Urban Homesteading PDX
A collection of stories from our urban homestead in Portland Oregon.
Our Stories
Follow along as we learn and explore urban homesteading in Portland, Oregon
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...
Ducks Eat Every Watermelon Good or Bad
Sometimes those personal watermelons just aren't very good. This one was not ripe at all even though it looked good, it was very light pink and kind of hard in the middle. While the duck girls didn't annihilate it as fast as a very ripe melon they still enjoyed their...
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...
Peach Harvest in Urban Food Forest
We are harvested tons of peaches from our urban food forest in our front yard. We thin the fruit trees in order to make sure the fruit that grows gets large and ripe. The peaches started to ripen up last week and there is a faint smell of delicious peach when you get...
Community Garden Projects
Our Community Garden Plot
Duck Ducks
We love our ducks.
Home Garden Project
Our 1/4 acre property is home to fruit trees and bushes, raised garden beds, and diverse native plants intermingled throughout.
Enjoying the Harvest
Using what we grow to feed ourselves, friends, and family.
About
Hi I am John Johnson and an avid urban gardener in the greater Portland Oregon area. We raise ducks and chickens in our urban lot. We also have planted a large food forest including apple, pear, persimmon, quince, cherry, apricot, and pawpaw trees. Our favorite understory shrubs include blueberries, raspberries, marionberries, honeyberries, and jostaberries. We grow a substantial garden with both in ground garden beds and raised garden beds. These are stories from our adventures growing food and raising animals in an urban setting and the tools that we use to make it happen. This site is supported by affiliate ad revenue.
Urban Homesteading in Practice
What elements of urban homesteading are you interested in?
- Reducing Resource Use. By using alternative energy sources such as installing solar roof panels, riding a bicycle, using public transportation, harvesting rainwater, drying clothes on a line, and reusing greywater.
- Raising Animals. A backyard poultry flock of chickens, ducks, or even other animals such as rabbits or goats. Honeybees and worms in a vermicomposter are also popular urban homesteading animals to raise.
- Edible Landscaping. Growing vegetable gardens, backyard orchard fruit trees, medicinal plants, and herbs, and converting lawns from traditional grass to food forest gardens.
- Self-Sufficient Living. Connecting with your community to trade and share resources that can be repaired, recycled, or made from scratch materials.
- Food Preservation. Managing a harvest of vegetables or fruit is just as important as growing. Canning, drying, freezing, and fermenting are the most popular methods for preserving a harvest for consumption over many months.
- Composting / Building Soil. On-site composting of plant materials and basic kitchen scrap materials. Building soil spreading compost throughout food forest or practicing chop and drop methods or spreading wood chips to feed the microbiology of the soil. Developing a rich soil ecosystem over years of intentional actions to feed the life in the soil.