The Urban Homestead

As part of the changes that we are implementing in our life, I recently checked out "The Urban Homestead" book by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen from my library.  I really like all the topics they cover in here. Well, almost since Urban Foraging is not really my thing ;)

The goal this summer is to be able to grow a lot of our own organic veggies and fruits. Last year we started with our raised beds which was a good start, but we either 1) grew the wrong veggies, 2) didn't really know how to eat certain veggies 3) waited too long to harvest certain veggies or 4) had some watering issues.  It was a good start and a good learning experience since now we know to do things differently.  We've also had some fruit trees for several years that haven't really produced much, we need to make some changes there.

This book is great because it gets me motivated to 'just do it'. They are big advocates on ripping out all the grass and only growing/watering what you can eat.  They also talk about the beauty of using nature to garden. You don't need to buy a bunch of fancy gadgets or fertilizers, just use what you have and compost! The book even goes beyond gardening and composting. They talk about how to preserve your harvest from dehydration to lacto-fermentation, canning and more.  It's definitely a book I will want to reference a lot so I'm going to have to buy it for my well curated library.

I finally pulled out our 2 compost bins that have been sitting on the side of the house for years unused. I washed the black widows out and set them up in easy access locations for successful composting.  I never thought I'd be one to put a compost bin in my front yard!!!!  We are already composting our fruits and veggies and since that is pretty much all we eat I am afraid we may need more compost bins!!   Rather than trying to get all scientific about a composting formula which was my downfall in the past, I'm just doing what they recommend in the book. Every time I add kitchen scraps, I throw enough carbon (brown) material on top to prevent maggots from growing!! Nice, right? :)  We will see how long it takes us to get 'black gold'!

Also inspired by this book, we ripped out 1/2 of the lawn in our backyard to create a new garden, thus tripling or quadrupling our vegetable garden from last year. It wasn't as rash of a decision as it seems since we had talked about doing something other than grass back there for a while now. But since we have dogs that meant putting up a fence around the new garden which is another one of those things that I never thought I would do in our small backyard, but just did it anyways.

We spent the past two weekends prepping our beds with the addition of 4 cu ft of topsoil & organic compost, adding bender board and a wire fence. Today was spent starting seeds indoors and outdoors as well as planting a couple new fruit trees.

All together we have in the ground/seeded for this summer are:

Herbs:
Basil, sweet
Cilantro
Mint, peppermint
Nettle
Parsley, Italian

Peppers:
Cayenne
Jalapeño
Red Bell Pepper

Veggies
Artichoke
Beans, blue lake
Broccoli
Carrots
Celery
Chives
Collard Greens
Kale
Lettuce, red sails
Spinach
Squash, spaghetti
Squash, zucchini
Swiss Chard
Tomato, Brandywine Heirloom
Tomato, Yellow Pear Heirloom

Fruit
Blueberry
Guava, pineapple
Kumquat
Lemon, meyer
Lime
Mandarin, satsuma
Pomegranate
Strawberry
Watermelon, sugar baby