Is growing a sustainable garden on a half-acre possible? Absolutely it is! But how do you accomplish that? It’s one of the questions I get over and over again. A homesteader lives on a small property and they don’t believe they can grow a sustainable (or partially sustainable) garden. So, they give up, or they don’t even try. There are a lot of tips and tricks along the way, but ultimately, it’s absolutely attainable. In this brand new YouTube series, I’m going to teach you exactly how to grow your own food on a half-acre, all while I’m doing it myself!
The series intro is now live on YouTube, so make sure you subscribe to my Youtube channel and hit that notification bell so that you’ll be notified every single time I post a brand new video. Watch the very first episode in the series below.
Before you do though, here are a few quick tips to help you start planning your sustainable half-acre garden.
Tips for Planning Your Half Acre Garden
First, you’ll need to make sure your space gets adequate sunlight. Don’t worry, even a garden can grow in partial sunlight, but you’ll have a little trouble with slower growing fruiting plants, like tomatoes and cucumbers. Once you choose your garden space, grab some graph paper (like the layout I created in The Homesteader Journal Planner), and treat each little block on the graph paper as 1-square-foot. This will help you easily space out rows and walkways.
As you plan out your garden space, don’t be afraid to put root vegetables, like sweet potatoes and carrots, in a partial shade area. Use all of the sunlight you can for the fruiting plants, like the ones I mentioned above. Choose plants that work well for your climate, as well. You can figure out when to start growing seeds and plants by figuring out your growing season and micro-climate.
More importantly, you don’t have to grow “all the things”. Only plant what your family likes to eat. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and space.
Next, make a plan for your spring/summer garden, and your fall garden, at the same time. You’ll be able to get a higher yield of produce from your garden space if you do succession planting and rotational growing. An example of this is when your potatoes that you planted in the spring get harvested in the summer, immediately plant something else in its place. For me, I like to plant bush beans right after I pull up my potatoes. After my first round of green beans is done and they stop producing (or slow down a lot), I normally still have time to plant another brand new batch and get another huge harvest off of them. This is really the only way you can get a lot of produce out of such a small space.
Alright, let’s go over some more tips in the video below!
How many hours a week/a day is required to maintain and harvest a half acre garden?