where it releases negative ions that attach to dust and allergens and toxins in your air. So when you burn beeswax it helps to clean your air.”

Bee-Based Gratitude

Goodspeed keeps the Farm And Hive bees purposely close to the house—and enjoys the benefits of living in such proximity to the hives. “When you’re out in the garden, it used to be fearful, sort of like, oh, no, there’s a bee!” But now it’s like, “Hi, friend!” Bees just teach you to be more aware and to have a lot more gratitude.”

Follow Farm And Hive at Instagram.

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Backyard beekeeping is a rapidly growing hobby, with people from all walks of life joining in on the fun for the first time each year. Folks from the city, those living in rural settings, even apartment dwellers and full-time RVers are embracing this exciting venture. And while it’s true that men typically dominate the beekeeping world, women are one of the fastest growing groups of new beekeepers in many regions of the United States. 

However, many women have questions or concerns that aren’t addressed in standard beekeeping meetings, books or conferences, such as how to lift those heavy boxes or how beekeepers can move hives around when going solo. So here’s a little primer to get you going, as I myself had to answer these questions many years ago as I began my own solo journey into the world of beekeeping.

First Things First

Before you make your first bee purchase, attend monthly beekeeping meetings regardless of how intimidated you may feel sitting in a room full of men. I’m from a Southern town where most men in the beekeeping community are big and burly farmers, often with gray hair and deep, gravely voices. I understand firsthand how anyone, regardless of gender, may feel a bit apprehensive by these guys.

However, most of the folks I’ve encountered over the years have been nothing but helpful and kind anytime I’ve had questions. 

In fact, all my mentors—and I’ve had many wonderful ones—have been those exact same gentlemen that I was once unnecessarily intimidated by. And my beekeeping operation would not be where it is today—350 colonies at its peak—without the vast amount of beekeeping wisdom each of these mentors has given me. It ranges from how to move those heavy boxes by myself to how to raise queens, how to best manage nuc production and even how and when to expand my operation. Without the timely guidance of these mentors from the beginning of my journey, I would likely not even be keeping bees today. 

So how do you obtain a mentor or find someone willing to answer your questions? Sometimes it can be tough, especially when not attending monthly meetings or living in an area that doesn’t have a local beekeeping association. You may need to expand your search outside of your local area by attending beekeeping schools, beginners’ classes or even beekeeping conferences that may be offered throughout your state or nearby regions. 

For instance, folks such as Kent Williams, an Eastern Apicultural Society Master Beekeeper and commercial beekeeper in Wingo, Kentucky, are more than eager to assist new and old beekeepers alike. Williams offers a free annual beekeeping school at his home place each April with the Lake Barkely Beekeepers Association to do just that—teach new and experienced beekeepers of every kind the ropes of beekeeping. He also speaks at countless conferences and beekeeping meetings around the country each year to further share his decades of experience just so…

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For a question that is so fundamental to emergency preparedness, this question is not easy to answer.

First, the question is very general. Do you mean how long should you be able to live out of your go bag, your bugout bag, your vehicle, or a fixed site like your home or a lifeboat property such as a retreat or bugout location?

Second, we cannot foretell the future. Emergency planners look to records of past emergencies and then try to predict exposure to future volatility and emergencies.

This methodology is deeply flawed because the little snippet of the past that emergency managers have data for is never long enough, so the number of hours or days FEMA has told Americans to prepare for ballooned longer as the nation experienced higher order Black Swans or events that planners failed to predict, that harmed us.

Managing Risk

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this his books: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Taleb, 2010), and Antifragile, Things that Gain from Disorder (Taleb, 2012), two great books for anyone serious about risk. Both books are just as applicable to emergency managers, survivalists, and healthcare professionals as it is to actuaries and risk managers, maybe more so.

The Great Turkey Problem

Taleb uses a section of Antifragile called “The Great Turkey Problem” (an adaptation of a metaphor from Bertrand Russell) to show how trying to predict future risk based on past performance can cause one to fall victim to a Black Swan. Here is a short excerpt:

“A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys ‘with increased statistical confidence.’ The butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then comes that day when it is really not a very good idea to be a turkey.“ (Taleb, 2012)

So, where did the turkeys go wrong? Had their data window covered a full year, they would have understood what the butcher was up to, had they survived the event, but it was too short. An economist or risk manager from FEMA would read that and say, “Well their window was simply too short.” But the real problem is that mankind sucks at predicting the future. The only way you can avoid this pitfall is to stop trying to predict the future and become antifragile and generally well prepared. I have watched “Chicken Little” survivalists fail badly at attempted predictions for 45 years or so now and it’s painful to watch. Don’t fall for it.

I am not advising you to prepare for known vulnerabilities, but fortunately, for the most part, you need more or less the same knowledge, skills, things and network to grow stronger in response to most volatility, disorder and disasters instead of being destroyed by them.

Economists

“Well, if you just put your money in the S&P 500, you can’t go wrong!” The…

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You’ve walked out to the coop and suddenly halt in your tracks. Feathers are everywhere, and it looks like your entire flock has been wiped out by a roving band of vicious minks. A few of your chickens round the corner, looking as if they went head-to-head with the local coyote pack.

Thankfully, your chickens are fine. You’re not the first chicken keeper to be caught off-guard by the feather explosion that signals the start of molting season. 

Every year, starting in mid to late summer, adult chickens go through an annual molt. This natural process allows chickens to shed their old, broken, dirty feathers, and regrow fresh new feathers before the chill of winter sets in. These brand-new feathers help chickens stay warmer throughout the winter and survive until spring.

The molting process is a stressful experience for chickens. And the process is painful, for the chickens as well as the chicken keeper. During molt, many birds look like they were on the losing end of a nasty bar fight. They often lose feathers in large patches, act lethargic and depressed, and skulk around the yard like they’re trying to avoid being seen by anyone they know.

Thankfully, we can do a lot to help ease our chickens through molting and support their bodies while they’re hard at work regrowing their feathers, and using medicinal herbs is a great way to start. 

Chickweed

Heather Levin

Chickweed is an unassuming spring weed that you’ve likely walked past a hundred times without giving it a second glance. However, this innocuous “weed” can be a marvelous snack to your chickens while they’re molting.

Chickens love the flavor (hence the name, “chickweed”), and the plant is high in vitamins A and C, as well as B vitamins, calcium, magnesium and zinc. It’s also a powerful anti-inflammatory and helps the body feel refreshed and rejuvenated, particularly after a long, cold winter. 

The challenge with feeding your chickens chickweed during molt is that this is an herb that typically only grows in the cool days of early spring. Once the hot summer sun blazes, it disappears. And your chickens will be molting in fall. So, what can you do?

The answer lies with your freezer. Chick-weed freezes well, so harvest chickweed in spring, freeze it and then dole it out to your chickens once they start to molt. I do this every year, as we have an abundance of chickweed that grows on our property, and it’s always a special treat for the chickens.

Basil

In addition to tasting divine, basil is a good source of protein and vitamin K, a mild sedative, and is helpful in treating stress, nervousness and irritability. Sounds like the perfect herb for a molting chicken to me!

Basil is best used fresh, as it loses much of its flavor and medicinal properties upon drying. One of the best…

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Whether we want to accept it or not, the growing season is coming to an end for many of us. I’ll be pulling out half of my gardens this weekend and putting them to bed. The possibility of frost is highly likely within the next few weeks. In our household, this means we harvest all of our green tomatoes.

I love fermented green tomato salsa, as well as the water bath canned version (both of which are in my cookbook Can It & Ferment It). We are also huge fans of fried green tomatoes and make several batches throughout the month of October.  But one recipe that my grandpa made long before I was even a thought, is spicy green tomato pickles. This is a refrigerator pickle, so it doesn’t require any boiling water bath canning or fermenting.  

We snack on these spicy tomatoes straight from the jar but as all my pickle recipes, they also make a great Bloody Mary garnish or unique pickle for an appetizer platter.  

Yield: 1 quart jar 

Ingredients 

Main

• 3.5 cups green tomatoes, cut into bite-sized chunks 
• 4 cloves garlic, halved 
• 2 jalapeño peppers, halved (or spicier peppers if you prefer) 

Brine 

• 1.5 cups water 
• 1.5 cups 5% white distilled vinegar 
• 2 tsp. canning salt 

Directions 

Wash tomatoes, remove any flawed or bruised areas and stems.  

Prepare tomatoes, garlic and hot peppers, and transfer them to a quart jar, until there is 1 inch of headspace (room from the tomatoes to the rim of the jar). 

Heat the brine ingredients to a simmer and stir until the salt is dissolved. Remove from heat. 

Carefully ladle the warm brine over the tomatoes until they are submerged completely. 

Wipe the rim of the jar clean with a dampened cloth to remove any spillage. Place the canning jar lid on the jar and tightly screw on the ring. Allow the jar to cool to room temperature and transfer to the refrigerator.  

Allow the tomatoes to pickle for at least one week before tasting. The longer the tomatoes pickle, the more flavor they will have. 

Notes 

Be sure to thoroughly clean your space and supplies before pickling (as when doing any food preservation). Wash jars and lids with hot, soapy water.  

My grandpa traditionally made these tomatoes really spicy and that’s how I tend to enjoy them to this day. Add any type and as many spicy peppers as you’d like. 

If using cherry tomatoes, I recommend slicing them in half before pickling. 

Add in whole peppercorns, dill, mustard seeds or other spices to change the flavor of your green tomato pickles. 

 This recipe has been shared from Stephanie Thurow’s, WECK Small-Batch Preserving cookbook, with permission from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.  

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Harvesting late-season, frost-sweetened crops is such a benefit to growing into the fall in cold climates. It also makes the most of the same garden space as it allows a grower to add another succession of crops to the garden. Season extension increases total harvests from the same square footage. 

So many of our favorite fall crops (kale, cabbages, Brussel sprouts, Swiss chard, parsnips, beets, turnips, carrots, celeriac, rutabagas and radishes) taste sweeter after a frost. This is because these veggies are able to turn starches in their cells into a botanical “anti-freeze” to keep themselves from dying when temps dip. This chemical change, their “anti-freeze,” turns into sucrose—aka sugar.    

To keep harvesting deeper into fall and possibly even winter—plus benefit from the frost-induced increase in natural sugars—try covering these crops with a low tunnel. Or if you plan far enough ahead you can even grow them in a cold frame.  

Choose Your Cover 

The basic idea is that, by covering a plant, you keep the soil’s warmth intact and let that radiate up into the air around the plants. The sun also warms the air trapped inside the tunnel. You can gain critical degrees under cover depending on sunlight, soil and height of the tunnel. 

The thickness of the covering also makes a difference in heat retention. Anything less than 2-millimeter-thick plastic isn’t worth the bother as it just won’t hold in the heat and tends to tear easily.

I suggest 4- to 6-millimeter plastic for covering low tunnels.  

Low Tunnels 

Low tunnels are so easy to pop up and move around to follow your crop rotations. Basically, you just pound in 18- to 24-inch lengths of rebar at the corners (and along the edges if the span is longer than 4 inches). Then simply slide some 1/2-inch PVC over the rebar. Repeat this on the other side to make an arch over the bed you want to cover.

Next, add a stick of PVC the length of the bed (perpendicular to the arches) to add strength to the structure. Securing with zip ties makes this step super easy. Cover in plastic, ensuring you have enough to make contact with the soil all the way around. You can use a longer piece of rebar (or rocks, lumber, etc.) to weigh down the edges.

Secure the plastic to the PVC with clips or clamps.  

You’ll want to monitor the temperatures inside low tunnels often, especially on sunny days when air temperatures can rise quickly (even when outside temperatures stay in the 30s). 

Cloches 

If you want to protect an individual plant, consider a simple “cloche.” This is a fancy word that describes anything that will hold in the heat.

I’ve used 5-gallon buckets and clear plastic bins to protect salad greens and cabbages when we got a quick dip into the low 20s. Being able to cover…

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