How To Start To Grow Your Own Food

Knowing where to start when you want to grow your own food is easier than you think. It is something just about everyone can do with the right plan in place and the right mindset.

I remember when we bought our current home. One of the things that I was most excited about was starting a garden and raising chickens. I was so ambitious that we were simultaneously trying to create garden beds, install fencing, and build a chicken coop.

Needless to say that was a bit too much to take on all at once. As a result, we had chicks that were growing quicker than we could get our chicken coop up. Since we took on too much, our chicks that started out in our basement to stay warm soon turned into almost full grown chickens living in our basement!

That is definitely a hilarious story that I will save for another time. However, what I learned from that whole experience was how important it is to set goals and create a plan. When it comes to producing your own food it can get overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to.

By taking small steps towards creating a more sustainable life for your family and learning to grow and produce your own food, you will reap a ton of rewards, learn a lot, and enjoy the process along the way.

Set Goals

Setting goals are important because they allow you to dream and have hope for the future. Even without a large property or if you live in an apartment, you can still start working towards your goals. With a little creativity, you will find that you can still work towards your goals even when you feel limited.

Regardless of your circumstances, create a list of goals that you would like to accomplish. At the same time, understand that producing your own food through gardening or raising your own meat has a learning curve. It often takes a few years to learn and grow your skills. I suggest setting only one or two goals each year to focus on.

By sticking to a small set of goals, it allows you to focus your energy in one or two areas. It also avoids stretching yourself too thin, feeling overwhelmed, and getting burned out before you really get started.

Below is a list of goals that might help you get started:

Growing and fermenting peppers
Growing tomatoes and canning tomato sauce
Learning how to preserve what you grow
Growing a spring garden
Producing a fall/winter garden
Growing an herb garden
Growing a small salad garden
Raising chickens
Planting fruit trees
Growing berries

Decide What To Grow And Produce

After choosing your goals for the year, it is time to decide more specifically what you want to produce.

Let’s say that my goals for the year are to raise chickens for eggs and grow a small salad garden. I might start by creating a list of what I want to produce. While doing this, I need to remember to keep it small in order to keep overwhelm at bay and only focus on a few things.

My list might look something like this:

chickens

lettuce (4 different varieties)

cucumbers (2 varieties)

tomatoes (2 varieties)

summer squash (1 variety)

Create A Plan

The next step is to get more specific and create a more detailed plan or checklist of things to do for the season. This is crucial, especially when getting started, because there is no infrastructure in place yet. Preparing shelter for animals or preparing garden beds takes time and it should be in place prior to bringing animals home and prior to planting dates for your area.

It also essential to determine whether or not you will be planting from seed or purchasing seedlings. If you plan on starting from seed, you’ll need to determine when to start the individual plants based on the type of plant and average last frost dates for your area.

Below is a list of things to consider when making your plan.

Infrastructure What shelter is needed for animals? What materials are needed for raised beds or garden beds? What will be used for planting on a patio garden?
Fencing Will fencing be needed for animals or to protect the garden from deer and other wildlife? Will a permanent fence or a portable electric fence be needed?
Soil Testing Does the soil need tested?
Soil Amendments Are amendments needed after a soil test? Will compost be made or purchased? Where is a good local source for compost? If planting in raised beds or containers, what will be added to them?
Animals What is needed to care for the animals.
Seeds/Plants What will be growing? Where will plants or seeds be sourced from? What are important dates for planting?

Things To Consider

Space Whether you have 5 acres, a tiny lot in the suburbs, or a patio at your apartment, there are always options for growing your own food. If you are limited on space, you may not be able to raise animals for now, but anyone can grow produce no matter how big or small their space is. When dealing with smaller spaces, a great option for gaining more space is to grow vertically. By placing a trellis or creating vertical space with inexpensive cattle panels, it’s possible to get a lot more growing space out of a small area. GreenStalks are also an amazing way to grow a ton if you are working with limited space like an apartment.

Finances Getting started growing and producing your own food can get expensive, but it doesn’t have to. Similar to most purchases we make today, there are expensive options when it comes to gardening and raising animals and there are lots of options for doing these things on a budget. Whatever your goals are, I would suggest setting a budget and being creative to come up with a plan that fits into the budget you set. Upgrades can always be made in the future to build nicer gardening beds, fencing, or animal structures. When you are just getting started, focus on the main goal for now. Also, be certain that you plan on continuing producing your own food long term before spending more.

Be Realistic Producing your own food does take a lot of hard work. Before getting started, it’s important to ask yourself why you want to produce your own food. If you just want to save a little money, it might not be a big enough why for you to get started on this journey and follow through with it. However, if you want to teach your kids about growing their own food and improve the health of your family, then you may be more motivated to make this work. It’s also important to consider how much time you have to dedicate to growing your own food. Although it isn’t necessary to spend hours a day out in the garden, it does take some time commitment. Spending time thinking about how realistic it is for you and your family can help avoid problems down the road.

Make A Big Impact

It’s easy to look at homesteaders and gardeners who have been working and learning for years and either think that it is completely unattainable for you or think that you can do everything that they are doing all at once. Gardening and homesteading is a journey that takes years.

Instead of trying to take it all on at once, build up your systems and skills slowly. With that in mind, it’s important to take small steps but do so in a direction that will have a big impact for you.

If your family doesn’t eat salad, then starting with a salad garden might not be the best choice for you. However, if your family eats a ton of tomato products, maybe the best choice would be to focus the first year on learning how to grow tomatoes well, trying numerous varieties, and later focusing on ways to preserve your tomatoes. By focusing on how to grow the best tomatoes, that provides you with the knowledge you need to have successful tomato crops each year moving forward. On top of that you could learn to make and can homemade salsa, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes.

Or maybe you love cooking with fresh herbs but hate paying the hefty grocery store prices. One of your areas of focus could be starting an herb garden, experimenting with new recipes using fresh herbs, and ways to preserve them for use over the winter.

Let’s say you want to reduce your grocery bill in the winter by purchasing less produce when it is out of season. You may want to focus on a few high producing, easy to grow vegetables that can be easily preserved for use in the winter. This might include green beans, potatoes, winter squash, and kale.

If your family loves fruit and berries, you might want to plant fruit trees and berry bushes, and grow melons. The fruit trees and berries won’t provide much of anything the first year. However, once they are in place they can produce a ton of fruit and berries for your family for many years.

Before jumping all in, spend some time thinking through what your long term goals are and what you can do this year to not only work towards those goals but can also have an impact on your family this year. The benefit is that you will see results and it will be a positive step towards your larger goals. This will help keep you motivated to do it again next year, and add more goals to achieve.

Stay Positive

Starting a garden or small homestead from scratch is a lot of work and at times can be overwhelming. However, understanding your purpose and having a plan to move forward not only this year but also in the future can really help you stay on track and stay positive when things don’t go as planned or take longer than you had hoped.

My family has been gardening and raising chickens for the last 8 years. Every year we expand on what we are doing and we have learned a ton over those years. I can’t imagine going a year without our garden. Aside from the amazing food it provides for our family, it has also had a big impact on me spiritually. It has allowed me to slow down and savor the beauty in the garden. I have a connection to everything that comes out of our garden. It has also taught me to have gratitude for the beautiful, nourishing food on our plates.

Keeping a positive attitude through your food producing journey will allow you to experience and appreciate all of the emotional and spiritual benefits that one may not expect from this adventure but come along with the beautiful bounty.

I encourage you to slowly start taking steps toward producing some of your own food. Whether you start big or small, take your time and enjoy the journey.

Happy Growing!!