Design Your Small Farm or Homestead Garden
What is homesteading? It’s really a mindset—a desire to be self-sufficient. Learn more about growing in a large vegetable garden or on a small farm. Plus, here are three sample garden layouts to get you started.
What is Homesteading?
The word “homesteading” comes from The Homesteading Act of 1862, which encouraged settlement of the Great West by giving away free land to be farmed. Today, homesteading is about more about an attitude and lifestyle of self-sufficiency and becoming less dependent on having others provide for you; it’s about actually knowing how to grow food, preserve food, minimize waste, use less energy, and raise animals such as chickens and bees.
While a homestead garden can truly be any size, they tend to be larger because the aim is to live off the land as much as possible. However, if you’ve never gardened, we would not recommend starting with one of these larger garden plans. It’s best to start small, learn about gardening, and have room to expand later.
While raised beds are increasingly common, most crops in a homestead garden are grown in traditional in-ground rows. In addition, many vegetables grown in a homestead garden are high-yield crops that can be stored (for example, beets, onions, carrots, and potatoes).
To take this further: By having a dedicated area or greenhouse for raising seedlings, follow-on crops can be readied to plant into areas after the first crop has been harvested, making an area doubly productive.
See our free “How to Garden” series of guides to learn more about soil preparation, which crops to plant, watering the garden, and more.
Homesteading Garden Plans
Below are three sample homesteading garden plans created by Almanac readers with the Almanac Garden Planner! Note that you can link to each garden’s full plant list and details.
1. Baldwin Homestead
Garden Size: 39’ 11” x 29’ 11”
Garden Location: Keysville, VA
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good Soil
2. Square-Foot Garden for a Homestead
“This is a my “chef’s garden” with lots of different veggies and fruit that we like to eat.”
Garden Size: 50’ 0” x 50’ 0”
Garden Location: North Kikos, Texas
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Heavy, Clay Soil
3. Homestead Garden Layout
Garden Size: 50’ 0” x 92’ 11”
Garden Location: Alto, MI
See full plant list!
Looking for more garden plans? See our free layouts for other types of gardens.
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