Urban Homestead Gardens 2011: Our Shining Path to Culinary Freedom

We had a real break in the weather here at Monkey Central and we've taken full advantage of it. It's been sunny and in the low 70's/mid 60's for about a week now and after a longish cold winter we've been out getting things ready for spring and we've (well Sparky mostly has) been getting our urban homestead gardens all set up and ready to grow.

One of the first things we did was put our rain barrels back outside. This is rain barrel number one, it's our third year with barrels and the new one out front should help immensely. We won't have to lug buckets of water around front anymore, yay! We're hoping the fish we put inside all of them will keep down the mosquitoes, but four out of five of the ones up front passed on already. They're only .13 cents each so if we have to buy more, it won't break the bank.

Composter number 2 is out and working. It's about half full of leaves and vegetable matter food scraps.
Composter #1 is composting away. I dug out a good sized chunk of rich black dirt from this composter a few weeks ago and we added it to the soil in the main garden. As you can see, our leaf bin is full of nice wet decaying leaves just waiting to be added to our composters.

Sparky has already begun planting in the former rose garden. She put peas in this past Sunday and she erected her pea trellises too. She also planted some frost tolerant veggies to the right of the peas. She's planted carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and onions. If the cold does come back, and it might, this is spring after all, and kills the lettuce and spinach, it no problem because it's so early we can just replant.

In the main urban homestead garden, as you can see, we did away with most of the raised beds we made last year. We decided to go with a raised mound system for the most part. We'd seen how well it worked in a community garden a few blocks from us so we decided to try it here. We'll plant potatoes, peppers, broccoli, egg plants, some herbs, and more in those mounded rows.
We kept the raised strawberry bed, and as you can tell the strawberries are going gangbusters already. In the other raised bed we kept we have some asparagus growing, this is it's second year, so hopefully next year we can actually harvest some!
Sparky's urban homestead herb garden next to the back of the house looks a little sparse, that chives, sage, and thyme growing in there now, but soon it will be busting forth with rich green basil, tarragon, lemon grass, and more.

This year we decided to give the plants we start inside some assistance so we got a regular florescent shop light to hang over the little pots. It's just a regular shop light with a regular bulb in it and we hung it on the baker's rack we use to start plants on:
We've got two varieties of tomatoes, broccoli, egg plant, and sun flowers started. And after a little over a week of concentrated light on the three trays of seeds, we've already got a slew of growth!
The seeds really respond to the 16 to 18 hours a day of light and they've taken off. Of course planting them in seed starter mixture and keeping them moist helps a bunch too.

More urban homestead updates coming as soon as we get more stuff in the ground!

The case of the disappearing front lawn

I know the excitement from the previous one was wearing off, so it's garden update time here on Monkey Muck! We made a space in the front yard to grow some watermelons and pumpkins. We did this by digging up some of the grass and laying a good thick layer of leaf mulch over it and then dumping a couple bags of topsoil over that. I transplanted some of the watermelon plants that were growing in one of the backyard beds, we moved them so we could plant corn in it's place, and I added some seeds in case the transplants don't make it. Watermelons are on the left and on the right I planted pumpkins. I also planted some Japanese egg plant seed around the front edge of the pumpkin mound.

The tomatoes and cukes that Sparky planted out front are looking good.

We've been enjoying the lettuce we planted but the spinach has been a disappointment. Sparky planted some onions in that bed and she's going to plant some lettuce seeds so that we can have more in a few weeks.
Potatoes, that's them in the right hand corner of the picture, are looking good.

My daikon radishes are growing like crazy. I pulled one today and it is delicious.
Our carrots are coming along nicely. We've almost gone through our first planting of onions, lucky for us we've replanted a slew of them. So we'll have many more to come in a few weeks.
I've had to stake all the tomatoes last week and I had to tie some of them again today because there has been so much growth in the past week. Our peas, squash, cabbage, and most everything else is taking off too.
Little soon to be tomatoes!
Squash blossoms!
And the potatoes and carrots that we're growing in containers are coming along swimmingly.

The herb garden is growing nicely and the two blueberry bushes that my friend Keith are coming along as well. Sparky is going to plant some red radish seeds, along with that lettuce I mentioned, and more cilantro.

And that's the way the garden grows, for now.

Garden Update

Things are progressing nicely in Garden 2010.
Starting from the bottom left we've got strawberries in the first box, parsley and asparagus in the middle box, tomatoes and zucchini (which hasn't sprouted yet) in the third. In the center row we've got a different variety of tomato and cucumber in the first box, cauliflower and cabbage in the middle, and peas in the last box. On the back row we've got yet another variety of tomato and okra, in the middle box are eight varieties of peppers, and watermelon is in the last box.

I saved room in a few of the boxes for things like egg plant and whatever else might strike my fancy to plant. I've got Japanese eggplant seeds planted in little containers and if they sprout I'll plant them, if not I'll get some from the nursery.

In the former rose garden we've got onions coming up nicely, carrots, daikon radish, potatoes, lettuce, and spinach planted. We decided to plant in some of our containers as well so we planted carrots in the purple tub and two kinds of potatoes in the other two containers.

Sparky's herb garden is well stocked with things like basil, thyme, tarragon, and other herbs. And she also planted yet another variety of tomato up front next to our front porch. And tonight she tossed some sunflower seeds and some dill seed in out front as well.

We may yet plant some corn and beans behind the raised beds garden in the area we refer to as 'No man's land.' I'll let you know what we decide. I know you're dying to find out.