Our Community Garden Stories
Garden Design Basics for Urban Homesteads
Garden Designs for Backyard Gardening A few garden design basics to think about for the urban homesteader to think about it is what type of garden you want. Do you want a food forest with plants intermingled and guilds of dozens of plants together? Or do you want to...
How to Build an In-Ground Hugelkultur Garden Bed
How to Build an In-Ground Hugelkultur Garden Bed Building an in-ground hugelkultur garden bed is an interesting garden method for developing very productive gardens. A hugelkultur bed is simply a variety of materials including wood, leafy material, straw, animal...
Building Raised Garden Beds with Wood
Building Wood Raised Garden Beds Building wood-raised garden beds is a very popular method of backyard gardening. Accordingly, there are many different ways to go about creating an above-ground garden bed. Raised garden beds have a very nice look and appeal to...
Starting Plants from Seed
Starting a Garden from Seed Starting plants from seed is the most economical way to grow a garden. Buying plants from a nursery that are ready to be directly planted into your garden beds may save time or be good for a first-time gardener. However, if the goal is to...
Soil Amendments
Soil Amendments Soil amendments enhance the productivity of the native soil. There are a large number of different soil amendments available to adjust the nutrient and mineral levels in your gardens and food forest. However, before you start adding tons of different...
Harvesting Snow Peas & Broccoli at the Community Garden
Today we harvested the first round of snow peas and some of the broccoli that we planted earlier this year in our community garden plot. We love planting late winter crops such as these and getting to enjoy the harvest in early spring. We have sugar snap peas, Oregon...
Florida Weave for Tomatoes in Community Garden Plot
We use the Florida weave for our sauce tomatoes growing in the community garden plot. This is a great way to trellis indeterminate tomatoes. Together with T posts or wooden stakes, you wrap the string around all of the tomatoes. By weaving the twine around the plants...
Sweet Onions: Harvesting and Drying
We were harvesting and drying the sweet onions today grown in the community garden plot. The sweet onions that we grew this year were Walla Walla and Alisa Craigs. Both of these varieties get very large and are excellent for making onions rings and for slicing to...
Harvesting Potatoes at Community Garden
We harvested a part of a row of potatoes at our community garden plot. This was a mix of dark Norlund red potatoes and Yukon Gold potatoes. We will pull up the rest of the row the next time we back at our plot and have room in the bucket. Potatoes are a great crop to...
Free or Nearly Free Resources
Finding Free or Nearly Free Resources in Your Community Leveraging free or nearly free resources is a smart thing for all urban homesteaders. There are countless resources to access in your local community. Although buying new may be the right choice for many...
Community Network
Community Network Connect with local, regional, and national community networks that share resources and ideas relevant to urban homesteading. These organizations and communities come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. With this in mind, think about where you might...
Compost
Compost for Backyard Gardeners Compost is the most important amendment to an organic garden. Urban homesteaders can make their own compost or buy it by the yard. While buying may be a necessity at the start of building new garden beds. Over time it is wise to...
Harvesting Brussel Sprouts & Carrots
A quick trip to the community garden on Thanksgiving morninig to harvest brussel sprouts and carrots for our dinner later today.