Welcome to Home Garden Joy, the place to learn all about gardening, self-care with herbs, and home cooking from scratch.
I wasn’t always a homebody. For many years, I thrived in the fast-paced concrete jungles of New York City as a marketing executive. I chose to give up that lifestyle in 2007 and move onto a 17 acre farm. What I gained by giving up is a peaceful existence that is true to my nature – a homebody who loves nothing more than digging deeply into the soil, putting down roots, and blooming where I’m planted.
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
If you are looking for information on how to start a vegetable garden from scratch, you may find yourself lost in a sea of advice. I’ll make it easy for your start a backyard vegetable garden by breaking down the steps into four simple categories: Location, Soil, Size, Timing. Where Should You Plant Your Vegetables?…
We decided that propagating peach trees from softwood cuttings was the way to go when we couldn’t find the variety we wanted at the store this past week. The best eating peach we’ve ever grown here at Seven Oaks Farm is “Red Haven.” It was recommended by our neighbor, a man whose family has farmed…
This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too. As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup…
Once you make water bread, you’ll never eat store bought white bread again. In fact, you won’t be able to look at a loaf of “white bread” from the market and consider it bread, in any sense of the word, after you’ve taken a bite of the real thing. Hot. Crunchy crust. Tender, flaky, soft…
If you’ve ever wondered can you grow a lemon tree from a seed, the answer is yes, you can. But it takes patience and time to coax the tree into producing fruit. In the meantime, you’ll have to tend a tree that wants to grow into six, seven or more feet tall. Here’s the story…