Tips for the small homestead.

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Hedgecrafter

Nomad
Feb 23, 2014
306
0
Suffolk
It's all very well for these guys with a nice big kitchen, pantries, spare rooms, green houses, sheds and plenty of land. But what about us guys that have flats, live in towns or small houses that want to do a bit more for ourselves and at least make the beginnings of a homestead?

I live in a medium sized village. 3mins walk south or west and I'm in the country, 10 mins north and west. So I'm in a nice location, but I have a downstairs flat with no spare rooms, no storage and a kitchen that my cat doesn't enjoy being swung around in.

We have a good sized garden but the ground is far too damp for most veg.

This year I'll be moving but probably won't be getting anywhere much bigger. So what projects can guys like me get involved in to start a homestead?
 

Hedgecrafter

Nomad
Feb 23, 2014
306
0
Suffolk
There are quite a few projects that I intend to tackle over the next few years.


Building a herb wall with PVC or sliced up plastic milk bottles.

Making a wardrobe sized green house.

Making a meat drying box, possibly dry smoking.

Building a planting table for small veg

Putting in a fancy to separate food garden and dog garden

Keeping chickens


If any one has guides, experience or just wants to add to the list of things they want to do to make there home a homestead then please join in.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
If the ground is damp in your garden, make a raised bed - or more than one. Raising the growing surface massively improves drainage

There's a write up here on how I did mine

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43729

Lack of space will always be a problem - it was for us when we spend a quarter of a century flogging round the country - but you can do a lot in even a tiny kitchen - heck my cottage kitchen is tiny now!
 

Swallow

Native
May 27, 2011
1,545
4
London
We are in a similar situation. In town, reasonable sized garden and next to no storage.

One of the things I want to try this year is something in Sepp Holzer's book that I can't remember the name of. Basically it is a suspended polythene tube filled with soil and you simply put holes in the side and plant things. It also talks about having a perforated inner tube down the middle for watering. I'll try and put a better desription up later, but if you put "vertical planting" into google images you get lots of interesting results.
 

Harvestman

Bushcrafter through and through
May 11, 2007
8,656
26
55
Pontypool, Wales, Uk
Likewise on the raised beds idea, tubs and pots will also work, and you cab get fruit trees on dwarfing rootstock that can be grown in large tubs.
 

Magentus

Settler
Oct 1, 2008
915
39
West Midlands
Chickens can be kept in a relatively small space - you could combine the greenhouse with a chicken coop - see this fabled structure;

chickengreenhousepw.gif


We had 4 bantams in a smallish garden and they are great fun. Read up about their care first of all though as they do take a bit of looking after.

All the best, Magentus
 

Swallow

Native
May 27, 2011
1,545
4
London
OK Sepp Holzer. Edible tubes

They took Geotextile (whatever that is) sewed it into 30cm diameter tubes. A long perforated and thinner hose is inserted for watering and feeding purposes and the whole tube is filled with soil, kitchen waste, straw and leaves.. The inner hose is connected to a bucket above protected by chicken wire or similar. The inside of the bucket is filled with stinging nettles, orach and other leaves. Rain going into the bucket makes liquid manure.

You can put a valve between the bucket and the watering hose to make watering easier. The inner hose is twisted/tied to prevent water & liquid manure running out. But it can be opened if it needs to be be cleared.

Holes are made in the outer tube for planting.
 

Quixoticgeek

Full Member
Aug 4, 2013
2,483
23
Europe
In a small space, you can get a surprisingly amount, if you have a sunny window sill you can grow a lot of salad type crops.

Suttons make a range of seeds called speedy seeds, by choosing varieties like their Mixed Salad Leaves or for winter use the Winter salad mix. I have managed to be self sufficient in salad from equinox to equinox just in containers on my kitchen window sill. Things like the Green Beans from the same range and Runner Bean Hestia can give you a good feed out of a very small space. You could even get away with just a grow bag for some of these.

My living room window is home in the summer to 6-8 chilli peppers, sweet peppers, and tomatoes. Two Cayenne pepper plants netted me several dozen chillies, these I dried and used over the next year, as well as giving a few away to friends.

If you want something a bit more advanced, you can get yourself some apple trees in containers. This has the advantage that you can take them with you when you move. You don't need much space, a dwarfing root stock like M9 or M27 tree in a container of about 15" x 18" (Dia x Height), cared for properly these should give you a nice yield of apples. I got my trees from Keepers Nursery[1]. You can also get small varieties of other fruit trees/bushes. Blackcurrant Ben Sarek is a variety that gives a nice compact bush with a high yield, my 8 bushes last year got me 15lb of blackcurrants, each bush is about 3' tall, and I have them just over 2' apart, again you can grow them in a container. This year I am growing strawberries in a grow bag. The bag suggested upto 10 plants per bag, but I have 8 in mine. Rhubarb is another good one, doesn't require much space, is high yielding, and expensive to buy. My 4 rhubarb plants (variety timberley early) net me about 40lb of rhubarb each year...

Don't forget you can easily supplement your own patch with what you can find in the local hedgerows. I managed to get 3lb of blackberries from a single 12 yard stretch of blackberries, found a 14lb giant puffball mushroom in a bit of pasture, not to mention copious quantities of elderberries to make elderberry wine. All in all, you don't need much space to start your own little homestead.

J

[1]Just a very happy customer, no connection
 

Bishop

Full Member
Jan 25, 2014
1,716
691
Pencader
There was one of those Prepper shows where a young couple were doing that whole permaculture thing with a greenhouse,chickens and fish in a pretty small urban backyard that really impressed me but that's a big investment especially if you're in a rented place like me. I suppose if an allotment is not an option there's always guerilla gardening. With so many people now removed from their agricultural past by several generations most cannot tell the difference between wild garlic and potato plants growing at the roadside.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Stuff done in rented gardens











Grew my own mustard seed here and made mustard from scratch



...I could go on, but check out my threads on soap making, vinegar making, pickling, dehydrating etc. All done in small, rented, properties
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Another way of finding good growing land is to ask around about elderly neighbours. In the burgh housing around here all of the gardens were meant to be able to feed a family. They are too big for most of the elderly folks to look after now. For doing the bit that shows to the road, the back growing garden is often offered for whatever growing you like.
It's still a lot of work, but it's good land and it's well sited here too.

Small storage bunkers, like the ones for wheelie bins or similar, can be reinforced quite easily to hold trays with grow bags and the like. They get the sun and are at an easily worked height, and you still have storage space underneath.
You can carpet a reinforced shed roof with trays of saladings or herbs too. Pots allow you to move plants around through the growing seasons.
I grow pignuts, lesser celandines, and dwarf stock fruit trees in pots, and they do very well. I make a cane wigwam in one and grow peas up it. If you find one of the mange tout types that lets you pick again and again all summer long, it's a tasty way to have fresh veg.
Other vegetables can be grown as ornamentals in the flower beds. Squash or the patio tomatoes, or the multicoloured cabbages and fancy flowered headed alliums.

atb,
Toddy
 

Hedgecrafter

Nomad
Feb 23, 2014
306
0
Suffolk
There is some amazing advice and experience coming in. My homesteading project list is growing fast.

Unfortunately I can't do much this year as we are moving but I will keep what's in my pots going. I'm gardening for my gramps-in-law as he has a very well established allotment in his garden. The plot is about a 1/5th of a acre, the harder work is getting a bit much so I'm taking it over under close observation.
 

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