Olden Oasis Homestead

Build a High-Yield Vegetable Garden Planner for Next Year Frost coats the ground in January, and seed catalogs arrive in your mailbox. You flip through glossy pages of red tomatoes and crisp sugar snap peas, feeling the urge to grow something amazing. But when May arrives with a rush of weeds and warm soil, excitement turns into panic. Seeds get scattered in random beds, plants crowd each other out, and half your crops fail before they fruit. Winter is the time to build a solid vegetable garden planner for next year so you skip the spring scramble. Why Timing Your Garden Strategy Now Prevents Mid-Season Crop Failure When you rush to plant in spring, you miss critical details. You end up buying random plants at the nursery just because they look green and healthy. Then you get home and realize you have no space for them. The Hidden Cost of Winging It in the Vegetable Patch Planting without a map leads to overcrowded beds that block sunlight and trap moisture. Pests move easily through d...

Smart Storage: Maximizing Shelf Life of Dried Foods for Your Prepper's Pantry Building a survival supply is more than buying bulk goods and shoving them into a closet. If you do not store them right, your food will spoil long before you ever need it. You are not just stockpiling calories; you are investing in your future security. Storing dried foods for your prepper's pantry requires a shift in mindset. You must treat moisture, heat, and light as active threats to your supply. By applying specific techniques, you can ensure that your food remains safe, nutritious, and ready to eat when a crisis hits. Securing the Flavor: Optimal Environmental Conditions for Dried Food Storage The environment where you keep your food dictates how long it lasts. You can use the most expensive containers available, but if you store them in a hot, damp attic, your food will fail. Consistency is the secret to a long-lasting reserve. Shielding from Moisture: The Silent Spoilage Agent Moisture is the...

Happy Independence Day! by Gin Lee

Barbecued country-style pork ribs Do you know the old saying, bet-cha can't eat just one? Well, that truthfully is the case with my barbecued ribs. This recipe for barbecued country-style ribs always turns out amazingly delicious. They're the yummiest, melt in your mouth, barbecued ribs.  So, I only prepared four country-style ribs today, but wished that I had made more, because they were just that darn good! I prepared my homemade barbecue sauce to smear on them and then slow cooked them in the oven (the sauce recipe is the same as I prepared for crock-pot chicken yesterday). Ingredients: Country-style pork ribs (The amount depends on how many you'll need for the size of your family. I cooked a four-piece pack.) Ground black pepper and seasoning salt to taste Homemade barbecue sauce (See below for the list of ingredients and how I prepare it. This is the same barbecue sauce recipe that I made for my crock-pot barbecued chicken.) Homemade barbecue sauce ingredients: ¼ cup o...

Backyard berry picking Several years ago, I planted numerous mulberry trees, because I absolutely love the berries. The trees are one of the easiest and fastest to grow, but they can be a bit of a nuisance to some homeowners. Once the berries begin to fall, they leave a purple stain on whatever they land on. If you have ever picked mulberries, then you know if you don't wear gloves while doing so, you'll end up with stained purple fingers and as you pop the berries into your mouth your lips also become stained by the berries' delectable juices. While working outside over the weekend, I was amazed to see that my mulberries were already turning and many were already ripe for picking. So today I'm venturing outdoors to pick multitudes of mulberries. I will end up making mulberry cobbler, mulberry jello pies, freezing, canning, and dehydrating the rest of the berries before the growing season is over. My trees will bear fruit up until July. Well, that's how they normall...

Growing organic Methley plums in Arkansas Living in the south, Japanese plum trees are one of the best options when considering planting plum trees. Although European plum trees will do well in both northern and southern states. Self-pollinating plum trees  My favorite type of self-pollinating plum tree is Methley. However, Au-Roadside, Beauty, Damson, Green Gage, Mount Royal, Persian Green, Plum Burgundy, Santa Rosa, and Stanley are also some other worthy choices of self-pollinating plum trees. I prefer growing self-pollinating trees when possible. Self-pollinating means that planting two different varieties of trees isn't required to bear fruit. Varieties of plum trees that require planting two different types of plum trees are referred to as being self-unfruitful. These types have to be planted with another type of plum tree to bear fruit. The Ozark plum tree is one example of a self-unfruitful tree.  However, there's still a tiny catch. Even though you don't need two se...

Vintage Horton head vase produced by Horton's Ceramics of Eastland, Texas Luckily for me, my father loved vintage antiques; about as much as I do. After he passed away, I inherited his beautiful and unique treasures, and this gorgeous head vase was one of those items. I longed to learn the history of these vintage pieces. So I dug as deep as I could to find out more information about them. The vintage glazed ceramic that I am showcasing today is of a beautiful blonde-haired beauty. The ceramic is known as a head vase. She measures 7-¼ inch tall x 7 inches in width. Handmade doilies were once placed inside the head vase to form a lacy hat, then filled with silk flower arrangements. I prefer not to stuff her delicate head with anything nowadays due to the fact that she's vintage and antique ceramics can break easily. I was told that the head vase was inspired by admiration of blonde Hollywood cover girls, otherwise known as glamor girls. These head vases were produced sometime du...

Growing Chick Grass Seed Mix Although I call this chick grass mix, it can also be fed to wild birds, goats, and sheep. The chick grass is simply a mixture of tetraploid ryegrass, flax, alfalfa, and red and white clover seeds. The chick grass mix can be grown in planters, chicken runs, or wherever else that you might want to grow it in your yard. The seeds will generally sprout within 7 to 14 days. When it's fed to chickens, it will help increase the level of omega-3 in their eggs. So, that's a win-win for both you and your hens. The mix that I prepare will make one 12-pound bag of chick grass mix. I plant this mix in planters and grow it indoors. You can plant as much or as little of the seed mix as you need. The chick grass can be planted inside your chicken run, chicken coop, outdoor plot area, greenhouse, and greenroom. The chick grass seed mix will germinate fairly quickly. Keeping the seed mix on hand makes it simple to continue growing a supply of healthy food for your ch...

Using Apple Cider Vinegar as a Natural Rooting Hormone Propagating plant clippings is one thing most gardeners like doing because it saves us money and also keeps our plants true. What do I mean by keeping the plants true? When you propagate a plant, it means that the plant that you've taken the clipping from will stay true to the original plant. With stem cuttings, each new plant will duplicate its parent plant. So if you have a favorite plant, it's nice to take several clippings from it and propagate it.  My favorite part about propagating plants is that you can also do this with vegetable plants. Tomatoes and peppers are just a few of the plants in your vegetable garden that can be propagated from cuttings. Starting a vegetable plant from an existing stem is also much faster than growing it from seed.  Apple cider rooting hormone Three teaspoons of apple cider vinegar mixed into a gallon of water is all it takes to make enough rooting hormone to use for several plant stem c...