From April through September 2011 I participated as a blogger in a Home Farming Project sponsored by Triscuit (Nabisco Company) at the Gather.com site. Some of my gardening articles survived the cut when Gather was sold, some did not. I am trying to save all the ones that did survive so will be sharing through this blog.
It was a lot of fun to share what I did know and also to learn things I did not know while doing research for certain topics.
I can easily climb on my soap box and carry on about what each of us can do to contribute to a lessening of the carbon footprint left by commercial growers, but that is for another time….Just read my articles and you can easily read between the lines…and get on the bandwagon.
We don't all need to live in farms to grow edibles. Any size yard can accommodate at least a few edible plants to supplement our produce and fruit needs.
We are seeing more people growing edibles in their yards. Many are ripping costly-to-maintain lawns and are planting food instead.
Some neighborhoods don't allow 'garden plots' in the landscape, but if you incorporate some herbs and food plants into your yard plantings, you yard can look beautiful and be useful. After all, if you have to work so hard to have a pretty lawn that just sits there, isn't it a lot smarter to work as hard but be able to reap an edible harvest in the same space?
If you take the time and care to think about landscaping with herbs and other edible plants, your yard can look as pretty as it it was planted in masses of flowering bushes or trees. Just make sure your flowering bushes are all growing edibles and your trees bear nuts or fruit.
In areas where the growing seasons are short, more care and consideration needs to be taken into what is feasible to grow during the shorter growing season.
To keep a home garden manageable and interesting it is best to plant smaller quantities of an assortment of edibles more often rather than a bumper crop of one or two selections at a time.
A way to take advantage of small plots of land is to do companion planting which can be done in even a small 4 x 4 space in a sunny spot of your yard.
The easiest way is to mark the square out with spray paint on the grass. Start layering newspapers over the grass to form a thick barrier between the growing bed and the grass and weeds below. Water the area thoroughly after laying down several layers of the newspapers. Keep layering as thick as you feel it needs to be.
If you like to have 'boundaries', lay 4 pieces of 4 x 6 or 4 x 8 (depending on the depth of your top soil layer) and nail them together with corner brackets. On top of the newspapers you can add the soil, which can be potting soil enriched with compost.
Plant the taller plants in the center; corn or okra are good examples. Underneath them you can plant climbers like beans or peas, which will use the taller plants as trellises. Around them spot tomato and pepper plants in the corners with some varieties of basil in between. Outside that row then plant the shorter plants, such as parsley, chives, creeping oregano or marjoram and marigolds, the petals of which are edible in salads and they discourage some pests from attacking the other plants.
Before you know it you can have your own "Itsy Bitsy Farm" plot in your urban garden.
