Our Little Piece of Heaven
Welcome to our little piece of Heaven on earth, our garden. It is here, where we escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life and enjoy the tranquility the garden brings as we take care of it. Being able to harvest the bounty we grow through out the year is one of the most rewarding and satisfying things we get to do. We invite you to explore, unwind, and share in the joy of our garden with us. Thank you for being a part of our sanctuary!
Helping Our Garden To Thrive
Successful gardens don't just happen, they take care and effort. These are a few of the things we do around our garden to help it thrive. We encourage you, even if you do not have a garden to consider doing something, even if it is small and in containers. By learning to nurture and care for our gardens, we can learn to nurture and care for one another, and all of God's creation!
Ensure Your Soil Is Healthy
Soil is foundational to a thriving garden. We work to make sure we have really good compost full of microorganisms. Learning to make your own compost is an important part of ensuring good healthy soil. We also choose a no-till method to grow our vegetables. This helps us not kill the microorganisms that live in the soil and keeps the soil structure in place. If you want healthy plants and a bountiful crop this is a must!
Adequate Clean Water
Every living thing needs good clean water to drink. Plants are no exception. In order for them to be healthy, they need regular and consistent watering with good clean water.
Go Chemical-Free
We choose to go chemical free. This is not only important for pollinators, but it is equally important for the environment. Runoff of chemicals affects streams, rivers and underground water supply. It's just not good for everyone - people and animals!
Encourage Pollinators
Creating a pollinator friendly environment is one of the best things we do for our garden. It not only helps us to produce more food, but it keeps our bees healthy, and promotes natural predators for pests! Who doesn't want a pest free garden?
Choose Healthy Plants
The seeds and transplants we choose are either open-air pollinated or heirloom. We always choose organically grown where possible. Planting the best, most healthy plants and seeds is important to us..
Become a Beekeeper
That's what we did! While it takes work to care for bees, these little insects have a lot to teach to us. Not to mention the honey they produce! Bees are great pollinators for our garden. By having healthy soil, healthy plants, a pollinator friendly environment, we help our bees to become more healthy and productive. Not only does it help our bees, but our garden helps to support the bees from our beekeeper neighbors!
The Microscopic Life of Soil
If you were to ask any gardener if they want healthy soil to grow their vegetable gardens in, you would receive a resounding YES! This is what we desire for our garden also.
Our journey into soil health started when we attended a soil gardening class in Tennessee during the summer of 2024. The instructor shared a fascinating tidbit about green beans: they can put nitrogen back into the soil, but only if they’re inoculated! We had never come across this insight before anywhere! We discovered that legumes form a fantastic partnership with soil-dwelling bacteria called Rhizobium. If you're curious to learn more like we were check out our blog post.
And with that our journey into learning soil health was born. Quite frankly we have never looked back.
So what is soil health? Soil is made up of inorganic material - sand and minerals - and organic matter: roots, decomposing leaves and plant matter. Healthy soil is also rich in a mind-boggling array of living creatures. The community of organisms living in the soil is called the ‘soil food web’. In decreasing order of size, it can include everything from mammals, worms, slugs and snails, spiders and insects to nematodes, protozoa, fungi and bacteria. Plant roots are also included in the soil food web.
The vast majority of this community of organisms live in the first inch or two of soil because that is where the food source is as well as around the root zone of plants. Earthworms and other larger living creatures can go deeper in the soil.
To have healthy soil, means that you have a diverse ecosystem of microorganisms in the soil you grow your fruit and vegetables in.
Meet Some Of The Microbes Of Old Oak Homestead!
Are you ready to meet just a few of the billions of incredible microbes that call Old Oak Homestead home? From beetles and earthworms to spiders, insects, nematodes, protozoa, fungi, and bacteria, our soil is bursting with life! Sometimes we have a ton of them, and sometimes just a few, but we’ve taken the art of creating healthy soil to whole new level! We take soil samples and peek at them under a microscope to make sure everything is as it needs to be. It’s an absolute blast to witness the tiny superheroes working tirelessly to break down nutrient-rich food resources, making them available for our plants to thrive. This means healthier plants and more nutritious food for everyone!
Oh, and when folks say "you need to feed the soil," this is exactly what they mean—nurturing these creatures!
Check out the videos below featuring some of the microbes we've discovered along the way under our microscope. To learn more about each one, just click the "i" button in each video. We hope you enjoy watching these incredible little creatures as much as we do!
Bacteria Feeding Nematode
Diatom
Rotifer
Rotifer
No-Till Gardening
We often get asked why we have chosen to no longer till our garden beds? And the answer is simple. The more we learn about what is living in our soil and what that life is doing for us to keep us healthy, we simply do not wish to destroy it by tilling the ground. We intentionally choose to disturb the soil as little as possible. It also means should we ever need to till our garden beds again, we understand what is happening to the microscopic life, the damage that is done and what we will need to do to fix it. However, fixing it can take time. This can mean the difference between weed and pest pressure and having little to no weeds and pest pressure. Not to mention the quality and nutritional density of food can also be affected. This is why we believe that preventing damage is far better than fixing it, so we're putting in the effort to ensure our vegetable garden beds thrive without tilling ever again!
Check out our gallery below to see the stunning bounty our beautiful garden has produced. If we can do it, you can too!
GROW YOUR OWN INGREDIENTS
Dive into the vibrant world of vegetables, fragrant herbs and stunning flowers!
Garden of Eatn
What's better than growing food? Eating it! Below are some of our favorite ways to eat what we grow.
Old Oak Homestead: The Growing Library
