Home Garden - Food Forest
A collection of stories from our urban homestead in Portland Oregon.
Our Home Garden Food Forest Stories
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...
How to get a delivery of wood chips?
How to get a delivery of wood chips? Learning how to get a delivery of wood chips is a good skill for urban homesteaders building a food forest. There are many ways to get a load of chips delivered to your house. The easiest method if available in your area is...
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...
Propagating Fruit Trees and Shrubs from Cuttings
Propagating Fruit Trees / Shrubs from Cuttings Propagating fruit trees and shrubs from cuttings is an important urban homesteading skill. If you want free plants or low-cost plants, learning to propagate your own plants is critical. In general, most berries and...
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...
May 2021 Garden Tour Through Our Food Forest
It's early May and everything is leafing out and full of blooms. The garden and food forest are in full spring mode. Can't wait to get to enjoy all the marionberries and peaches that are to come. We wrap up with a little tomato planting. We put in brandywines, black...
4 Reasons to Grow Comfrey in a Urban Food Forest
We grow a bunch of comfrey in our urban homestead food forest. They grow very well in our climate with no watering necessary and with the variety they do not spread by seed or run super far, it stays clumped up where we plant it. It is an excellent source of flowers...
Lady Bugs are Food Forest Friends
Ladybugs Natural Aphid Killers I noticed a couple of days ago that there were several aphids around the Artichokes that were popping up. We plant artichokes in many of our fruit tree guilds as the pollinators love them. I could have come through and sprayed them with...
Oyster Mushrooms from the Garden Enjoying the Harvest
Enjoying our first garden oyster mushroom harvest. Mushrooms are an excellent option for urban homesteaders looking to maximize the potential of their food forest gardens. We planted mushrooms in buckets of straw and directly into the wood chip mulch around plants in...
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...
Grafting European Pear to Quince Trees
I tried a couple of different grafts of European pears to the quince trees in the backyard food forest and had limited success. This graft took though and I think will work out well even though it is a little ugly, the branch is growing well. I am going to try and...
Trellising Marionberry Vines
A simple system for trellising our marionberry vines to keep them off the ground to avoid plants rooting in the ground. Marionberries grow on second-year vines. It is important to remove the previous vines and manage the growth for the production of future fruit. A little management goes a long way for fruit production.
Propogating Marionberry Plants
Marionberry plants are super simple to propagate, even a toddler can help out.