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DIY – Page 19 – Homesteader Depot

Homesteader Depot

Category: DIY

  • How to Test Your Soil Using Only a Mason Jar

    How to Test Your Soil Using Only a Mason Jar

     

    When starting a garden, it’s crucial to know what kind of soil you’re working with. It will help you determine what to plant and how to amend your soil. All soil is comprised of three basic components: sand, silt, and clay, and varying combinations of these three components determine what type of soil you have.

    Loamy soil is ideal, and it is typically more or less an even mix of sand, silt, and clay. It is slightly spongy and moist, but still light enough that it doesn’t get packed down too easily. In essence, it’s just right. To achieve this ideal soil, you would want to add whatever component your soil is lacking.

    To test your soil, all you need is a mason jar, some water, and a little bit of time.

    How to perform a mason jar soil test

    1. First, you need your soil sample. Don’t just grab a handful off the top though, dig a bit into some well-tilled soil, “stir” around a bit with your trowel, and get a good scoop from below the surface of your garden bed or the ground you are testing.
    2. Once you have a nice sized scoop of dirt, fill your mason jar about halfway with the dirt.
    3. Fill the rest of the way up to the lip of the mason jar with water, leaving about 1″ of air.
    4. Attach the lid to the jar securely, then shake vigorously. This will cause the dirt to settle once you’ve put the jar back down, as well as break up any sizable clumps of dirt.
    5. Set the jar back down and leave overnight. In the morning, you’ll have your results!

    On the bottom will be sand, then silt, and then clay. Here’s a quick and easy guide to how to read your results and what they mean for your soil type:

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  • DIY Tooth Whitening Recipe

    DIY Tooth Whitening Recipe

    We’ve shared a lot of DIY health and personal hygiene products on this blog, and for good reason. There are so many products out there that are full of chemicals and toxins, that can be easily made at home for a fraction of the cost. This whitening tooth powder is packed with beneficial ingredients you’ll want to try.

     

    Ingredients:

    • 4 tablespoons bentonite clay. This is a natural, mineral-rich powder that gently cleans your teeth. It also detoxifies your mouth to freshen breath and fight gum disease
    • 2 teaspoons baking soda. Baking soda is a very mild abrasive that polishes the teeth and removes stains.
    • 1½ teaspoons finely ground sea salt. This ingredient is loaded with trace minerals that help to strengthen and rebuild your teeth. Salt is also a natural antiseptic which keeps the bacteria in your mouth in check.
    • 1 ½ teaspoons unrefined stevia powder. For anyone nervous about ditching conventional toothpaste, or just picky children, stevia helps to sweeten the powder.
    • Up to 3 teaspoons flavoring of your choice. Ground cloves, cinnamon, or mint are excellent choices that also act as astringents for gum health.
    • 1 teaspoon activated charcoal. Ironically, this jet black special ingredient is what really does the work in whitening your teeth. Activated charcoal (carbon) particles bind to the tannins from coffee, tea, wine, and certain foods to lift stains away. Charcoal also helps to balance the mouth’s pH levels which aids in remineralization.

     

    Add all ingredients to a clean glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Attach the lid and shake thoroughly to evenly mix.

    To use, simply wet your toothbrush, dip it in the powder, and brush and rinse as you would with toothpaste. 

    This recipe is incredibly easy to make and use in place of conventional toothpaste made with questionable chemicals. Whip up a batch today to complete your DIY health and wellness toolkit.

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  • Mother of Four Builds House From YouTube Video Instructions

    Mother of Four Builds House From YouTube Video Instructions

    These days, we all rely on the internet for literally everything. I personally believe that YouTube instruction videos are one of the greatest inventions of all time (seriously!). It is such an incredible thing to be able to search for a video to help you out with a confusing or intimidating project, and homesteaders know this better than anyone! Whether you want to learn how to build cold frames, shear a sheep, or birth a baby cow, YouTube has videos for pretty much everything.

    Still, it might surprise you to learn what this incredibly ambitious mother of four did, using YouTube videos. A few years ago, single mother Cara Brookins was trying to rebuild her life for her and her four children after escaping an abusive marriage. She didn’t have enough money to buy them a house, but she could afford a small plot of land.

    Determined to provide her family with a home, she and her children got to work. Using YouTube videos as a reference, they mixed their own cement, lay the foundation, raised the walls, and built their own house, all by hand.

    Such an incredible story! Now Brookins and her four children have their own home, and are the picture of independence.

    Check it out!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyP28vNviKk

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  • Ways to Recycle Sawdust

    Ways to Recycle Sawdust

     

    Woodworking projects and home repairs top the to-do lists of many homesteaders, but they generate a copious amount of a largely unwanted byproduct: sawdust. Before dumping your next shovelful of sawdust into the trash, take a look at this list of creative ways to make good use of it:

    • Use for traction when you’re stuck in the snow. Sawdust is traditionally used by logging truck drivers to prevent slipping and getting stuck in harsh winter road conditions. Keep a sealed bag or two of it in your trunk to spread around your tires for extra traction if you get stuck.
    • Keep on hand as a spill kit must-have. Sawdust is a very absorbent material and can quickly contain any spills such as oil or paint. Once the spill is soaked up, the sawdust sweeps up easily and with minimal dust.
    • Decorate with fake snow. Mix with white paint (acrylic or whatever is on hand) and glue to use for seasonal arts and crafts.
    • DIY firestarter bricks. Melt candle wax in a nonstick pot, add sawdust to achieve a thick consistency, pour into an ice cube tray or egg carton, and cool, and store with your camping gear or fireplace items. Use just like storebought firestarters.

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    • Keep weeds under control. Walnut sawdust has natural weed-killing properties. Sweep into the cracks of your driveway or walkway to prevent weed growth.
    • Use as a cement additive. Sawdust mixed into mortar aids in bonding building materials together. It also makes for a good recipe for casting moisture-loving planters.
    • Create a decorative garden path. Spread and tamp sawdust into a dirt walkway to curb erosion and create a soft, fragrant path through your garden or wooded lot.
    • Compost and fertilizer. Mix a little bit of sawdust with manure or a nitrogen source like blood meal. This both fertilizes plants and aids in water retention.
    • Mix with wood glue to fill cracks and holes. Mixed into a putty consistency with wood glue, very fine sawdust is often used by flooring professionals as a cheap, stainable wood filler.
    • Clean concrete floors. Lightly wet a small pile of sawdust with water and use a push broom to spread it around the concrete floor of any workspace. The wet sawdust will bind and absorb grime and hazardous fine dust.

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  • The Easiest Gardening Method You’ll Ever Try

    The Easiest Gardening Method You’ll Ever Try

    A thriving garden is the beating heart of the homestead.  For many people, though, keeping a garden can be a challenge. Traditional methods require heavy machinery for soil preparation, questionable chemical fertilizers, all adding up to a prohibitive upfront cost. A great and easy method of gardening that has a very low financial demand is the “lasagna garden”.

    It was given that name because the method involves developing arable soil by composting an existing plot with layers of organic matter. You create the layers in the fall, to be ready for planting in the spring. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:

    • Select your plot: With this method, you don’t need to prepare the soil at all. That’s right, no double-digging, no weeding! Just pick an area where your garden will get the sunshine it needs that isn’t too far from your water source.
    • The first layer: The base layer of your garden will be a single layer of corrugated cardboard that smothers out even the toughest weeds. You can source this from almost anywhere, just be sure to remove packing tape if you’re recycling boxes. To prevent weeds from growing through, be sure to cover up any gaps in the cardboard with more cardboard. If your plot doesn’t have any persistent or tenacious weeds, a minimum of three layers of newspaper will work fine instead. Just before applying the next layer, thoroughly saturate your base layer with water.

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    • The compost layer: This layer will be the powerhouse of your garden. Your garden is literally a compost sheet (rather than a pile or heap). Put anything in this layer you’d put in the compost, including “browns” like fall leaves, shredded paper, pine needles, and “greens” like veggie scraps, grass clippings, garden trimmings, etc. Once you’ve piled on the compostable matter, finish this layer off with three to four inches of finished compost or topsoil to be ready to plant. 
    • The mulch layer: Your lasagna garden will be topped off with the application of a couple of inches of mulch to retain the ideal moisture and temperature for your compost to break down. The best mulch materials are the ones you can source with minimal effort from neighbors, local businesses, or even your town’s Department of Works. Tried and true materials for this layer include wood chips (aged chips are best), straw, grass clippings, leaves, even tree bark! If it’s more convenient for you to purchase mulch, opt for undyed wood chips.

    Once you have your layers prepared, let them sit for a season. It’s common to start in the fall to be ready to plant in the spring, but you could do this in the spring for early fall planting, for example.

    To plant, brush back the mulch layer a bit and plot out the spots you’d like to plant your seeds. Cut holes in the cardboard for the roots to grow once the seeds begin to sprout, plant your seeds in the compost layer, and cover lightly with the mulch (as you would were you using potting soil).

    That’s it! The layers will retain moisture, so only water if the bottom layer is dry. Happy planting!

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  • Common Mistakes When Going Off-Grid

    Common Mistakes When Going Off-Grid

    Getting off-grid and energy independent is really appealing, but can also be pretty intimidating. It’s hard to know where to start when you’ve lived your whole life reliant upon a municipal grid, and as I wrote recently about homesteading in general, it’s OK to make mistakes.

    But, you can always learn from the mistakes of others! There are common mistakes a lot of people make when first getting off the grid, and here are some of those mistakes and how to avoid them.

    1. Aiming too high

    Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have goals and aim for the sky. However, when you’re thinking about going off the grid, don’t expect to have satellite TV, a dishwasher, run a crock pot, a video game console, curling iron, etc. all at once. When you get off-grid, you will have to scale down your life…drastically.

    2. Wasting energy

    This is obviously a broad category of mistakes, and there are many ways in which you can waste energy. Running a gas generator to watch a movie might be a good example, or using solar power to use a light during the day when natural light would work fine. You’ll need to conserve and constantly think about the most efficient way to use your resources.

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    3. Buying gimmicky products

    There are a ton of products out there to generate electricity off-grid, and some are really great, while others are probably a waste of your money. A lot of small solar products to charge small devices, for example, just straight don’t work unless there is direct sunlight on them for several hours at a time, so they could fail frequently. Do your research, read reviews, and again…

    4. Failure to Prioritize

    As mentioned in #1, you will need to take a cold, hard look at what you really need electricity for. We are accustomed to so many gadgets and gizmos these days, we don’t even think about how much we require electricity for the simplest of tasks. You will have to seriously reassess how much you really need an electric coffee maker or if you can make it in a percolator, if you really need a food processor or if you can mix things by hand, if you really need lights in every room or if you can use a lantern, etc.

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  • 22 Ways to Use Beeswax

    22 Ways to Use Beeswax

    Beeswax is amazing. It is the only naturally occurring wax, and is produced in special wax glands of female honeybees. It takes 8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax! Vegetable waxes are rendered from fruit or leaves, while soy and paraffin waxes are produced by a toxic chemical process. Only beeswax is wax in its natural form, and simply can’t be produced in a lab, even in this day and age. But if you keep bees, you can essentially grow it in your own backyard!

    It has been used for centuries in many different ways, and there’s still plenty we can use it for in our daily lives. While one pound of beeswax can be relatively expensive, it can last you for a long time and serve many different uses. Many projects you will use it for will only require a small amount of beeswax, making it quite cost-effective, especially compared to purchasing a pre-made product that contains beeswax.

    Here is a list of 22 things you can do with beeswax. Each of the items on this list is something that can be made using beeswax or something that beeswax can be used for in its raw state.

    • Fabric waterproofing
    • Lotions
    • Balms
    • Ointments
    • Deodorant
    • Lipstick
    • Lubricate screws
    • Candles (DIY Beeswax Candles – Video)
    • Condition tools
    • Condition wood
    • Hair pomade
    • Beard wax
    • In grafting trees
    • Firestarter
    • Solid fuel
    • Condition leather
    • Sealing wax
    • Crayons
    • Polish copper
    • Season cast iron
    • Cover cheese
    • Treat snow shovels

    This is certainly just a small taste of ways you can use beeswax! If you buy a pound or so for one or two of these projects, or keep bees yourself, you’re bound to come across other ways you can use it in your home. It’s a great item to have on hand, especially for homesteaders. It’s one of the greatest naturally occurring products available to us, and we should take advantage!

     

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  • A Vegetable Growing Cheat Sheet

    A Vegetable Growing Cheat Sheet

    I love a good, detailed infographic, especially when it comes to gardening. A lot of the gardening infographics that show up on my feed on Pinterest are pretty simple, so I was stoked when I found this one from Anglianhome.co.uk recently.

    It’s an all-purpose cheat sheet for vegetable growing, from what’s best for plot vs. patio (or potted) vegetable gardens, where to plant, when to plant, and a handy companion planting guide as well. I think the companion planting guide section is my favorite, with handy color coding. It can be overwhelming trying to decide what to plant with what, and I love visual aids like this that can make planning out next year’s garden simpler.

    The most impressive part of the infographic however, has got to be the chart in the middle that has, in one handy chart, all the info you will need for planting, from spacing, sunlight, whether to direct sow, and what season to plant and harvest. This can also help to plan a garden, so you can coordinate companion plants and early spring starts.

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