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When we launched Wild Homestead Living, we knew that helping people grow their own food would be a major category. Everybody eats, but learning how to feed yourself can be daunting! That’s one of the reasons that our very first free products is a guide to help you get started.

Watch “Demo: Quick Start Vegetable Gardening Guide” video on YouTube.

Who is this Vegetable Gardening Guide for?

Are you excited to start gardening, but don’t know where to begin? Or maybe you’ve got a few seasons behind you, but know that you could be doing better? Then this post - and the FREE guide - is for you! While it’s primarily designed for people new to gardening, there is something for everyone. The plant families and crop rotation charts are especially useful - I reference them regularly as I plan our gardens!

Why did we create a Quick Start Guide?

I created the Quick Start Vegetable Gardening Guide to be the resource I wish I’d had 20 years ago when I started a homestead garden. While I always knew I wanted to grow food, and had even worked on large organic farms, home-scale gardening has a steep learning curve. This guide isn’t a silver bullet to solve every homestead garden problem that will ever arise, but it will give you a short-cut to becoming successful on your own gardening journey.

What’s inside the Quick Start Vegetable Gardening Guide?

The guide contains four sections designed to walk you through what you need to know in order to get started right. Let’s take a closer look.

Gardening Basics

Here you can find quick overview of the key topics for vegetable gardening. Each of these topics can be a lifetime of learning, but you don’t need to be an expert to get started. Topics such as soil, climate and pests are mentioned as well as the plant spacing, variety, and succession growing.

Charts

This section contains charts covering the major vegetable plant families and how we use this knowledge to plan our garden. Crop rotation is about planting different plants in the same place over time - either in the same season or different years. A helpful feature of the plant family profiles is the ‘Growing Difficulty’ column. While it’s good advice to plant what you like to eat, it’s also wise to start with easy-to-grow plants and build your confidence from a place of success.

Field Notes

This section is filled with blank worksheets that lead you through developing your own garden plan. They start with laying out your garden space, followed by figuring out what you want to grow in that space. Then you can create your seed and plant shopping list. The final page is one to help you start taking notes - your future self will thank you for writing down when you planted things and how they grew.

More Resources

This last section features a list of our favorite tried and true resources, from seed suppliers and tools to books and websites. We update this list regularly, so by the time download the guide, it might look different than it does in the video. Rest assured that we only share resources we use ourselves.

How do I get a copy of the Quick Start Vegetable Gardening Guide?

Getting your own copy is super simple! All you need to do is visit the Free Resources section of the website. There you will see the Free Vegetable Gardening Guide featured. Just click on it, then enter your name and email address. A link to the guide will be delivered almost immediately to your inbox. If you don’t see it, check your spam filter. To ensure you get the guide, you can also add our email address (neighbor @ wildhomesteadliving.com) to your ‘safe sender’ list.