When you think of things you can bury in your garden to help improve the quality of your soil, fish heads may not be the first thing that comes to mind.
However, this is a practice that has been used for centuries in various parts of the world and can actually have some benefits for your plants.
Fish heads are an excellent source of nutrients for plants, and burying them under tomato plants can give the plants a much-needed boost.
Maybe you’re looking for an environmentally-friendly and economical alternative to store-bought soap. Or perhaps you want to know how to maintain hygiene while camping or in a survival situation. Either way, you can benefit from learning about the many plants you can use as soap.
Using plants for cleansing is nothing new. Historians have found evidence that the ancient Egyptians bathed with soaps made from plants along with animal and vegetable oils. Native Americans also used a variety of plants as soap when they washed.
And the good news is that it is surprisingly easy to create soap with plants. The secret is a naturally-occurring compound called saponin in many plants, especially those with waxy cuticles.
When you chop up plants that contain saponin and rub the pieces in your hands with water, you can create a lather. This article will share some of the most common plants in the U.S. that contain saponin and how to use them as a soap substitute.
Grocery prices are skyrocketing, and shrinkflation is running rampant on every grocery store shelf. Brands have cut down on the size of the product package while keeping it at the same price to create less sticker shock.
There is just no getting around the fact that groceries cost a lot, and the food budget that covered your family’s needs a few months ago probably isn’t going as far today.
There are many things we can do on the homestead to help stretch the grocery budget. You can make simple meals that require cheap ingredients, shop your back stock and pantry to put together meals, and grow your own produce in the garden.
While many of us probably have a garden in place, have you ever thought about the amount of calories each plant produces? To help specifically save on the food budget while also filling bellies, it is essential to know what plants will produce the most calorie-rich foods.
Learn more about how to save on groceries by growing these high-calorie plants to keep you full this year.
By J.G. Martinez D
We drink a lot of coffee here in Venezuela. It’s a part of our culture.
It’s a tradition to offer coffee to visitors. Even in the humblest of homes, and if the infusion has to be a little bit watery, with little sugar, visitors will still receive a cup of coffee. Mind you, our Italian/Spanish and even Arabic mixed society has brought along the national desire for strong and tasty cappuccinos, lattes, and a much-extended version: the gravity brewed. That last one is not my favorite, as I prefer to use a small coffee maker to pressure-brew one cup at a time.
However, in every home, there is a gravity brewer. You may now have an idea of the extent of our coffee consumption. When the commies here decreed that all the coffee production had to be sold to the “State,” this just further contributed to the coffee scarcity we saw during the Hyperinflation Period (2017-2021).
You can prep coffee, but how do you grow it? I would like to tell you what my family did to keep coffee in our mugs during the collapse of our country.
What we discovered is that when researching greenhouses, there is a flood of information, a lot of different options, and many extra things to consider. And on top of that, there’s also a learning curve to starting to use one (I don’t wanna even TALK about how many plants wilted in the first summer in the greenhouse!).
If adding a greenhouse is on your homesteading dream list, then the questions you will want to consider first include:
Alpine strawberries are a real treat, but you’ll never see these fresh summer fruits at the grocery store. Learn to grow alpine strawberries, and you can easily harvest them at home.
Alexandria and yellow wonder alpine strawberries
The first time I had an alpine strawberry, I couldn’t believe what I was tasting: it tasted like the Platonic ideal of a strawberry, what strawberries should and were meant to taste like. I knew at that moment I had to get my hands on some, and since this was a strawberry I knew I’d never be able to buy (it has a near-nonexistent presence commercially), I decided to grow my own.
Alpine strawberries are not a new phenomenon, they grow wild in wooded areas all over the world, and there’s evidence that Stone Age civilizations ate them — not to mention the fact that they were first domesticated in ancient Persia.
Humans have been developing alpine strawberry varieties for at least 300 years, and eager horticulturalists are still tinkering with this diminutive perennial to refine the fruit’s incredible sweet flavors even more.
