GenAcres Homestead

Great Gifts for People who Can Food Looking for a great gift for that relative or friend who is into canning food?

Great Gifts for Older Gardeners We all want our older loved ones to keep healthy, and their love of gardening is a great way for them to do so. The rigors of gardening, such as bending, stooping, kneeling, squatting, gripping, lifting and the like can be good exercise, but it can also be pretty taxing on an older body.

     Creating a Rock Garden that Rocks -- With Hostas! A rock garden by design is a small plot (usually on a slope or man-made hill) designed to emphasize a variety of rocks, stones, and plants.  Rock gardens can be made to blend into the landscape or they can be a great focal point area. Rocks are naturally beautiful, and with the right planning, your rock garden will look good year-round.

Top Ten  Hostas to Brighten up your Shade Garden Shady garden spaces don't have to be bland. There are the usual colorful shade perennials like the usual suspects like Astilbe, Foxglove and Bleeding Hearts. Those are good perennial shade garden plants to use in adding some bright colors to a shady garden spot. But have you ever considered incorporating bright-colored hostas into your shade garden layout?

   Epsom Salt in the Organic Garden The popularity of organic gardening is increasing day by day. Organic gardeners have a philosophy that supports the health of the whole system of gardening, especially when it comes to dealing with the soil. As organic gardeners look for alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers,  Epsom Salt  has risen in popularity as an effective organic soil amendment for garden use.

You know you're a serious gardener when...

No homesteading garden is complete without growing the foundation of your salad garden, lettuce!  Growing lettuce is easy, takes up little space so you can easily tuck it between and under taller vegetables and even flowers. Lettuce grows for many weeks in the mild weather of spring and fall, and it can be planted several times every season for a continual supply.  The Basics -- Lettuce Annual  Height:  9-12:      Width:  6" Lettuce comes in many different varieties including leaf lettuces, crispheads, summer crisps, icebergs, romaine, butterheads, and bibbs.  Here's a  short description of each. Leaf lettuce.  Forms a loose rosette of tender, sweet-tasting leaves in 4-6 weeks. Summer Crisps.  Loosehead of large, crisp leaves with good flavor. Crispheads.  A combination of romaine and iceberg types.  Crunchy texture. Romaines.  Oblong leaves that form fairly loose, upright heads. Butterhead and Bibb.  Broad rosettes of tender, wavy leaves wit