It’s The Gardening Off Season. Let’s Get Ready For 2016 Now!

During the gardening ‘off season’, my plan is to write a series of encouragement and ‘how to’ articles with the beginner and wannabe gardener/homesteader in mind.  There is a lot of good information available for getting started down the road of increased self-sufficiency, but there’s even more misinformation and ignorance being tossed around out there. My goal is to simplify the process of gardening and homesteading to make it accessible for more people. It is my belief that nearly EVERYONE can grow some or all of their own food, regardless of your age, or where you live.

Sure, some situations require more thought and planning than others, but whether you live on a large acreage, in a suburban HOA controlled neighborhood or in a big city high rise, the only thing holding you back is you.  If you’ll join me, and stay the course, I’ll have you ready to grow by next spring. I guarantee it.

I hear regularly from people who say things like, “Someday, when we have some land, we’re going to do what you do,” or, “We’d love to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle, if we only had the land to do that.”

If you are thinking those, or similar thoughts, I have some GREAT news for you: you can get started right where you are.

Stop laughing, I’m serious.  Do some research and learn about the Dervaes family in California, who live on 1/10^th of an acre and not only provide their own food, but operate a full time thriving farm from their suburban plot.

I know plenty of stories of families living self-sufficiently, or virtually so, from a quarter of an acre.

We’re all rather familiar with the “Victory Gardens” that sustained many millions of people during WWII.

And let’s not forget about the allotment gardens (community gardens) that dot the British landscape each spring through fall, where families can rent small spaces to grow their own food. The British Parliament has passed laws that require local governments to provide spaces for allotments, if there is a demand. Here in the USA, some towns and many Churches could make space available for community growing.

My point is, it doesn’t take acres and acres to become self-sufficient; it takes creativity, out of the box thinking and elbow grease. If you want to start growing your own fruits and vegetables, and maybe your own meat, fish and/or eggs, you don’t have to wait until ‘someday’. In point of fact, I looked, and someday isn’t on any calendar, somewhere isn’t on any map, someone isn’t in any phone book. There is today, here, and there is me (you).

Brittan and I began our edible suburb when we lived on ½ acre in a typical suburban neighborhood, under the watchful eyes of a Home Owners’ Association. In that location we grew tons of fruit and vegetables, made our own compost, raised rabbits for meat and manure, raised fish and even managed to sneak in a few goats and chickens from time to time.

I share that last paragraph to help you understand that I KNOW from experience what can be done. I’ve grown fish and vegetables in my garage, herbs on our back deck, kept rabbits in the basement, and once we even hid 150 baby chicks in our garage for 10 weeks.

During the next several weeks, I’m going to show you a step by step plan to make sure you can succeed in your own edible suburb, but it will be up to you to implement what you learn.

I hope you’ll join the adventure. Please add your thoughts and questions to the comments section, or email any questions to us.  Also, please email or comment and let me know some of the subjects you’d like to discuss. I’d love to hear from you. Let’s do this!

 

Read Full Post »

Suburban Homesteading And A Myth Called Organic Gardening

I’ve been following the story of an Australian certified organic canola farmer who recently lost his organic certification because his fields were contaminated by his neighbor’s GMO crop.  You can imagine how devastating it’s been for him.  He works hard to ‘do things right’ and still ends up with nearby fields pollinating his crops.

The story made me think about how difficult it really is to be truly ‘organic’, especially those of us in the suburbs and exurbs. In most neighborhoods, even those where the HOA still allows back yard gardens, the streets are filled with trucks from those companies that spray yards with fertilizers, weed killers and pesticides.  As closely packed as most subdivisions are, is there really any way to prevent contamination of our gardens?

Calling ‘organic’ a ‘myth’ is perhaps hyperbole, but I wanted to emphasize how very difficult it is to achieve and why so many have given up on the idea.

First of all, there’s the wind that blows wherever it wants. The wind understands nothing of property lines or boundaries. As the neighbor’s lawn care or pest removal service sprays for weeds, bugs and to chemically fertilize, is it unreasonable to believe that wind drift could affect the place next door?

What about neighborhoods on hills? The yard at the top of a hill gets treated regularly. The neighbor next door or two doors down, is trying to grow an organic garden. Is it assured that during heavy rains, nothing washes into the organic garden and yard?

Then there are the birds, the bees, the insects and the small mammals who roam freely, carrying pollen and everything else they’ve picked up along the way.  They spread it with their feet, their legs, their beaks, their poop.

Out here on the very edge of suburbia, where we live now (sometimes called, the exurbs), we are smack in the middle of  conventional cotton and bean fields. Some of the farmers alternate with rape seed.  The fields are regularly sprayed.  The area is rather wide open and the breezes blow pretty much all the time.  The same birds, bees and butterflies that buzz the bean fields down the road, play on our blossoms, as well.

All we can do, is practice the best natural farming and gardening methods we can, and leave the rest up to nature.  Chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are not going away anytime soon.  We are surrounded and out numbered. We fight on.

What about you? Do you practice organic growing methods? What challenges do you face? Are you conventional and think the whole organic thing is humbug? We love to hear from readers. Let us know you thoughts.

As a way of saying thanks to all our readers, everyone who comments on the blog during the month of March is being entered into a drawing to win a copy of Ed Smith’s awesome book, “Incredible Vegetables In Self Watering Containers”.

Send us your gardening questions, pics and ideas. We’ll share them with the world.

 

Read Full Post »